ILASCD Winter 2020 Journal

Impact • Service • Advocacy Quarterly Journal - WINTER 2020

CELEBRATE!

Do you know someone who might be a candidate for IL ASCD membership? We are always looking to reach additional Illinois educators who would enjoy more information about learning, curriculum, Common Core, PERA and education in general.

Please share this digital journal with them. There are tools in the menu bar at the top of the digital issue - the tool looks like a web - and you can share a link via email or social media. If you make a personal recommendation, then perhaps they might take time to visit the rest of our website and find out what IL ASCD can do for them. They can also join by filling out our form HERE:

Our Membership Form

JOIN OUR ONLINE COMMUNITY! Get involved with our social media:

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 2

A Letter from the President

Quick Links Successful 6

Assessment Video Series

Akemi Sessler, President asessler@sd25.org

9

Trending

12

Whole Child

22

Resource Corner

Book Review 26 Dear Colleagues in Education, It’s Winter Break as I write this letter. I’m enjoying this quiet time to reflect on the past year and set intentions for the coming year. So much has happened in 2020 that has shaken us as individuals, as communities and globally. 2020 has been very difficult for so many of us. While it’s tempting to write the year off and hope that 2021 will be better, it’s important to remember that our choices about our actions, our mindsets, and our thoughts are truly what will make the new year a good one for our students and for ourselves.

All that we’ve experienced in 2020 has me thinking about priorities and how I can best contribute to making the world a better place through my role in educational leadership. While there is much of 2020 that I would prefer to forget, there are wonderful highlights, accomplishments, and lessons

Grandmother’s 30 Perspective

Preserving the 36 Triangle of Learning

As We Move Into 48 2021

Upcoming Events 54 School Spotlight 56

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 3

ILASCD Leaders Akemi Sessler, President asessler@sd25.org Dee Ann Schnautz, Past President dschnautz@mtv80.org Belinda Veillon, President-elect bveillon@nsd2.com Doug Wood, Treasurer dwood@bcsd5.org Debbie Poffinbarger, Media Director dpoffinbarger@roe40.com Amy MacCrindle, Secretary amaccrindle@district158.org Ryan Nevius, Executive Director rcneviu@me.com Bill Dodds, Associate Director dwdodds1@me.com

Task Force Leaders: Membership & Partnerships Denise Makowski, Andrew Lobdell Communications & Publications Scott England, Jeff Prickett Advocacy & Influence Richard Lange, Brenda Mendoza Program Development Bev Taylor

A Letter from the President (cont.) learned that deserve to be recognized, celebrated and shared with others that can positively impact the learning and growth of our students as we move forward.

Throughout 2020, I’ve had the privilege of observing teachers, students, and families rising to meet challenges never imagined. With perseverance and creative problem-solving, we’ve received books, art supplies, technology, and hands-on activities into the hands of our students who are learning both in the school building and remotely.

Teachers have learned and effectively utilized numerous technology tools to meaningfully connect with students while helping students develop and strengthen their friendships with one another across multiple environments.

We’ve stepped outside our comfort zones and traditional roles to meet the needs of our students and support one another during tremendously turbulent times. Additionally, by partnering with parent and community organizations, there have been many inventive, successful attempts to create positive school memories for students.

Our responsibilities as educators in 2021 as we confront racial inequities and social injustices as well as navigate through and beyond this pandemic are

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 4

awesome. While academics are extremely important, educators provide so much more than academics. We create learning environments where people come to be loved, feel safe, and be nurtured. As we face and attempt to overcome adversity with compassion and grit, we are teaching and modeling for our students how to do the same. We are helping students strengthen their resilience and compassion so that they will contribute in making this world a better place and successfully overcome the inevitable obstacles life will bring.

IL ASCD winter journal’s focus on positive news in education showcases the brave,

selfless, innovative work of educators during these most trying times. We hope these stories will affirm your own efforts and fan your flames of optimism and determination for making 2021 positive and fruitful for you and your students. These stories are a testament to the honorable and invaluable impact of educators. IL ASCD remains at the forefront in creatively adapting to flexibly and meaningfully support educators during these times of great change.

Please reach out to us anytime.

Sincerely, Akemi Sessler

Just a few of our Pinterest Boards!

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 5

Introducing a new

VIDEO WORKSHOP SERIES

SUCCESSFUL ASSESSMENT 101 a.k.a. Everything you need to know about tests in a standards-based learning environment

A SERIES OF VIDEO LEARNING UNITS FOR TEACHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS Local Assessment Literacy 8-part Series!

Each 35-40 minute video offers: • • • •

live-captured presentation on testing directed activities timed working sessions accompanying handouts and resources

Other topics include: • • • •

Testing overview National/state tests District level tests Local/classroom level tests

Use For: Faculty Meetings • College Classes • PLC Teams Parent Meetings • Board of Education Meetings • Individual PD WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 6

SUCCESSFUL ASSESSMENT 101 Learning leaders in classrooms, both teachers and administrators, need a thorough understanding of quality assessment and attributes of the various tests to propel students to achieve the growth model. These video tools will help to explain formative and summative assessment techniques so that teachers and those evaluating them can speak the same language and work together for student standard attainment.

Each video begins with definitions of the tests in the area being covered.

Detailed information about their impact on the learning in classrooms will be provided.

Each video will allow break times within the 30 minute time period for discussion by the viewing group under the leadership of the local host (principal, professor, department chair, PLC leader).

Faculty for these video sessions include: • Linda Brissenden - Teacher, Principal, Staff Developer • Jennifer Garrison - Teacher, Principal, Superintendent, Staff Developer • Steve Oertle - Teacher, Principal, Asst. Superintendent, Creator of CourseMason and Staff Developer • Quintin Shepherd - Teacher, Principal, Superintendent, Staff Developer

Click HERE for more information!

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 7

March 4–5, 2021

PROGRAM GUIDE

Trending A Parent’s Perspective: Making the Most Out Of Remote Learning Libby Ashcraft

As I think back to March 12, 2020, sitting in the multipurpose room at my daughter’s school for a choir performance, chatting with a neighbor about the rumors of school closing due to the pandemic, it is hard to articulate the mixed emotions I was feeling. I had no doubt in my mind that I did NOT want my kids to be in the school building during the pandemic. At the same time, I could not imagine having them home, while still being able to work.

