Reflection
Reflection is one of the most valuable practices effective teachers can do. When I say reflect, I mean real and honest reflection about both negatives and positives. It is easy to identify negatives, but I think we all too often forget to celebrate the successes. No matter what you are reflecting on, when we can identify both areas of strength and areas for improvement, we can build on what went well and make adjustments to make it even better.
Crisis Schooling
What happened with education during the pandemic is no different. In fact, many school districts from across the country took time to systematically reflect and assess what happened in the spring of 2020 before developing a plan for the subsequent school year. ClassLink, a well known name in the education technology field, partnered with other big names such as the Consortium for School Network (CoSN), and the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) to develop a tool for school districts to use to reflect and evaluate their crisis education plans. The detailed rubric can be used to assess both areas that need improvement as well as areas of strength in relation to their district's plan. The purpose of the rubric was to "provide a framework for school leaders to use and adapt when implementing remote, in-person or hybrid learning, making adjustments, and transitioning between remote and in-person instruction" (Classlink et al., 2021).
The rubric is divided into four areas:
- Leadership and Policy
- Operations
- Access and Equity
- Instruction
The four areas are then divided into core elements that can be assessed using the rubric scale of beginning, developing, aligning, improving, and optimizing (Classlink et al., 2021). After having had time to really look through the rubric, I feel like it is a well-designed and comprehensive tool that can help districts use data to drive their decisions.
What Stood Out To Me
This video clip paints a pretty accurate picture of education during the pandemic.
Three particular areas of the rubric stood out to me because of my personal experience with crisis education.
The first was establishing access and equity. It was shocking to me to learn so many of our students did not have access to reliable devices and internet to use from home in the event of remote or hybrid learning senarios. From my personal experience, many of my students simply did not "participate" when they had to learn from home. There were many factors at play including students having to share a device between the whole family, or not having a device at all. This was an area that my school district took an honest look at when developing future plans. First, my district began purchasing devices so all students could be one-to-one. They also tried to identify who needed internet access and brainstorm ways to remedy that problem. This goes right along with the ideas shared by Cocco and Kemble who suggest that school districts must provide information to families to help them with resources to get low-cost internet (2020). Districts must also have an accurate picture of the students' situations (Cocco and Kemble, 2020). Our district tried to get an accurate picture by sending surveys to families to help them as they developed the crisis education plan.
The second was developing teacher and student capacity. Teachers must have certain characteristics or they will find distance education especially challenging . Those characteristics make up the acronym VOCAL (Simonson, Zvacek, & Smaldino, 2019).
- visible
- organized
- compassionate
- analytical
- lead by example
The third was implementation of remote learning. We all know how difficult it was for parents to juggle their own responsibilities with those of their kids learning from home. I had a conference with a mom who said that she would get up at 2 am to do her work for her job so she could be available to help her son when he was doing his school work. Williamson and McMullan suggest that districts can support families and minimize confusion if they use tools consistently for communication, sharing lessons, and student work when implementing remote learning (2020). This is an area my school district also addressed. All teachers were to share information using email and our class websites. Students and parents could be directed to specific tasks, but communication was always supposed to be consistent so parents knew where to look.
References:
Classlink, AASA, AESA, CoSN, & SETDA. (2021). Continuous Learning Rubric. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lXAwsLWBfNslkhIGxHqgojVjmV5n8KIrR7SCmZnNqsA/edit#gid=1587779846
Cocco, L. & Kemble, J. (2020, May 15). Learning continuity guidebook: Establish equity & access. Classlink. https://www.classlink.com/blog/learning-continuity-guidebook-part2
Giphy. Critical Thinking Reflect GIF By Mentoring Minds. https://media.giphy.com/media/fCiJ06LNooXOJg335j/giphy.gif
Williamson, D. & McMullan, A. (2020, June30). Learning continuity guidebook: Implement remote learning. Classlink. https://www.classlink.com/blog/learning-continuity-guidebook-part8
Simonson, M., Zvacek, S., & Smaldino, S. (2019). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (7th ed.). Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Valerie, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on what we went through and the road ahead. I addressed the mental health aspects in my blog as well. This article talked about how districts were beginning to address mental health before the pandemic even started (Gewertz & Schwartz, 2021). Thinking back, I do remember a push toward that with some professional development about those topics being offered. One of the best practices from the Continuous Learning Rubric that stood out to me was to "attend to staff social and emotional needs." Teachers have to be well in order to take care of them people that have been put in their care. Maybe that means more time, or taking away a demand, or being more flexible. I do know that unless the people who can make these decisions don't start realizing what they are doing by asking more and more, but not compensating will regret that decision. Unfortunately, it has only been exacerbated by the "emergency learning." Supporting teachers with time and support will help lessen stress and increase achievement among students that are in our classrooms or distance learning, Simonson, et al,. 2019)
ReplyDeleteClasslink, AASA, AESA, CoSN, & SETDA. (2021). Continuous Learning Rubric. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lXAwsLWBfNslkhIGxHqgojVjmV5n8KIrR7SCmZnNqsA/edit#gid=1587779846
Gewertz, C., & Schwartz, S. (2021, May 4). Teachers' Mental Health Has Suffered in the Pandemic. Here's How Districts Can Help. Education Week. Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://www.edweek.org/leadership/teachers-mental-health-has-suffered-in-the-pandemic-heres-how-districts-can-help/2021/05
Simonson, M., Zvacek, S., & Smaldino, S. (2019). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (7th ed.). Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Valerie,
ReplyDeleteI think we all have similar experiences during our COVID learning days but in many areas that the rubric, I believe we've learned our lessons and grown from these experiences. Simonson, Zvacek, & Smaldino (2019) discuss the growing need for a job to help design online programs, and with the growing number of virtual schools in Alabama, I'm sure this is a position that some school districts are looking to create. This person would not only help design effective online models, but also help ensure teachers get the proper training (as you mentioned). One method that could be used to train a large amount of teachers at one time would be massive open online courses (MOOCs). For many teachers, they are time poor and in need of flexible learning options (Kennedy & Laurilland, 2019). By implementing effective online professional learning, teachers could not only new strategies, but also gain practice by completing work online theirselves! {Steps off soapbox}.
Thanks for your thoughts!!
Katie
References:
Kennedy, E., & Laurillard, D. (2019). The potential of MOOCs for large-scale teacher professional development in contexts of mass displacemen. London Review of Education, 17(2), 141-158.
Simonson, M., Zvacek, S., & Smaldino, S. (2019) Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of Distance Education (7th ed.) IAP-Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Valerie,
ReplyDeleteI also used the Continuous Learning Rubric from ClassLink to gauge my district's response to remote learning. According to the DLC Snapshot produced by the Digital Learning Collaborative (2022), we were absolutely performing Emergency Remote Learning rather than Online Learning. We reactive instead of proactive, which isn't always a bad thing. We learned from our mistakes and have sense made strides in this area. I think with this mindset and by following a rubric such as the Continuous Learning Rubric (2020) which targets core elements and areas for distance learning, our district could have systems in place if ever needed.
References
ClassLink. (2020, April 21). Continuous learning rubric v2.1. ClassLink Analytics. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lXAwsLWBfNslkhIGxHqgojVjmV5n8KIrR7SCmZnNqsA/edit#gid=1000901060
Digital Learning Collaborative. (2022, January). DLC snapshot 2022: An inflection point for digital learning (No. 3). Evergreene Group. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a98496696d4556b01f86662/t/61fbf37739a0f21c1334f108/1643901817943/DLC-Snapshot2022.pdf