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2020-2021: A School Year Undaunted

By ATLIS Admin posted 07-14-2021 04:36 PM

  

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During a challenging year, technology leaders adapted with agility and set up their schools for lasting success

BY TRACI BROWNE

Editor’s note: In this inaugural issue of the redesigned Access Points, we saw an opportunity to yearbook the experiences we’ve just lived through in the COVID-19 pandemic. Part timeline, part reflection, the following article captures the flavor of one of the most challenging school years of a generation. As a publication, Access Points is a time capsule, of sorts, and we are grateful to the participants who aided in summarizing the moment and to the ATLIS staff whose reflections allowed us to put the year in perspective.

March 2020. It seems like it has been years since the first rumblings of a lockdown, and yet, it also feels like it was just yesterday. Even before the stay-at-home orders were issued and plans were made to transition to an online learning environment, educators and technology leaders were paying attention to what was happening globally. The warning signs were there, and it was all hands on deck for independent schools in the United States as they watched their international counterparts adjust, even before the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

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A network of professional and personal learning systems activated, and schools from around the world began sharing information. Technologists were eager to hear how their peers in other countries, further along in the pandemic, were managing, and the community was more than willing to share.

Susan Davis, professional development director for ATLIS, played a vital role in pulling the community together, organizing a clearinghouse of resources as the pandemic unfolded and hosting regular virtual town halls where members could brainstorm, exchange information, reflect with peers, and sometimes find a shoulder to cry on. “We knew the most important role ATLIS could play was creating a vehicle for connection,” she said. “We made space to bring the community together, and we walked through this crisis side by side.”

Holly Gerla, technology director at Charles Wright Academy in Tacoma, Washington, described the ATLIS community as a relief during the toughest days of the transition.“There are days I don’t know that I would have gotten through it without that,” she explained. “It’s a great community of people.”

Making the Transition to Remote Learning

Schools across the country had just weeks or, in some cases, days to transition to a fully remote model as states issued mandates and stay-at-home orders. It was an abrupt transition for the schools, students, and students’ parents or guardians. Everyone was learning a new way to be in this world.

The challenges were many, but 1-to-1 schools had an advantage over those without a system of deploying devices already in place, according to Davis. The 1-to-1 schools not only had the laptops or tablets on hand to send home with students, but they typically also had mobile device and learning management systems already in use.

Schools that were not 1-to-1 scrambled to put devices in their students’ hands, divvying up computers and tablets that were shared between classes and finding out which students would be using their own devices (BYOD). Budgets were adjusted and orders for new equipment were placed, but as schools soon found, the backlog for orders was slowed considerably. Households with only one computer and two or three students, plus parents working from home, complicated things. Schools and families had to worry about bandwidth and access to a shared device, which became a teaching and scheduling nightmare.

Designing a schedule for the lockdown classes was a challenge, even if devices were plenty. Teaching remotely is nothing like teaching in a classroom setting. While some schools chose to replicate the traditional school schedule online, others took the opportunity to employ major shifts in how and when instruction was delivered. Some schools chose an abbreviated schedule for classes, either half-days or alternating full days throughout the week, for example. Many educators grappled with how to keep students focused, how to collect homework, and ways to revamp assessment.

“For many schools,” Davis said, “it was a strategy of ‘do what you can and hope for the best.’”

Time away from direct instruction was frequently used to teleconference with students or parents or to help families troubleshoot the complications of learning at home. Even if there was extra time away from teaching, it was certainly not a break for educators. Every extra minute of every day—and many evenings—was dedicated to professional development and addressing technology issues for all members of the school community, Gerla said. “I think I was putting in 10- to 12-hour days for weeks at a time,” she said.

Gerla said her school held pop-up training sessions about new technologies two or three times per week. She also had open office hours throughout the day when teachers could work one on one with her to solve their technology challenges.

In the early weeks and months of the pandemic, technology leaders and educators scrambled to find solutions for their classrooms, and there were plenty of options flooding the market. Melika Panneri, director of educational technology and innovation at The Wilson School in St. Louis, reflected on the abundance of tools suddenly being provided by edtech companies.

“Teachers [were] trying 50 new tools, and then having nervous breakdowns because that’s too much for anyone’s brain to deal with when you’re … trying to teach in a whole new way,” Panneri said.

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Providence Day School operates on a hybrid model

Panneri started vetting the best tools for students based on grade level. While she didn’t say no to using other new tools, Panneri did explain to teachers that delivering instruction with a consistent core set of tools would be easier on them, on the parents, and on the students.

Matt Scully, director of digital integration and innovation at Providence Day School in Charlotte, North Carolina, said his school’s team designed online professional development that allowed teachers to go through learning modules quickly, grabbing whatever information they needed at a given time. From there, Scully and his team could work with each teacher and customize for each subject and grade level.

“It was more of a ‘just in time’ [learning experience], customized to what was most needed” and that could be delivered “in smaller groups,” he said. “So, in some ways, we just kind of connected with people [for training] as they needed it.”

Chad Lewis, director of technology at Tampa Preparatory School in Florida, also a 1-to-1 school, said they had the necessary devices for the transition to virtual learning but still had to scramble to get ready for the lockdown when it came to training a community of users.

“We had two weeks to identify the tools we needed, train ourselves on those tools, get training developed for teachers and kids, and then deliver the training,” he said. “It was very, very quick. And, you know, it was tough, but I’m proud of the team and the school that we pulled it off. Every member of the team stepped up to be a Zoom trainer for all the employees.”

The Hard Turn: Planning for a Different Kind of School

Summer offered a brief respite and time for educators and technologists to rethink education for a world mired in a pandemic. No one was certain what would be possible come fall, so schools planned for multiple scenarios.