The spring months of school were a huge challenge for everyone. I don’t want to sugarcoat the situation— there were several elements related to school that left me feeling extremely disappointed and let down by the district, even into the summer. However, throughout the entire process, even the messy early days, I have been continually impressed with how well the teachers were able to adapt to this new way of teaching. Our teachers have made this unimaginable situation the best it can be and as I listen to the classes from the other room, all I can think of is that they are my heroes.

In the spring, the teachers had already been with the students in their classroom for more than half of the academic year. While the virtual environment was new WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 9

Trending (cont.) and challenging, they already had a connection with the kids. We were so lucky that our teachers made an effort to keep this connection alive by participating in neighborhood parades. This meant the world to my daughters. Moving into the fall, we all wondered how it works for the students and teachers to only know each other virtually.

Despite being remote, the connection continues. For my daughter in second grade, the teacher keeps her Zoom

Another highlight for us has been the less busy schedule. Pre COVID, our kids had full days Monday-Friday. We were out the door by 7:45 am, in school until 2:45 pm, directly from there to the afterschool program until 5/5:30 pm when my husband or I could pick them up. We would usually have a snack ready for them as we would be heading to some sort of extracurricular activity such as dance, music, swimming, or evening school event. I am exhausted just reading this now. Of course, our intention in

For my daughter in second grade, the teacher keeps her Zoom session going during the independent work time so that any kids who want to stay on to chat are able to. This is the highlight of my daughter’s day. session going during the independent work time so that any kids who want to stay on to chat can. This is the highlight of my daughter’s day. There are a few kids who join her there as well and this has been a great way for her to stay engaged and get to know the teacher and classmates. At the fifth-grade level, I am in awe every morning as the teacher and her assistant start off the day in the format of a morning talk show. Topics range from headline news, school assignments to stories from their personal lives in such an engaging way that help the students get to know them and each other.

scheduling these activities was to enrich their learning through nonacademic activities. What I didn’t realize is how stressful this full schedule is for the kids and us. Being forced to slow down has benefited us in many ways. Both daughters are less anxious and sleeping better. The number of meltdowns we experience is minuscule compared to what we had before March. This is something I want to hang on to into our post COVID world.

Another element that has been incredibly appreciated is how flexible and understanding the teachers have been.

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 10

My participation in my daughters’ school day is minimal based on my need to keep working. We have missed classes, missed assignments and needed to ask for a lot of help. All along the way the teachers have been willing to do whatever it takes to help get us back on track with patience and grace. And that kindness and understanding is contagious, reminding me to be more accepting of others doing the best they can during this crazy time.

the teachers in our district have still been able to make on our students. My message to all of the educators reading this is that you are making a difference.

Thank you for all that you are doing to make this work. Kids are resilient and they will be okay. We are all going through this together and I hope we can all keep a focus on the positive elements to carry us through making the best of the situation.

While we all want this to be over, I am so thankful for the positive influence

Libby Ashcraft is a working mom of two daughters in the Chicagoland area.

Image from ChildsPlayInAction.com “Games for the Classroom” and how to host a Zoom birthday party.

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 11

Whole Child Celebrating a Newfound Purpose in Education

Tara Linney

In 2020, we saw an elevated level of tension affecting many around the world. With all the stress-filled experiences that educators were facing on the daily BEFORE the pandemic, those stressors became amplified once the new limitations went into effect. From this new challenge, I saw an opportunity to create some calm in our overall education space, thus the creation of TL Specialists, LLC. The mission of TL Specialists, LLC is as follows: TL Specialists LLC is an equity-minded education organization established to provide personalized training for schools and districts around the world. In a time where the education system is facing one of its biggest pivots of the era, we are here to deliver personalized educational technology training to your school’s educators with a focus on SEL and equity to help prepare communities for this new shift to a hybrid world.

We, as educators, know that it is hard to learn when we’re feeling anxious. Thus, I saw an opportunity in the field to create stress-free learning environments, wherein grace, patience, and calmness are a part of every training session. By modeling and integrating self-care and SEL practices into training sessions, learners are put at ease, and knowledge is acquired more easily. This is WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 12

true regardless of the age of the learner.

Thus when administrators, specialists, coaches, and trainers support teachers with an overall sense of calm and grace, the teachers take this experience and transfer that energy to their students.

With everything going on in the world, we know that in order to show up every day for the people in our community, we must make sure that we are okay first. That’s what they teach us when we board planes: always secure your oxygen mask first before helping those around you. The energy that we bring into an environment is something that is transferred to and shared with everyone in that environment. It’s contagious.

Thus, by maintaining the calm when the storms surround us, we’re modeling that we can, and will, get through this.

we’re providing training, mentoring, and community support resources for schools and districts across the world.

In addition to becoming a Google Partner, TL Specialists LLC also recently became a Recommended Partner for the Google Certified Coach program.

This is exciting for a number of different reasons. Having been a coach in schools around the world (France, Singapore, and the U.S.) over the course of the last

The vast majority of our blog posts focus on ways to make the life of an educator a bit easier.

One of the biggest celebrations that I’ve had in the last year was the moment that TL Specialists LLC became a Google Partner. With our mission centered on a calm, sustainable approach to adult learning, paired with a team of specialists that have diverse backgrounds in the industry of education,

See the blog.

eight years, I understand what it takes to be a coach—from the way in which time must be balanced, to the equity piece, to understanding how to differentiate for different educators. It can be a lot and I get it. That’s why I’m looking forward

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 13

Whole Child (cont.) to both being a mentor and providing mentors to help other coaches in this journey to become a Certified Coach.

You see, in today’s world, schools are busy putting out fires. As administrators and coaches work to support teachers and students, their self-care and support can go to the wayside. Although the Certified Coach program has a self-paced

news, in their neighborhoods. They have questions about the world around them.

The Google Certified Coach program highlights this amazing opportunity to empower teachers to allow their students to wonder, to ask questions, and to investigate solutions to challenges that exist in the world. In addition, the program focuses on coaches providing

The Google Certified Coach program highlights this amazing opportunity to empower teachers to allow their students to wonder, to ask questions, and to investigate solutions to challenges that exist in the world. course, finding the time, patience, and peace to focus on the curriculum can be challenging. That’s where the support of a mentor comes in. A mentor is someone who provides guidance, motivation, emotional support, and role-modeling.

