B.Y.O.T Bring Your Own Thoughts
The latest on all student-centered models, leadership development, strategic planning, teacher retention, and all things innovation in K-12 education. We answer questions before you think to ask them.
Blended Learning | Classrooms | Return Planning | School Leadership | Virtual Learning
Through most of the spring and summer, we at Education Elements have intensely focused on helping school districts prepare for returning to school. As we’ve gotten closer to the start of school, and school leaders return to prepare their campuses, one of the most common questions we get is how to think about instructional staff assignments when some students will be learning remotely and some will be onsite. To explore this topic further, we convened a group of school and district leaders in Texas to participate in a design sprint. Here’s what we learned:
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Here we are, looking down the barrel of another stretch of at-home learning. We always knew that it was likely not “if” but “when” we’d be back here, but the fact that many districts are announcing remote learning from day one has caught us all by surprise. Worn down from an already long stretch of stay-at-home learning, it’s understandable for parents to feel overwhelmed or daunted by the prospect.
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Classrooms | Teachers | Virtual Learning
The first time I tried to cook a meal in my own place was a disaster. Within 10 minutes, my kitchen was a disaster. Within an hour, my house smelled charred, and I had abandoned all efforts to cook myself dinner. I called my mom frustrated: what went wrong? Until that moment, I failed to realize the level of strategic thinking my mother uses every time she cooks. Her successful dishes require intentional preparation, planning, and organizing to achieve the outcome of a satisfying dish. The art of mise en place to smoothly roll out a meal was utterly lost on me. It wasn't until I had this experience, firsthand, that I realized that neglecting to read the whole recipe and then adequately preparing before I cooked results in disaster. Once that pan gets hot there isn't time to dice more onions or cut up the chicken breast. You need to know the next step and be ready ahead of time to add the ingredients quickly. It sounds silly, but no one had explicitly said this out loud to me, and I didn't make the connection on my own.
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Professional Development | Virtual Learning
Research matters! When developing your Continuity of Learning (CoL) plans there are many things that feel logical and natural. In looking at historical data from recent studies surrounding remote/virtual learning, there are several elements that, at face value, seem both natural and logical, but in reality, may not be in your students’ best interest.
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Personalized Learning | Professional Development | School Districts | Virtual Learning
The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear the need to redesign school to ensure that meaningful learning can continue even if our brick and mortar school buildings close. Most schools and districts had only days to prepare to close school buildings and move learning to students’ homes. Remote learning has largely been designed as an emergency measure; a way to support some amount of learning in a situation that was unthinkable at the start of the school year. As we look to the future, educators are thinking about learning continuity. How do we design our schools to ensure that meaningful learning can happen anywhere?
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"Resilience doesn’t just mean getting back to normal after facing a difficult situation. It means learning from the process in order to become stronger and better at tackling the next challenge.” – Quote by Donna Volpitta shared in Inside the Box by George Couros A little more than a month ago, school teams transitioned to distance learning arguably overnight. In doing so, we quickly saw the cracks in our school systems, such as equity, access, social-emotional learning, and experiences that empower students to be more self-directed. Now more than ever we need to learn from the process of shifting remotely, so we become stronger and better at addressing the cracks in the system that are being exacerbated by this pandemic. Otherwise, what was it all for?
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