viernes, 8 de mayo de 2020

May 10, 2020

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Kudos
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  • Chrystal McVey, Brittanie Gayhert, Pam Bauer, Stacey Steeples, Lisa Iniguez, Vicky Leuck, Johnny Aguirre, Andrea Pangburn, Bobbi Smith, Ramon Alvarez, Cynthia Orszula, & Jean Fifer...you all did the lion's share of work as it relates to getting our locker clean-out organized and executed! Between locks, fitness straps, art projects, yearbooks, lost and found items, school supplies,  library books, ice packs, clothes, shoes, and questionable smelling science projects posing as food, we thank you!!!!!!
Article this week:  

Keep It Simple, Schools
Justin Reich
To ensure equity and engagement in remote learning, schools need to zero in on key priorities, including enrichment and manageable projects.
On March 26, Massachusetts' Education Commissioner Jeff Riley released a thoughtful pathway forward for remote learning during a pandemic (2020). The plan has three main principles. First, care for students. Prioritize keeping students fed and sheltered, supporting emotional needs and mental health, and attending to the most vulnerable students. Second, create opportunities for projects and enrichment. The state recommends that schools focus on student interests, family projects, and reinforcing previously taught skills over addressing new material or learning objectives. Third, set realistic expectations. The state suggests that schools aim for about one-half of a typical school day of learning time, with a combination of student-driven learning, educator-recommended activities, teacher check-ins, physical activity, arts, and play. For credit-bearing classes that do continue, the state recommends switching to credit/no-credit grading for work.
My intuition is that whether by fiat, by recommendation, or by necessity, most school districts across the country will adopt similar models that focus on projects and enrichment over trying to maintain a regular schedule of classes. The vast majority of American schools are not set up to rapidly switch to remote, online learning in the midst of a pandemic. Many families lack access to devices and broadband internet, and even families that do have a computer at home often don't have one for each school-age child. Meanwhile, many teachers are not familiar with digital learning pedagogies, and some districts don't have the curriculum resources prepared to support remote teaching. As growing economic uncertainty raises anxiety and causes hardship in families and the pandemic potentially causes widespread illness among students and teachers, the barriers to remote education will grow.

Even in the best of circumstances, effective distance learning can be difficult to accomplish. Research suggests that young people have great capacity for online learning, but much less facility and persistence with online schooling. Young people are remarkably facile at using the internet to learn how to cook a new recipe, beat a level in a video game, or explore their interests (Ito et al., 2012). Unfortunately, the research on pursuing formal schooling and courses online provides much less cause for optimism.
Over the last decade, researchers have identified a kind of "online penalty" in terms of grades and dropout rates when students switch from face-to-face to online learning (Dynarski, 2018). High achieving, affluent learners tend to be minimally affected by this penalty: students who do fine anywhere will do fine online. But most students do worse in online courses, and the online penalty is more severe for vulnerable and struggling students—students with low prior achievement, ethnic and racial minorities, and younger students. These are the same groups of students most likely to be hit hard by COVID-19 and a possible economic recession. In the best of circumstances, we'd expect these students to struggle in a transition to online learning, and we can expect yawning gaps in outcomes to emerge during a pandemic. As a result, a focus on projects and enrichment is probably not only the most equitable way forward for the weeks and months ahead, but likely the most effective for keeping students learning and engaged in school.

Key Questions to Address for Remote Learning

For schools and districts that want to adopt Massachusetts' proposed remote learning model—one based on projects and enrichment—there are four big questions to address:

How will you publish good projects and enrichment activities?

Schools now pivoting to online learning can learn from the experiences of virtual schools already in operation. Full-time virtual schools typically operate with an asynchronous learning model that depends upon parents and caregivers acting as coaches. Schools publish curriculum materials, parents help their students proceed through these materials, and teachers provide assessment of student work and coaching to students and parents. At younger ages, more of this happens with students working under the direct supervision of parents (a tremendous challenge during a pandemic), but as students get older, there is a greater expectation for independence and synchronous learning with teachers and peers. To simplify, virtual schools do two things: they publish curriculum materials and they coach students and families. For regular public schools and district to pivot to distance learning, they'll need to become good at the same two things.
For students to pursue projects and enrichment, schools need to recommend and distribute them. As much as possible, these curriculum materials should be accessible to learners in every dimension. They should be designed so that students can pursue them independently, with limited support from busy parents who may be working, caring for other children, or sick. Instructions should be simple, with realistic expectations as well as opportunities for extension. They should be disseminated in as many ways as possible: printed and mailed packets, online document downloads, text message broadcasts, pre-recorded phone messages, and radio or television broadcasts. Schools should prioritize low-bandwidth options for families with limited internet access. Materials should be translated into multiple languages and adhere to accessibility guidelines for disabled learners.
I appreciated a remote learning lesson plan from Kelly Gallagher, an English Language Arts high school teacher in Anaheim, California. He encouraged his students to journal two pages a day about their experiences and to seed their writings with interesting readings, news reports, or stories from the pandemic. He promised to share his own writing, and he also encouraged students to read for 30 minutes each day. That's it. While he published more details online, the gist of his syllabus fits into a text message.
Given all of the complexities of curating, translating, screening for accessibility, and publishing projects and enrichment activities, teachers and schools should focus on these kinds of activities, which are simple, rich, extensible, reinforce important skills, and tap into student interests and agency.

