Students continue to learn from home utilizing new technology

Restaurants and retailers weren’t the only ones hit hard by the pandemic. Schools also had to make the transition to distance learning, and Hawaii Catholic Schools was able to help its students keep their learning on track by moving their curriculum online and utilizing technology the schools already had in place.

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Hawaii Catholic Schools was able to continue distance learning by implementing a number of the platforms already used in its schools mixed in with Zoom meetings between teachers, students and parents.

“We already integrated a lot of the technologies into the classroom, so from second grade and up, they already had their own Chromebook devices they were using at school,” explains Kainoa Fukumoto, principal of St. Michael School. “So we could use that type of learning they do in the classroom and bring it into the home dynamic.”

St. Michael School is not just the North Shore’s only Catholic high school, as it’s the North Shore’s only Catholic school. As such, its mission is to continue providing a quality Catholic education to all students from preschool through high school.

“Parents had to be almost the overseer of the curriculum. That was definitely a challenge,”

Fukumoto says he believes the Catholic schools were able to execute the transition to distance learning pretty effectively because of the smaller school sizes that offer a one to one student-teacher ratio and individualized attention.

“With many of our schools being small and nimble we were able to adjust to the sometimes daily changes this pandemic brought upon us,” explains Dr. Mike Rockers, superintendent of Hawaii Catholic Schools. “The teachers and the principals did a fantastic job. It’s actually harder work to provide quality distance learning than it is to do in the classroom.”