Just as a pilot must complete a checklist prior to takeoff, teachers always have a lot of preparations to make before the start of each school year. For educators during the COVID-19 crisis, starting this school year might be likened to taking off into a tempest. As Henry Ford once said, when it feels as though everything is against us, an airplane "takes off against the wind, not with it." How do we prepare for opening school under such unique circumstances? One option is to reflect and capitalize on our experiences from this spring, determine what worked well, and use that knowledge to reshape our openings.
Over the last four months, we talked to over 40 teachers and administrators—a cross-section of colleagues, friends, and mentees, both college-level faculty and classroom and administration practitioners—regarding their thoughts about how to reopen schools successfully. From these conversations, we identified seven practices that could significantly alter the traditional procedures for the start of the school year. Like a pilot's preflight checklist, each suggestion depends upon the successful completion of its predecessor.
1. Connect with students.
The alienation young people—and educators—experienced during the spring was palpable. The teachers and administrators with whom we spoke were convinced that building and maintaining student-to-teacher and student-to-student relations is our most important job for the fall. To that end, many practitioners suggested using technology and class lists to reach out to students before the start of school in order to allay anxieties and introduce ourselves, thereby helping students see us as real and caring people. Online platforms such as Zoom, Google Classroom, and 365 Live are extremely useful for this purpose.
2. Focus on grade-level standards.
All educators, parents, and students are concerned about the gaps that many students may have with regard to last year's curriculum. As a result, there is a temptation to spend the fall months reviewing last year's content. However, educators strongly recommend focusing on the upcoming year's grade-level standards.
Our conversations with administrators and teachers revealed more: "Focusing" suggested that teachers could tease apart and place a laser-like focus on the essential concepts, skills, applications and dispositions within each of their 2020–21 grade-level standards. Given the likelihood of another school interruption, sharp focus on only the crucial content is essential. For example, Grade 5 Common Core State Standards' writing standard 5.2b asks students to "develop the topic with facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations or other information and examples related to the topic." The essential skill here is developing a topic. Essential concepts embedded within this skill include "facts, definitions, concrete details, and quotations."
It is important to point out that this application/skill has already been taught in the grade 4 writing curriculum. To avoid re-teaching already mastered content, our practitioners reminded us of the importance of pre-assessment, our next item.
3. Use Pre-Assessments and Data.
Several teachers remarked on the merits of designing and administering short, informal pre-assessments related to the essential content within a lesson or unit. This is instead of commercial or state tests, which typically do not contain items that teachers find useful for planning related differentiation. Instead, developing open-ended and constructed response items that ask students to explain their thinking, describe their related knowledge, or solve a problem is more effective. An example of a short pre-assessment for part of the writing standard 5.2b mentioned above might ask students to identify some of the facts, definitions, concrete details, and quotations in a selected passage of nonfiction.
Student responses provide early insights about diverse learning needs and gaps from the 2020 school hiatus, thereby helping teachers plan appropriate differentiation. Using our summer months to design such pre-assessments gives us a jumpstart on the development of an early warning system that will identify our high-fliers as well as those students who are likely to need scaffolding, coaching, and guided practice.
4. Use technology purposefully.
If nothing else, this spring's closures gave us an opportunity to hone technology skills. Teachers were quick to share the numerous and varied websites, platforms, and applications they found useful for supporting differentiation, increasing student engagement, supporting student collaboration, and providing blended instruction on a continuing basis. Consistently, they mentioned Zoom (especially its breakout-room feature), Flipgrid, Google Classroom, and Khan Academy.
Though many educators may be using these high-quality platforms, they may not be using them purposively to support curriculum differentiation. In this time of COVID-19, differentiation becomes a critical instructional strategy to address learning loss due to students’ shortened school year, lack of access to technology, or lack of parental support, for example. Specifically, our colleagues suggested that the Zoom small group option—coupled with Khan Academy—be used to target instruction or projects for students who might need more time on a particular topic.
Likewise, the same coupling of platforms might be used to tailor advanced instruction or projects for individuals or small groups of high-achieving students. Using Carol Tomlinson’s framework (Tomlinson, 2001) for differentiation—content, process, product—they suggested using Flipgrid for community building, content check-ins, and students’ audio self-report of product preferences. It goes without saying that there are many other strategies for using these exemplary platforms for differentiation.
5. Revise instructional strategies.
In our months of conversations, many teachers reported how they adapted instructional practices last spring. They shared an increased use of mini-lessons instead of lectures; small-group meetings instead of large-group work; opportunities for small group discussions, collaborations and projects, and student conferences; formative assessment; feedback; tutoring; and interventions. These same teachers were adamant about their intent to continue using these strategies in Fall 2020, regardless of their teaching environment, because they realized the robustness of the instructional strategies for personalizing instruction to support student achievement.
6. Employ formative assessments.
Our dialogues revealed the crucial importance of ongoing formative assessments throughout the year. These daily or every-other-day check-ins with students—which can be as simple as online entrance/exit cards—can gauge student mastery toward learning targets, thereby pinpointing teachers' next instructional steps.
7. Get in touch with parents early and often.
Several teachers experienced increased contact with parents during school closings or found parents to be essential partners in online education. Others reported the need to support parents with technology assistance, homework, and assignment deadlines. To address both points, they recommended contacting parents as soon as the class lists become available, sharing a few remote-teaching joys and experiences from last year, listening carefully as parents share their thoughts and feelings, and continuing online parent meetings and conferences. Teachers contacted parents through emails, phone calls, Zoom meetings, and letters home. This initial contact also allows teachers and administrators to determine student and parent access to internet services and computers.
A Successful Landing
Remember Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who landed his disabled aircraft on the Hudson River in 2009? His famous words resonate in this time of COVID-19: "My aircraft, my aircraft," he uttered when all engine restart efforts failed. He alerted his copilot and air control personnel that he had taken the plane's controls back into his own hands and was overriding all computerized scenarios and models. Using his training, past experiences, and calm demeanor, Sullenberger analytically and methodically landed the craft.
In the same way, educators can take control over the classroom before the beginning of the school year. Regardless of the challenges, summoning prior training and a calm demeanor, drawing upon past successes when solving problems, and preparing ahead of time for the challenges that await will ensure that we all navigate the year successfully.