Simply managing would no longer be an option in the 2020–2021 school year, despite the uncertainty. Letting everyone do their own thing, which seemed practical during the rapid transition to distance learning, would no longer work.

Students, especially in the middle and upper levels, have multiple classes and teachers throughout the day. Everyone would need to be on the same page as to how homework would be turned in and how lessons would be made available and how student progress would be assessed. Without continuity, students, their parents, and the teachers themselves would be operating under so much stress, they’d be ineffective.

Reinventing education is hard work, Gerla said, and looking back now, she wishes she would have had more confidence in knowing that everything would come together. “When you’re in the middle of all of it, there’s no metacognition happening for you,” she said. “You are not aware [of] the leadership strategies and techniques you’re using to actually get through this crisis right now. You’re just going full steam ahead.”

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The Wilson School’s ConnectED FLEX model allowed parents to choose the time and day of the week for virtual learning.

Inventing the Hybrid Model

As schools faced reopening after the summer of 2020, technology leaders knew their main priority would be the safety of the students and teachers. What that looked like varied enormously from school to school, Davis observed.

Lewis said Tampa Preparatory School decided to go with a hybrid learning environment to maximize social distancing by cutting physical class sizes in half. All students would be required to spend a couple of days in school and then do asynchronous learning from home another two days.

Tampa Preparatory School has had a strict mask policy in place and 6-foot distancing at all times, and it is also using digital tools for health tracking and vaccination data, a new layer of technology most school leaders had to address. Because of the school’s success in preventing any large outbreaks of the coronavirus and because of the continued low regional infection rates, Lewis said the school is planning on returning to a full in-school schedule for all students in the fall. Should conditions change, the school is equipped to immediately switch back to the hybrid model, Lewis noted.

Panneri said The Wilson School is in the same neighborhood as Washington University in St. Louis, and many of its students have parents who work at the university’s hospital. In preparing for a return to in-person learning, Panneri said the school quickly assembled an advisory board that includes an infectious disease doctor, a doctor with data and informatics, and physicians with public health and communication backgrounds. Not only did the board assist the school in reopening safely, but it also helped assuage the fears of teachers, students, and parents.

“I can’t even tell you how nervous teachers were this year,” she said. “The level of trust goes up a million percent when you’re asking all the hard questions to people who really have the answers. You know that your administration is listening to them to make the decisions, to make you safe at work. None of our teachers stayed home this year. They all came.”

Gerla noted that Charles Wright set up a flexible hybrid system, where parents had the option of in-person or virtual learning. Classes are taught both in person and online for middle- and upper-school students four days per week, she explained. The other day is remote for both students and teachers and reserved for online community gatherings like assemblies, club meetings, and faculty meetings.

“Our student government kids in the upper school have been trying really hard to make [community gatherings] fun and interactive. A favorite activity has

now become the [virtual] poll of the week, in which everyone gets to share light, often silly, things, like your favorite snack or which move you throw first in a game of Rock Paper Scissors,” Gerla said. “Every small gesture helps build community.”

Scully’s Providence Day School is also operating on a hybrid model, where groups of students are physically at school on certain days and doing remote school at home on others. It has been a professional growth experience for his whole team, and he’s proud of how far the team has come.

“From a tech perspective, we’ve gotten really good at remote support,” he said. “We joke that one of the guys on my team can time travel. By the time a support ticket gets submitted, he’s already at your doorway.”

“We got pretty good at figuring out the best ways to help people through what they needed at that moment,” he said. “And we got better as a team communicating these solutions to each other. We’re sharing tips and tricks with each other and the faculty all the time, because so many of these things we’re doing, we hadn’t done before.”

Still, Scully said the information they were pushing out to the faculty often became one more piece of noise in an already noisy environment. So the technology team got better at balancing when to be proactive versus reactive with communication.

“There’s so much coming at teachers and so much coming at students right now,” he said. “They don’t really need another email about ‘Here are five things that you may or may not bump into next week.’”

Learning Moments and the Future

The world is close to getting this pandemic under control, but where do we go from here? Davis said, “We’ve opened a Pandora’s box of possibilities this past year. Now we are wondering what will stay, what will go, and what are the new opportunities that await?”

Gerla said it can be difficult to find time to pause and reflect. “A lot of us, especially in our ATLIS circles, have talked about when you’re so busy, just trying to make everything work and keep the school functioning in a very difficult time, so how do you pick your head up and look down the road to where you’re going?”

Still, Davis noted that technology teams are demonstrating impressive commitment to helping their school leadership navigate what comes next. “We may see the pendulum swing away from large amounts of screen time, for instance, and we are seeing teaching and learning evolve in ways we’ve been discussing for years,” she said. “Schools are discussing how students learn best and which delivery method supports which kind of learning. The technology leaders at schools are providing critical insight during these strategic conversations.”

Lewis said he sees an opportunity for a new model of education that independent schools can now leverage due to their experience with distance learning models. Schools are no longer limited to their local neighborhood to recruit students. By perfecting online learning, they can invite students from across the country, and even around the world, to be a part of their school, he noted.

This has been a year of stretching and learning on the part of every member of the school community. Technology leaders have been at the forefront, persevering through enormous difficulties and finding a way forward, Davis said. They have found ways to be creative in adversity and to solve the problems at hand.

As technology leaders journey onward, Gerla offered these motivating words in hindsight of the past year: Have confidence in the fact that you have the skills to get you through whatever life puts in front of you.

Traci Browne is a Pennsylvania- based freelance journalist.

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