As mentors, we help to alleviate that challenge, while also focusing on the well-being of the coach and the administrators.

What’s great about the Certified Coach curriculum is that it focuses on coaching teachers to adapt their practices to a student-centered learning environment.

In this world, our students bring a variety of rich experiences and backgrounds to the classroom. They see things on the

1:1 support for educators in their schools with an emphasis on both relationship building and school goals.

It’s a huge celebration for TL Specialists LLC to be a part of this Google Certified Coach program, because it aligns with both our name and purpose. Within the name “TL Specialists”, both the “T” and the “L” hold many meanings. The “T” stands for timely, technology-embedded, and teaching. The “L” stands for lifelong, learning, and leading. When you combine the two it creates an opportunity to bring teaching and learning together with technology and leading in a timely and lifelong way.

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 14

As we embark upon the new year I’m looking forward to opportunities where alignment and purpose intersect. If you’re looking for the same in your community, then contact us at tara@ tlspecialists.com to see how we can best support you.

Tara Linney is an international, awardwinning educator, who has helped several schools nationally and internationally with launching and sustaining effective 1:1 programs over the course of the last decade. In 2016, she received the 21st Century Learning Award for Innovation in Educational Coaching. She holds a

B.A. in Mass Communications from the University of South Florida, and an M.S. in the Science of Instruction from Drexel University. She also holds a certification as an Instructional Technology Specialist. Since the start of her career in Education, Tara has played an active role in many professional communities. In 2017, she served as the ISTE Global Collaboration PLN President, where she led an organizational pivot to focus on SDGs in Education. She is currently an active leader of both the ISTE Global Collaboration PLN and the Computer Science PLN. In addition to her work in the PLN teams, Tara is also an ISTE Certified Educator.

Click below to learn more about the Google Certified Coach progam.

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 15

Whole Child (cont.)

Pandemic Principal(ing)

Kirsten Clark

There’s no denying that the pandemic has completely turned the education world upside down. This is true for everyone with a role in education—students, teachers, parents, bus drivers, cafeteria staff, custodians, administrators. The problem is that unless you’re “in the trenches” in a school setting on a daily basis, you don’t really understand the impact it has had and the toll it is taking. Unfortunately, it also seems as if some don’t want to understand.

The general public needs to know that it is virtually impossible to social distance in a classroom. Keeping students six feet apart from everyone just isn’t realistic.

If you stop to think about a class of 25 or more students and spacing the desks six feet apart, that’s an incredibly large space. Classrooms simply are not that big. So, what does that mean? That means when there is a positive, the contact tracing includes seven classes, lunch, bus riders, and any extracurricular activities in which the student may be involved.

In the fall we started school full time in person. There was a period when we had to quarantine over thirty students at a time, and our numbers at one point were well over 100 students out of the building due to being a close contact. Here’s a general idea of what the quarantine process looks like from start to finish for staff.

1. School nurse gets notification of a student positive and notifies administration WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 16

2. Administration goes over seating charts to identify those within six feet in every classroom and confirms with teachers 3. Administration identifies close contacts from lunch seating charts 4. Bus drivers are notified and provide close contacts 5. Coaches/sponsors of extracurricular activities are notified and provide close contacts from their activities 6. Students are called out of class and placed in a holding area away from the main student body— they are notified that they are close contacts and need to remain where they are until their parents are notified 7. Parents are called to be informed of their student’s status of a close contact—they either come to pick up their child or give their consent for them to drive home 8. When students are picked up, an administrator escorts them out and provides a detailed letter to parents regarding the quarantine process and the date on which their child may return to school

9. School nurse sends a followup email to parents with the detailed letter 10. School nurse enters all information for close contacts into the State database 11. School secretary collects all quarantine information and compiles it into a spreadsheet that is shared with administration in order to keep track of when students can return—this spreadsheet is updated daily and includes anyone with symptoms, any positive results, and all close contacts 12. Superintendent notifies all parents of the positive via recorded phone message 13. School secretary tracks student attendance with new codes developed by the State in our student management system daily 14. Students on quarantine are now virtual students—teachers must keep their online classes updated and be available for students in their physical classrooms and those at home Our secondary school switched to a hybrid schedule in November due to the attendance numbers at that time.

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 17

Whole Child (cont.)

Students were divided into two groups based on last name. The administration took into account students who live in the same household but have different last names and made sure they were all in the same group. Group A attends Mondays and Wednesdays. Group B attends Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays

the powers that be and/or make decisions that I feel are in the best interest of the student body as a whole. We have to try to balance the safety of our students and staff with the academic needs of everyone. It’s not easy. It’s not perfect. It never will be.

Another issue to consider is staffing. If you don’t have teachers, you can’t have school. are virtual for all students. The hybrid schedule has worked wonders for the attendance rate and close contact numbers. Our last positive resulted in six close contacts—only two being from an actual classroom. There is no denying that for the purpose of keeping students socially distanced, this is the answer.

On the flip side, however, is the fact that students are only getting two in person instruction days per week, which obviously is not ideal.

So what is the answer? There isn’t one that will appease everyone.

Administrators provide input to the Superintendent and School Board, but ultimately the decision is out of our hands. Being a principal has been described to me by another principal as “middle management.” We get the brunt of the frustrations of everyone. My ultimate goal is to provide proposals to

Another issue to consider is staffing. If you don’t have teachers, you can’t have school. We have recently struggled to maintain the staff that we need to keep our doors open. We have a limited pool of substitutes, and when we run out, we have to ask teachers to cover for their colleagues during their preparation time.

Again, not ideal, but our options are incredibly limited. We have secretaries and paraprofessionals covering classes at times. I have covered classes as well. This may not seem like a big deal, but teachers need their preparation time to do just that—prepare, grade, have some quiet time, etc.

What educators need from everyone is the courtesy of attempting to understand. Perception is reality, I know.