How will you partner with students, teachers, and families?

The coronavirus pandemic feels like something that is being done to us. There is a sense of powerlessness as we watch our worlds contract to our homes, apartments, and temporary shelters. But our response to the crisis can be something that we can do together. At every level of schools, we need to find new ways to listen to each other at a distance. If school leaders haven't surveyed teachers, students, and families about how things are going, today is the day to start. Even a simple three question survey can gather valuable data: "How are you? What has been going well for you? What could we do more of, or do better, to help your learning?" Teachers can ask these questions of students; schools can ask these questions of parents; districts can ask these questions of faculty and families.
Asking these questions will do two things. First, the answers to these questions may provide useful new ideas. Perhaps more important, the more that stakeholders feel like they are partners co-constructing a response, the more invested they will be in learning.

A Cautious Approach to Experimentation

I have spent the last ten years studying education technology and online learning, and yet I have written very little about fancy digital tools in my advice here. That's because spinning up new school technology initiatives during the best of times is challenging; during a pandemic it is just extraordinarily difficult. As much as possible, schools should try to publish materials and check in with students using their existing technology infrastructure. How much can you publish and disseminate through phone trees, text messages, email, simple webpages, or your existing online infrastructure? How much coaching and checking in can be done with tools that students are already using? It may be that after days or weeks of remote learning, a glaring weakness in the distance learning infrastructure emerges, where some kind of new technology might be worth introducing. But generally, keep it simple.
Publish good projects and learning resources. Make them accessible. Disseminate widely. Check in with students. Solicit feedback. Plan for re-entry.
Schools that do a few simple things well, listen to stakeholders, and plan for the future will likely be in the best position on the other side of this crisis. My hat is off, and my heart is with, all of the teachers and administrators serving students and families in these difficult times.

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Information/Reminders
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New Construction Information 
  • We did have a meeting this past Thursday, therefore, the blog has been updated this week! Check out some of the interior images of the building!
    • Click HERE to access the new building blog!
New or reminder information:

  • May 11 - 15 - As a district, we were happy to help support the needs of the county/state to partner with Racine County to have BHS as a COVID testing site for Wisconsin.  This was a conversation a few weeks ago and is now a need starting May 11. Here is a snippet of information about it from Racine County: 
    • From Monday, May 11 through Friday, May 15, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., Wisconsin residents or people who work in Wisconsin who are experiencing symptoms consistent with COVID-19 can come to this free drive-thru clinic. Drive-thru testing will be conducted at Burlington High School, 400 McCanna Pkwy, Burlington, WI 53105.
      • There is a media release you can search for if you want further information and/or want to be able to pass information on to family or friends.  
  • Friday, May 15 - BHS will be using Karcher as a pick up location for our seniors to receive their caps and gowns. This adjustment to be at Karcher is due to the need of BHS to support the need for a COVID testing site.
    • If you have questions from Karcher students about this date being a pick up please help us message that May 15th is for the seniors and explain the why... our pick up is on May 20-21.
  • May 20-21 Karcher student pick up.
    • Thank you to those who are willing to volunteer to come in and assist with student pick up. Please know, we will have gloves here for staff to use but we do need all staff to bring your own masks.
    • HERE is the sign up document again... as a reminder... we did add this to the Karcher Calendar to help with all of our organization.
  • Requested videos from teachers:  
    • Guidelines for the videos we need from you:  
      • 1. When you hit record... wait a few seconds 5 seconds or so... (longer versus shorter is great) 
      • 2. Farewell message... no longer than 15 seconds (want things to be fairly uniform and not one sided with a long speech to X advisory and short to Y advisory.... equal lengths).  
      • 3. After talking again... let it record for a 5 seconds before shutting it off. 
    • 8th grade advisory staff... 
      • I sent you an email about needing a short video from you for our 8th grade recognition that will need to be recorded as a video and shared with students/parents/guardians.  
      • Please have your video completed and done by May 15, next Friday and added to THIS folder. Please do not email me your video as it is much easier to organize when all videos are in the same folder with your last name as the title of the video.
    • Beginning of year video needed from all teachers.
      • In the event we do not start the school year in person, we would like to have an introduction video to share with students/parents/guardians to kick off the 2020-2021 school year.
      • As shared above... please have your video completed and done by Friday, May 29th and add your video to THIS folder. Please do not email me your video as it is much easier to organize when all videos are in the same folder with your last name as the title of the video.
      • Things to include in your video:  
        • Your name (teachers: say your subject area but do not say your house... we will have slides to transition from house to house)
        • Below are simply a few ideas to potentially use to say (don't need to say them all, if you have a better idea go for it)  
          • What your excited about for the year
          • Favorite Karcher moments
          • What not to be nervous about
          • ... anything where the focus of what you are saying is to help students with the transition while maintaining professionalism and good representation for the building and district.

Pictures from this week!!!

Silver House advisory Kahoot Challenge!  

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