ERLANGER, Ky. — Devices, internet, and screens are helping kick off the first day of school in Boone County.

Instead of the school bell, the school year is starting out with incoming video call notifications.

“It’s the first day of school. I’m used to a building full of people and the excitement and I miss that so I’m happy to have people come on and chat and say hi,” said Darin Smith to his students on a video call.

Smith teaches social studies at Northern Kentucky’s Ignite Institute for Boone and Kenton counties. 

For the first part of the school week, teachers are spending time building relationships and troubleshooting any virtual needs.

“We have a lot of students who, they’re in high school, they might have younger siblings that they need to babysit or help with their school work and then they’re doing their own work at another time,” Smith said. “So I don’t want to force kids to be online at one particular time so most what I’ll be doing is pre-recorded videos.”

Down the hall and around the corner, Christopher Norris is dressed up bow-tie and all. Norris is working with students to get them acclimated to the remote learning modules, an adjustment from this time last year.

“This year it’s more like getting them checked-in to the LMS system, getting them checked into our virtual meeting system and making sure their logins work so they can get into everything,” Norris said.

Superintendent Matt Turner has been in this role for about three months at Boone County.

He said the pandemic has been hard on families and schools, but like any start of the of year, they are focusing on building relationships with their students.

“Our teachers are doing whatever they can and working very hard over the next few days to be excited, to show some enthusiasm to students, to get to know them and really, get to know the person before they start getting too deep in the academic work,” Turner said.

Hopefully, for these students and those in the commonwealth, they’ll be able to return and learn in the classroom soon.