Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many of you have found yourselves unable to complete your hospital visit assignment or the practical exercises (hands-on techniques). The Advisory Board held an impromptu teleconference to address this issue this afternoon. We hear your frustration and we know that you are feeling stuck. Unfortunately, the learning management system we use (the course software) doesn’t let us skip you forward, the assignments must be completed, or at the very least, a grade must be entered.

For those of you that are anxious to move forward, you have two options.

Hold off on the hospital tour/practical exercise until you are free to complete it, and in the meantime you can work on your future book reports. You know that there are three mandatory book reports that have to be done, and the titles of the three mandatory books are in the book list. They all follow the same parameters as the first one, the ‘Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering’ book report. You can work on the other reports while you wait and that way your time will be spent productively.

Or…

You can submit a statement that you intend to complete the assignment at a later time. We will then give you a temporary grade for that assignment so that you can move forward, but you will have to complete the assignment later in order to graduate. To do this, just upload a document in place of the assignment that reads:

“Due to the Covid-19 pandemic I would like to postpone this assignment.”

Make sure your name and email address is on it, and we will put it in your file.

For the practical exercises, submit a picture file with this text.

The assignment must be made up BEFORE you take the final exam. Make no mistake, if you forget to do it later, you will fail the course and we do not want that. Obviously, we would recommend you take the first option, but if you are very frustrated and want to move forward we understand.

Our School Status

The Somatic Arts and Sciences Institute (the parent company of Madriella) is a school of massage therapy continuing education located in California. At the order of the Governor of our state, and the California Massage Therapy Council, we have had to suspend all operations in our office. Our entire staff is working from home. As massage therapy continuing education workshops around the country are being canceled, our online program is moving to pick up the slack so that hundreds of massage therapists are able to meet their continuing education requirements before their deadline. This has caused a sharp uptake in work for our staff (there are only four of us that send out the certificates). Due to this increase in workload, some of your assignments may take more than the usual 24 hours to grade and turn around. We appreciate your patience, a lot of people are counting on us to help them renew their license and we take that responsibility very seriously. In closing, we know a lot of you are frustrated, not just with the delay in your Doula training, but also with the many other inconveniences this pandemic has caused. Remember that it could be much, much worse. Try to stay positive, and just as important, stay safe.

Nancy Perce
Program Manager
Madriella.org