But take a step back and try to have a little empathy for the way in which our

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 18

educators and doing everything in their power to ensure that students have what they need. Teachers are present in the classroom, answering emails at all hours, holding Zooms when necessary, driving supplies directly to students’ homes, checking in with students and parents when they have a concern... I could go on and on. We are only human.

Stop expecting superhuman efforts and results during a global pandemic. This is our first pandemic. We are learning as we go, and there will be missteps. It doesn’t help anyone when you cuss us, call us out on social media, slander us or our schools. No one is out to get you or your student. We are doing the absolute best we can with what we have. Many have left the profession because this pandemic has taken it out of them. We all love our students, and they are the reason we are here. Give us a break. Please.

things like, “For the record, I agree with this decision”, you have no idea just how much your words can mean to us in a time like this.

If you have school-aged children, or even if you don’t, make it a point to reach out to teachers and schools to provide positive feedback or words of encouragement. Those small acts of kindness are greatly needed.

Kirsten Clark is a Jr.-Sr. High School Principal who works with approximately 550 students in grades 7-12 and a faculty and staff of 50 in a small, rural school in central Indiana. After spending eleven years teaching in a high school social studies classroom and four years as a high school assistant principal, Kirsten made the transition to principal at her high school alma mater and is now serving in her fourth year.

That being said, there are most certainly some parents who have been incredibly supportive through this process. Their positive emails and occasional treats for the staff have been godsends. We all know that the positive far outweighs the negative when it comes to parent involvement, but at the same time the negative is much more vocal and therefore seems to be what we hear the most and focus on the most. It’s defeating. But for those who have responded to an email with simple WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 19

Whole Child (cont.)

Celebrating the Whole Child

Brenda Mendoza

In 2020, COVID-19 forced educators, parents, and administrators to transform education into remote learning. The pandemic changed the way we learn and exposed our country in many ways; economic inconsistencies, inequitable disparities, and systemic inequalities. However, we also experienced a collective realization; a realignment of our values, a focus on what is truly important, the value of family, the strength of community, and our children’s resilience.

I read a compelling article about the children of the pandemic by Teresa Thayer-Snyder, Superintendent of Voorheesville district in New York. She talked about

...children that have lived through struggle have considerable regard for life. the concern of student deficits. This resonated with me because, as ELL teachers, our students are perceived to have many deficits. We acknowledge that it takes years to master a new language, so we only focus on their potential. We advocate the importance of meeting students where they are. I want to join Thayer-Snyder in celebrating the children of this pandemic. Our children were faced with a multitude of challenges, and they found ways to persevere.

Emmy Werner is a developmental psychologist who worked with childhood trauma. She was a trauma WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 20

survivor who grew up during World War II. Dr. Divecha, a psychologist and professor at Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, has been using Werner’s work to help understand how trauma can impact children during a pandemic.

She has been collecting research on how this pandemic will affect our children. Through Werner’s studies of war survivors, Divecha has learned that children who have survived war times have an extraordinary affirmation of life. In other words, children that have lived through struggle have considerable regard for life. During this pandemic, our children have developed a similar appreciation. When we ultimately overcome this pandemic our children will be better for it.

We can also thank educators for helping children develop this new resilience.

Through her research, she explains that having one caring adult influenced children and encouraged their strength.

Children were taught self-awareness, mindfulness, and how to build positive relationships through remote learning.

Even if our students faced difficulties at home, having had that caring adult through remote learning made a significant impact. During this pandemic, teachers were at times the only caring individuals available to provide support for students. Many parents were essential to our economy and had to continue to work.

According to Divecha’s research, a supportive adult does not need to be a parent. Resilient children can find those supportive relationships with their teachers through remote learning.

Children build resilience when they have social support. Children connecting with their teachers via remote learning has provided that collective support.

This support has assisted children in developing strength and perseverance.

We have experienced a combined awareness that has transformed our attitudes. It has refocused us on the importance of community and the strength of making connections. In the middle of a pandemic, don’t forget to celebrate our children. Our children faced a multitude of challenges and are still preserving.

Our children have not been left behind, if anything, they’ve helped us push forward.

Brenda Mendoza of Chicago is a K-12 ELL specialist in West Aurora School District 129. Her first Master’s was in Curriculum and Instruction, with an emphasis in English Language and Bilingual Education.

Her second Master’s was in educational leadership. Brenda has been teaching for twelve years as an ELL and Bilingual educator in grades K-6. She currently teaches fourth grade bilingual, coordinates family literacy workshops, is an instructional coach for Challenging Learning, and is Illinois ASCD’s Whole Child Leader.

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 21

Resource Corner PODCASTS Give a listen...

CHECK OUT THE SERIES...

CHECK OUT THE SERIES...

CHECK OUT THE SERIES...

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 22

Click HERE to read more!

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 23

Resource Corner (cont.)

Click HERE to read more!

Click to get more info on AMAZON...

JOIN HEADSPACE Get Headspace for free, sponsored by Teach for America READ MORE...

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 24

Teacher Well-Being

2 Hour Workshop March 10, 2021 3-5 p.m.

Featuring Carla Tantillo Philibert

From safety concerns to dysregulated students, educators often face high-stress situations that may leave them feeling beat up and uninspired. In order to be the best and most effective version of yourself for your students, it is imperative that space is created for your own mental health and well-being.

Self-care is an essential practice for all educators. We must take care of those who take care of our students. This fun, engaging workshop targets strategies for well-being, focused on your whole self— you personally, as an educator, parent, partner, friend, and community member.

You will learn helpful techniques based in mindfulness and SEL for how to recognize stressors and your bodily reactions, manage challenging situations by giving yourself permission to pause and practice self-care techniques, and practice well-being strategies for all areas of your life. This workshop gives you the opportunity to invest in yourself so you can build a more grounded foundation for living.

ONLINE REGISTRATION

Workshop Date: Wednesday, March 10 Time: 3:00 - 5:00pm CDT ( 2 PD Hours) Location: Online (Webinar link will be sent to participants via email the morning of the session). While we suggest joining live, recordings are available for those who are unable to fit this time into their busy schedules.

One copy of the book Everyday Self-Care for Educators is included in the price and will be mailed to each participant, so your well-being journey can continue after the workshop!

