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The 5 Commandments of Distance Learning Presentation by Weston Kieschnick, ICLE Associate Partner Summary written by William D. Parker, OASSP/OMLEA Executive Director
At the 2020 CCOSA Summer Leadership Conference, Weston Kieschnick, education consultant, author and associate partner with International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE), presented a powerful session on “Surviving and Thriving Remotely and Beyond.” During his presentation, he touched on five key points, or “The 5 Commandments of Distance Learning” that educators must keep in mind while providing distance learning. Below are those 5 tips and a quick summary of each.
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Boundaries are needed for you and for kids. Don’t respond to emails after a certain hour. Teachers should not be working at 10 pm. Kids absolutely should not be.
Communication is king. Make sure you have separate communication for kids and for parents. It will help you prioritize and organize.
If you are going to manage distance learning, students and parents both need to know what boundaries exist. Just like you establish rules, procedures, norms and expectations in the first week of school, you must do the same in remote learning spaces.
Instead of leaving your channels of communication open 24-hours a day, create communication norms instead. If you create open forums for communicating via groups, you run the risk of waking up to long group conversations in one email thread. Separate out your modes of communication so that students and parents both know how to communicate without burdening everyone with back and forth messages.
