The Community Languages Australia Council met on 16 March 2020 to discuss the current situation relating the Corona Virus and the impact on Community Language Schools around Australia.
- There has been no direction from the Federal or State Governments to close schools.
- However, some schools are taking the decision to close
- The decision to close schools is left to individual schools. The same applies to community language schools.
- There maybe situations where host schools may wish to close which means the CLS maybe asked to cease classes
- Each State and Territory Association will inform its members of issues that relate to their State and Territory .
- Schools should consider rescheduling community events, concerts etc
- Avoid having to call whole school assemblies
Some things to keep in mind :
If a student attends a mainstream school and the school instructs the students to self-isolate the student should not attend community language school classes .
Schools should follow the instructions being circulated by the Department of Health and the Department of Education – Commonwealth and State and Territory.
General advice
Good hygiene includes:
- covering your coughs and sneezes with your elbow or a tissue
- disposing of tissues properly
- washing your hands often with soap and water, including before and after eating and after going to the toilet
- using alcohol-based hand sanitisers
- cleaning and disinfecting surfaces
- if you are sick, avoiding contact with others and staying more than 1.5 metres away from people
These are all there to stop, prevent the spread of the virus. We all have a responsibility .
Virtual classrooms
To assist schools with communicating with students in the case that schools do close
we are proposing several platforms that you can use to communicate with parents and students.
They include -
- ZOOM
- EDMODO
- GOOGLE CLASSROOM
- SKYPE
We have tested Zoom which allows interaction between teachers and students
Our Compliance officer Neda Erjaei will conduct workshops on how to use the Zoom Program.
Workshops will be held at
2.00pm , 4.00pm , 6.00pm on
Wednesday March 18, 2020
Thursday March 19, 2020
Each workshop will 45 mins to an hour
Please contact Neda if you wish to join any of these by return email
erjaei.neda@communitylanguages.org.au
We have also attached details of program that allows you to send – blast SMS messages to your school community
At this time, it is vital that your data base of contact details is up to date
These are challenging times – But working together , not panicking, we will overcome these challenges – Life is a little different, many of us have never experienced these conditions – BUT they have been around before and Australia and globally we overcame these challenges
As a radio announcer said recently … Every day we wake up – we are a day to closer to ending these challenges !