Cost: $99.00/person Presented by:

&

Carla Tantillo Philibert, the founder of Mindful Practices and a former classroom teacher, understands the stresses that come with teaching, will guide you through a variety of interactive activities to help you identify your own wellbeing needs and implement helpful practices in your daily life.

Registration includes a 20% discount coupon to attend the 2021 Social Emotional Learning in Schools Virtual Summit, July 21 & 22, 2021.

For info visit www.illinoisASCD.org.

Book Review Connecting with Students Online

by Jennifer Serravallo

Review by Monique Belin

Click the cover to view on Heinemann.

The coronavirus pandemic has tried to turn our lives upside down. It has impacted almost everyone since the spring of 2020 when educators had to quickly pivot to provide traditional inperson teaching practices into a remote learning format. While the pandemic has allowed teachers to dig deep into their creative teacher bag and find innovative ways to teach in a digital space, it has not changed the meaning of what great teaching looks like.

Drawing from feedback received from fellow educators, author Jennifer Serravallo wrote Connecting with Students Online, a book that discusses and shares over 50 strategies on how

teachers can improve the quality of distant learning through seven C’s: collaborating, communicating, connecting, caring, conferring, clarity, and compassion.

Seravallo’s vision for this book was centered around how to lead small groups, provide assessments to students and monitor for understanding, and how to keep students engaged in a remote format utilizing the seven C’s with the hope that it will lead to students having a more meaningful remote learning

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 26

experience. Seravallo also wanted to offer a way for students and families to still seem connected through direct interactions remotely. She does so by guiding the reader through a series of concrete how-to strategies to help teachers continue to connect and support students.

Through six chapters, Serravallo gives readers a closer look inside her vision on how to make the reality of online

what technology will be useful so that it can serve a variety of purposes in the educational process.

Serravallo begins the book by walking the reader through how crucial it is to continue to partner with families and caregivers at home to set students up for success. This is done by detailing how online schools can be set-up and organized to ensure that someone is supporting the student’s learning in

A noteworthy fact of this book is that not all strategies are centered strictly on the basis of technology and putting students on devices. teaching possible by discussing tools that center around concrete How-To topics such as partnering with adults to create relationships at home, curriculum preparation, and reviewing for online instruction, handling time, supporting students’ asynchronously, and procedures for online teaching.

A noteworthy fact of this book is that not all strategies are centered strictly on the basis of technology and putting students on devices. Instead, it is much more beneficial to be able to pick a small handful of tech tools and apps and explicitly teach children how to use them. Doing so will allow teachers to concentrate on their pedagogy guiding

addition to being a parent, caregiver, or even a tutor. This chapter also provides strategies for how teachers can communicate to welcome parents and families into the online classroom through online videos and surveys. This chapter also provides creative strategies to help families set up learning spaces for the students at home as well as strategies to help families know what to do when things get frustrating.

Serravallo then leads the reader on how to craft and adapt curriculum units for online instruction. Strategies are presented on how teachers can organize their lessons, resources, and materials, as well as clearly communicating with students

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 27

Book Review (cont.) and families so that it is easily accessible.

Concrete ways of collecting and using feedback so teachers can modify and adapt their instruction to fit the needs of students are also detailed. Serravallo explains strategies that will help teachers navigate checking and monitoring for students’ understanding through an online environment—a relatively easy task in a traditional classroom setting that is complicated by a screen.

Online learning doesn’t diminish the importance of students’ independent practice at home. Serravallo explains how teachers can organize their day and time in different content areas to emphasize how beneficial it is to get students off the screen. Technology is valuable to help students connect with peers and teachers, however, students can quickly get burned out if all of their time is spent online. Readers are provided with creative strategies so students are not spending all the online instruction time with their eyes glued to the screen.

Lastly, Serravallo concludes the book with a packed chapter centered on how to take almost every in-person teaching method and adapting it to fit into an online space. Organizing book clubs, conferring with students, planning mini- and strategies lessons, phonics instructions, guided reading, peer feedback, and even tips on how

teachers can make themselves look great on camera are just a few of the things discussed in this chapter.

Connecting with Students Online is an excellent book for all educators and noneducators who have a connection to the education system. No matter if school districts are in-person, fully remote, or somewhere in between during this chaotic pandemic, Jennifer Seravallo’s book is a great read with useful strategies to stay connected with your students.

Monique Belin began her career teaching 7th and 8th Gateway to Technology alongside teaching 8th grade Algebra.

She transitioned to Elementary Education where she dedicated 8 years as a classroom teacher teaching a variety of grade levels. She recently has had the opportunity to serve as an Instruction Coach for grades K-5 in Huntley School District while obtaining her Administrative degree in Education from National Louis University. Monique’s passion and greatest area of strengths are in building relationships, curriculum, and instruction, and equity and diversity. Follow Monique @monique_belin on Twitter!

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 28

CULTURES OF CHARACTER INITIATIVES at North Central College

PROJECT COMPONENTS CHARACTER INITIATIVES

Character Certificate Program

Educational Leadership Program

Practitioners, Students, Distant Leaders

Principal Academy

Aspiring Administrators

School Leaders

“The real value I see for aspiring administrators developing cultures of character is to have them be deliberate in their thinking about their influence on the students and the families

Scholarship Recipients

Residency Fellows

they serve.”

Brian Valek Director of Human Resources, Naperville District 203

North Central College received $3.2 million in funding from The Kern Family Foundation to accelerate comprehensive plans to expand and enhance our preparation of educators and principals.

For more information contact Marsha Webster, Character

Our vision is to become a regional and national model of educational leader

Initiatives Outreach and

preparation, offering distinctive classroom, experiential learning, and

Recruitment Coordinator,

professional development opportunities that prepare practitioners and

at mbwebster@noctrl.edu

administrators to lead cultures of character in PK-12 schools.

or 630-637-5842.

northcentralcollege.edu/character-initiatives

Article A Grandmother’s And Retired Teacher’s Perspective On E-Learning

Christine Layton

As we all continue to navigate the unprecedented waters the COVID-19 pandemic has flung us into for these last ten months, perhaps no lives have been more impacted than those of American educators, students, parents, and, yes, even grandparents.

When I retired from teaching elementary school in 2008 to focus on my growing family of grandchildren, I soon realized that I desperately missed my classroom.

