Reflect on how your school or district started the school year. What went well? What didn’t?

Each panelist faced different challenges when it came to how instruction would be provided. In Uwezo’s district, they had to pivot between remote and hybrid many times. He was particularly worried about equity and learning loss. It’s something that keeps him up at night as a school leader and as a member of the local community.

Kerry’s campus was much more like a college setting so they had to make some adaptations like teaching students how to go in one direction in the hallways based on the physical lay-out of those students that were in-person in their hybrid setting. Her school surveyed parents and received extremely positive feedback about how they’ve handled the adaptations. With the days getting shorter and the weather getting colder in the northeast, school leaders are concerned with what the kids are doing in terms of interactions out of school is a major concern going into winter.

Don teaches at a high school in St. Louisand was supposed to go back to in-person soon. The elementary and middle schools have brought back some students, however, at the recording of the episode, he was just notified that all high school students will remain virtual for the foreseeable future. He’s been impressed about how much work the students can get through in terms of course work and the fact that there was a very specific schedule for kids and their virtual classes. There were opportunities for extra help and office hours between students and teachers that they couldn’t get during a whole group block in the schedule.

Nancy supports multiple schools in her district in North Texas. They started out the school year remote, but are now about 70/30 remote vs. in-person. She’s been extremely impressed with the increased level of collaboration amongst teachers across the district. In some ways, this pandemic has forced them out of their comfort zone and encouraged them to connect with teachers across their district that might not have happened without the sudden disruption. A focus of her district going forward is strategies for her teachers around the area of remote assessment. There are concerns with students cheating but at the same time, they are trying to figure out ways to assess more on understanding rather than knowledge.

What is the level of teacher capacity at the moment in your schools?

It doesn’t matter what platform you use or what device you use. It doesn’t even matter if you are in the physical classroom. The teacher is still the driver of the learning experience. But how do we help teachers that are over-stressed and stretched thin? Kerry stressed how important the role of parent partnerships play in the role of learning with the teacher. As leaders, one of the best ways to help with teacher capacity issues is to alleviate some of the tasks like streamlining communication tasks. Let them focus on the teaching and learning while other support staff in the school help handle some of those other issues. Don also mentioned that we are all at virtual fatigue, but for him, he uses whatever energy he has left towards feedback to help with his students’ growth.

How do we help teachers grow in this environment?

We as leaders need to model growth and change. We also need to support teachers in any way we can. Teachers are too busy to ask for help at this point. Just like we check in with students on their mental health and SEL, Nancy mentions how important it is to do that with teachers as well. When we spend so many hours just trying to get through the day, teaching and instructional design tends to go by the wayside or occupies the evening hours of many of our teachers. Her district dedicates time for half-days with no students where teachers can recharge and work on designing their learning experiences.