March 18, 2020 is a day that marked an unexpected change at PICA. That is the day that Jason and I knew without a doubt that we would be taking over as the administrators of the school. The previous administrators and founders of the school
The school year, 2019/2020 had started out much as the one before. Big things were happening and even bigger things were on the horizon. We had four students looking at graduation in June; they were looking forward to what the immediate and further future held.
Everything slid to a stop that fateful day. "Two weeks" became two years. We had to do everything in our power to pull those four students through the remainder of the school year and to their graduation. We had twenty other students who needed just as much attention as the seniors. We, like schools the world over, had to figure out a new way of "doing school."
Zoom and our excellent, independently based curriculum came in really handy for this. It wasn't fun to be separated. Separation may not have even been necessary, but we learned much about possibilities over the course of 2020 and 2021. We learned we can function as an online school. We learned kids can build relationships playing monitored online games for a short time. We learned working from home is possible. We learned coming back together as a society, as man was intended to be, is sweet and fulfilling and that face-to-face interactions are the most rewarding.
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