Teaching is my passion. For many years after my retirement I found fulfillment as a substitute teacher in McHenry, Illinois my former school district. Four years ago, I stopped “subbing” so I could help care for my two youngest grandchildren.

Fast forward to March 2020. COVID-19 officially hit the United States, and schools across the country ceased in-person instruction. The world suddenly got smaller. My grandson Luke was in second grade and my granddaughter Anna was in kindergarten when they were required to participate in a remote-learning model that had never been tested before. Naturally, their school was unprepared, but they did their best to adapt. No one assumed the e-learning would last more than two weeks, so the curriculum was not robust and

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 30

my grandchildren were rarely, if ever, connecting with their teachers.

When it became clear, over the summer, that their school would not be able to safely return to in-person instruction for the fall, I offered to assist with Luke and Anna’s e-learning. Having taught first, second, and third grades, I knew I was qualified to help. For the start of the 2020-2021 academic year, their school had developed a more rigorous curriculum that included both synchronous learning, via Zoom with teachers, as well as asynchronous, independent learning, via various computer programs. Each child was assigned their own preloaded Chromebook from the school.

Materials and supplies were delivered to the students’ doorsteps. My plan was to teach both Luke and Anna at my home. Luke would be more challenging to teach, as he has an Individualized Education Program (“IEP”} and requires more time and resources than other third graders. However, I soon realized that an IEP was not my biggest hurdle. After all, I taught classrooms averaging 23 students with varying abilities and needs for years. The biggest challenge for me was learning the technology!

The first day I attempted to assist both kids with e-learning from my home was terrifying, stressful, and eye-opening! I

found the Chromebook screens to be too small, so I set Luke up on my large PC upstairs, and set Anna up on my husband’s PC downstairs. The morning began with me literally running from child to child, trying to set them up for their morning class meetings via Zoom. Prior to this day, I had limited experience using Zoom and zero experience using Google Classroom, which is the platform their teachers use to post daily agendas links, and other useful information. Once I had Anna comfortable, I rushed to help Luke.

He was panicking because, for reasons we still don’t understand, a polka song in my computer’s music library started blaring during his class Zoom meeting.

I was mortified, as I tried to stop the music. Meanwhile, Luke, Anna, and a boy in Luke’s class all started dancing around.

I tried to mute Luke’s connection, but I couldn’t figure it out. I finally apologized to the teacher and completely shut down the computer. We were all laughing hysterically. But, that day marked the end of me trying to help both kids simultaneously with their e-learning.

From there, my son decided to take time off from his job, so he could assist Luke with his e-learning, and I continued to take Anna every day to my house to help her. In order to foster a successful e-learning environment for my granddaughter I have to wear two hats: loving “Grammy,” as Anna calls me,

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 31

Grandmother’s Perspective (cont.) and teacher. For the most part, during the hours between 8:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, I have to keep that teacher hat on. I have to be firm, I have to be patient, and I have to be adept at redirecting Anna in an atypical learning environment. I thought I could count on Anna to show me how to use the technology. At first, even if I could find the right site, I could not figure out how to properly save her work. With the help of Anna and her STEM class sessions, I began to learn. Now, five months in,

of school children across this country this year, technology is by no means perfect. We regularly lose our internet connection, and we get dropped from Anna’s Zoom calls. In addition, the asynchronous work Anna’s teacher Mrs. Wheaton assigns on various computer programs does not always keep Anna’s interest or does not keep her busy enough to fill the time before her next Zoom call. Fortunately, I can rely on the many first-grade workbooks I kept from my teaching days to keep Anna busy. I

I thought I could count on Anna to show me how to use the technology. At first, even if I could find the right site, I could not figure out how to properly save her work... Now, five months in, I can toggle back and forth between Google Classroom, Clever, Seesaw, Lexia, Dreambox, Imagine Literacy, Imagine Math, etc.

I can toggle back and forth between Google Classroom, Clever, Seesaw, Lexia, Dreambox, Imagine Literacy, Imagine Math, etc. When I retired from teaching, these programs were not used—teachers had only just started using email. Now, my comfort level with using technology has grown exponentially.

Although technology is amazing, and it’s facilitating e-learning for millions

also create science projects for us, we bake cookies together, and we take walks in the wood to keep Anna learning in nontraditional ways. Without my worksheets and lessons, Anna would have a difficult time staying on task, and I fear she would lose interest in e-learning altogether.

Certainly, these are challenges that all schools are facing as the months of e-learning continues. How do teachers

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 32

keep students engaged with nothing but a computer screen between them?

I’ve observed Mrs. Wheaton doing a

It was an e-learning moment and a connection between grandmother and granddaughter that I will never forget.

It was an e-learning moment and a connection between grandmother and granddaughter that I will never forget. fantastic job of bridging that gap. Every day, Mrs. Wheaton starts with a Zoom meeting, wherein she greets each child and plays a song. She and the school social worker also stress the importance of strengthening the social-emotional connections by employing many Calm Classroom lessons. These exercises help the kids focus on mindfulness, physical awareness and, most importantly, calmness, during these trying times.

The children are walked through steps on deep breathing, sitting still, and relaxing their bodies. A recent exercise introduced during Calm Classroom is called “external gazing.” Anna insisted that I participate in this because she assumed it was a staring contest, which she wanted to win. After many days of her “winning,” I decided to truly focus on the intended calming effect of this exercise. While I was lost in our locked gaze Ana surprised me by whispering, “You’re beautiful, Grammy,” with such sincerity and love, I almost cried.

Connecting with her classmates and her teacher in this e-learning environment has not been easy for Anna. Thankfully, in recent weeks, Mrs. Wheaton has mastered the use of Zoom breakout rooms and incorporated these connections in her daily curriculum. The breakout rooms allow students to pair with one or two peers for math, reading or much-needed socialization. Mrs. Wheaton can go back and forth among the breakout rooms to ensure that her students are being respectful and staying on-task. Being able to connect with other children, even if only virtually, has made Anna so happy these last few weeks.

Mrs. Wheaton does a great job of making e-learning as fun as possible for her students. She uses a Bitmoji classroom, which she updates daily, and she sends regular newsletter to parents via email.

