A-S Bridge Lamplighter
A-S BRIDGE 1.0
8
So much has changed over the past few months, but this spring A-S Bridge demonstrated that an Allen-Stevenson education continues to nourish our boys’ hearts and minds. For 137 years, Allen-Stevenson has created opportunities for learning, elicited feedback, made alterations, and watched what was designed get better. Developing A-S Bridge has followed precisely this process. The School had to rapidly launch remote learning and slowly evolve it over several months with feedback from parents, boys, and teachers, seeing improvements weekly. Now, the intention is to evaluate A-S Bridge further to discuss what worked and what didn’t work so well and, with the benefit of time, develop an even more robust A-S Bridge 2.0, so it is ready as needed in the fall. Bridging learning between being physically in School and learning from home is challenging. With the School’s mission in mind, the A-S Bridge curriculum incorporated a balance of skills and content, but through new forms and approaches. The plan engaged students in work that was teacher-directed as well as self-driven, with developmentally appropriate amounts of on and off screen time.
Live Instruction, Small-Group Learning and Individual Support All boys had daily connections live with their teachers via Zoom. In the Lower School, homerooms met daily via Zoom and teachers checked in with each boy individually at least once a week. Boys and their teachers connected over assignments through Seesaw and had classes live with their specialist instructors. Middle and Upper School boys also had daily meetings via Zoom with their homerooms and advisories. Academic support was provided in the Middle and Upper School through Zoom office hours or individual meetings with regular academic teachers and Learning Specialists. They worked closely with the boys on assignments, just as they always have, by creating smaller breakout rooms during Zoom classes to give more attention to each boy’s needs. The School Nurse remained an active part of each boy’s school day by popping into the Lower School classroom meetings and offering Zoom office hours for the older boys.
The Library Tech Commons team trained teachers on numerous educational tools, provided round the clock tech support to families and employees, and culled through resources to support classroom learning across the grades, as well as to share out with the community on the A-S Bridge web page. Library teachers curated books for the boys and read aloud every afternoon so boys could decompress while listening. They even organized a virtual Book Fair to ensure the boys’ love of reading was nourished and books were made available.
The Arts The fact that our music program is embedded in the rest of our curriculum meant we were able to find many ways to continue to incorporate it into our remote learning plan. Lower School Music Teacher Ian Taggart created a range of entertaining music videos to teach boys in Grades K to 2 musical rhythms, as well as holding live music classes via Zoom from time to time. Third graders continued their recorder lessons with Head of Music Michelle Demko via Zoom.