She also provides an entire virtual library for her students to access, and she encourages her students to record themselves reading to her in Seesaw so she can monitor their progress.

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 33

Grandmother’s Perspective (cont.)

Having taught several grade levels in the classroom, I understand how crucial first grade is for a child’s academic development. For example, most children come into first grade just starting to sound out words on their own and, by the end of the school year, they are reading fluently. Their math skills grow by leaps and bounds in first grade. Writing is also an important skill that I worked on with my first grade students daily. Every morning in my classroom, I would post a question on the board, and the students would have to write a journal entry in response to the question.

I could walk around the classroom, help students spell tricky words and observe their writing styles. How do teachers accomplish this in a virtual environment?

It’s beyond difficult, but Mrs. Wheaton tries her best to work on writing in small groups with her students via Zoom. Anna is very fortunate to have me, a retired schoolteacher, to work directly with her on reading, math and writing.

By no means is e-learning a sustainable way to educate a child, but I’ve come to appreciate all of the positives involved in this preternatural situation. Being here to assist my granddaughter has given me a

renewed sense of purpose. I feel so much pride watching her grow and learn daily.

Aside from the annual Grandparent’s Day visit at her school, the occasional stint as a Mystery Reader in her classroom, I would not have access to her education like I do now.

On the other hand, if Anna were in school full time, she would not be with me for hours every day, teaching me patience, helping me learn technology and, after a recent adverse reaction to a medication I was taking, potentially saving my life by calling 911. We have grown so close.

I know we are both eager for her to return to a normal school setting, I will miss these days and look back at them fondly, including the crazy moments, the frustrating moments, and the polka-song fiasco! The world got smaller this year, but my passion for teaching, dormant for years as a retiree, grew.

Christine Layton is a 72-year-old retired teacher and a “tutoring grandmother.” She lives in Ingleside Illinois with her husband of 55 years. Christine has three sons, seven grandchildren, and one greatgranddaughter.

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 34

An ISBE Approved Provider

All Learning Is Social and Emotional: Helping Students Develop Essential Skills for the Classroom and Beyond

with Nancy Frey April 29, 2021

While social and emotional learning (SEL) is most familiar as compartmentalized programs separate from academics, the truth is, all learning is social and emotional.

If you teach kids rather than standards, and if you want all kids to get what they need to thrive, Nancy Frey offers a solution: a comprehensive, five-part model of SEL that’s easy to integrate into everyday content instruction, no matter what subject or grade level you teach. You'll learn the hows and whys of Building students' sense of identity and confidence in their ability to learn, overcome challenge, and influence the world around them.

Helping students identify, describe, and regulate their emotional responses.

Promoting the cognitive regulation skills critical to decision making and problem solving.

Fostering students' social skills, including teamwork and sharing, and their ability to establish and repair relationships.

Equipping students to becoming informed and involved citizens.

Along with a toolbox of strategies for addressing 33 essential competencies, you'll find real-life examples highlighting the many opportunities for social and emotional learning within the K–12 academic curriculum. Learn to use this Integrated SEL approach to help your students build essential skills that will serve them in the classroom and throughout their lives.

Nancy Frey is a professor of educational leadership at San Diego State University. ... She is a recipient of the Christa McAuliffe Award for Excellence in Teacher Education from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the Early Career Award from the Literacy Research Association.

Live Online!

9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. Central Time Registration Includes: 5.5 Professional Development Hours and workshop materials CLICK HEREREGISTRATION FOR REGISTRATION ONLINE

Can’t attend these dates? Contact Ryan Nevius at IL ASCD 618-203-3993 or rcneviu@me.com Illinois ASCD is CPS Approved Provider # 24595 www.ILASCD.org

Article Preserving the Triangle of Learning: Increasing Engagement and Learning Throughout Remote and Hybrid Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Michael Buhl

The pandemic has affected all students in the US and around the world. The impact on some has been greater than others. Here’s what we at Opportunity Academy in Holyoke, MA are trying to do about it.

Geoffrey Schmidt

Recently, during the fall literary showcase at our school, Holyoke Public Schools’ Opportunity Academy (OA), an expert panelist, Unman Hameedi, spoke about the power of our instructional pillars—feedback and revision, learning beside experts, and giving students permission to go deep on their work. These strategies, rather than scrambling from assignment to assignment, are instructional priorities at OA. Hameedi, a nationally recognized SLAM poet, who had workshopped several of our students’ poems with them numerous times, said, “Revision and feedback and workshopping with experts...isn’t just about, ‘Do this again’ until it’s perfect. It is about the student taking ownership

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 36

over their work. The more they work on it, and craft it to say just what they want it to say, the more they own it.”

At Holyoke Public Schools’ Opportunity Academy, our mission is a seemingly simple one: “Everyone deserves a good education. Everyone deserves

We know innovative alternative schools like our own are not alone in combating waning engagement for student learning during this time. In districts like ours, the pandemic has precipitated unprecedented numbers of high school students who are now off-track from their graduation cohort. Indeed,

Over the last 4 years, the district’s dropout rate has fallen from a historical average of around 10% to 5.9% then to 4.7% the to 3.9% and finally, a rate for 2019-20 that, when official, will very likely be under 3%. a rewarding life.” Because we are intentionally designed to serve high school students of all ages who have gotten off-track in their education, dropped out entirely, or found themselves at severe risk of doing so, this mission can be more challenging than its simplicity lets on. Our students possess a wealth of reasons why success in high school is difficult—homelessness, teen parenting, trauma and mental health concerns, needing to work at a young age. Multiply those obstacles by the crises of pandemic learning, and you can imagine what a concern engagement has been for our team at Opportunity Academy since March.

the pandemic will almost certainly have a “hangover” effect, creating an inevitable bubble of off-track high school students to which districts will need to plan a response, starting right now. In Holyoke, we have experience in redoubling engagement efforts, well before remote learning made the need a universally prevalent one. Created 4 years ago as part of a full-scale district turnaround effort, Opportunity Academy has fundamentally changed the learning opportunities available for students whose paths through high school hit the rocks for one reason or another.

Over the last 4 years, the district’s dropout rate has fallen from a historical

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 37

Triangle of Learning (cont.) average of around 10% to 5.9% then to 4.7% the to 3.9% and finally, a rate for 2019-20 that, when official, will

we seek for our students. In fact, we are in the second year of an ongoing design process to tackle this problem, head-on.

These are curricular and instructional strategies, small and large, which shift the ownership of learning to students, and require from teachers a willingness to think differently about their role. very likely be under 3%. While many changes have happened that have helped keep more students moving towards a diploma, Opportunity Academy, or OA as we are known in the district, is widely recognized for being the key reason why students who in prior years disappeared from the high school, now are sticking with their education, and as our increasing graduation rate also attests, receiving a diploma.

At the center of our philosophy is that engagement and academic achievement are driven by a universal triangle of learning: student, curriculum, and teacher. We have had to work particularly hard, especially during the pandemic to maintain this triangle.

While we are proud of our early accomplishments we also know a lot more has to be done to provide the quality education and choice-filled life

We have learned some lessons along the way that we believe are valuable for all schools who are confronting the current, sobering reality: that pandemic learning inevitably equates to engagement difficulties.

In the past two years of our design work, and in the ten months of pandemic learning, we have found undeniable best practices that increase engagement— and most importantly, deepen learning— for all students. These are curricular and instructional strategies, small and large, which shift the ownership of learning to students, and require from teachers a willingness to think differently about their role. As Hameedi says, however, the payoff is a sense for students that they are not simply completing tasks, but that they own the work, and that what they are creating is special. This change in how students view their school work, especially when distance and

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 38

other factors can make it easy to feel disengaged, is ultimately what has driven our students’ connections to school and their teachers at this time.

We have been lucky to partner with Springpoint Schools, a school design firm whose mission is “to enable all students, regardless of environment or background, to succeed in high school, college and beyond.” This partnership is supported by The Barr Foundation’s Engage New England Initiative, “a $30-million investment over five years to help New England innovators develop a diverse array of high school models that champion success for all students.”

The results of this partnership is a laser focus on a model of instruction that emphasizes depth over breadth, engaging and relevant project-based learning, the power of feedback and revision aligned to core competencies that students will need to succeed through and beyond secondary schooling, and ultimately student ownership over their learning.

Because our students often have big holes in their background knowledge and skills, we do maintain a focus on core test-prep learning in some of our classes.

This is necessary to prepare students for the retest of our state MCAS exams (students in MA are required to pass MCAS exams in ELA, math and science in

order to receive a HS diploma.) However, the focus of these lessons remain in conjunction with our other two lanes of instruction: our Transformative Learning Experience (TLEs) courses, developed with and supported by our partners at Springpoint; and our personalized learning projects, heavily student-centered inquiry work that students complete with the facilitation and feedback of advisors on our faculty and staff, along with experts in their field of interest.

These two environments have critical elements in common: 1. the work is narrow in focus, and highly student-centered 2. the instruction requires a willingness by teachers to use student work and feedback as the drivers of learning, rather than relying heavily on direct instruction and lecture 3. our course curricula not only welcome, but insist upon fostering connections between students and experts in the field they study 4. they result in students producing and exhibiting artifacts that live beyond the classroom and are shared with an authentic audience.

Ultimately, a strategic vision of instruction is only as successful as its

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 39

Triangle of Learning (cont.) buy-in and implementation by teachers, across the classroom environments.

The Power of Experts In five separate classes offered this year, TLEs have been supported by experts and a process of feedback and revision that requires students, teachers, and experts to leverage conferencing as the driver of student learning and quality of work. In a Slam Poetry Class (cited in this Boston Globe article) students met with the teacher, staff members who acted as writing coaches, and Slam poets themselves, to workshop their work.

For these, the facilitators used breakout

rooms in video conference class sessions.

In a Dystopian Literature class, students analyzed and wrote their own dystopian literature stories (here is one example from student PJ King), with the support of volunteer writers from all over the country. In one class, students were tasked with developing spreadsheets that compared cars for prospective buyers, and made their pitches to customers who were on the market.

They were supported in developing highquality spreadsheets with formulas by our own local experts (staff members and administrators.) In a math TLE on the loan

Caption and Photo from the Boston Globe article: Geoffrey Schmidt has begun organizing his students into online breakout groups, where two or three can workshop their own verse while Schmidt and a co-teacher rotated between the groups. JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 40

industry, students met with bankers, loan officers, including a reformed PayDay Loan officer, and eventually an app designer, as they developed their own decks for a financial literacy app, which they pitched to a local entrepreneurial board.

What makes the expert connections in these classes different than the typical field trip or guest speaker, is that the teachers adapted curriculum, and designed learning activities and assessments around expert involvement, not merely with the expert voice as a supplementary activity. This required teachers to rethink their planning time to allow for more collaboration, preparation, and facilitation of the experts, who in turn took on some of the workload of providing direct feedback and assessment of student work. Our teachers acknowledge this is not easy.

“Planning for the TLEs is more rigorous,” Nicole McNeil, an OA Math Teacher says. “There are more activities to plan for, and the experts and exhibition require planning and coordination with the community. It’s a heavy lift for the students, so it requires more scaffolding” (than typical units.) However, while they admit the units required more work, they are adamant the payoff is worth it, Danielle Razon, an ELA teacher at OA, says: “The planning is totally worth

it, because the students are forced to do work and revisions outside their comfort zone, so they create pieces that are better than they may have ever anticipated. It allows growth for the student on an academic level, but also promotes confidence for them on a personal level, which makes all the planning worth it!”

Across the board these classes benefited from a small shift in pedagogical approaches by teachers with remote learning. We anticipate these shifts will carry over into hybrid learning, and even our return to a full in-person model in future years. The big shifts included the importance of providing students private work-time, with regular conferences, and feedback.

Feedback as the Driver Even in the early days of remote learning, our teachers were trying to figure out how best to utilize the breakout room features in video conferencing. We tried small group work. We tried to replicate gallery walks, and we tried to have co-teachers circulate between two breakout rooms with the hope smaller groups would encourage more student interaction. It was, perhaps, simply good luck that we stumbled across its best use however: creating small private spaces (and time) for students to be set off on individual

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 41

Triangle of Learning (cont.) work with clear expectations and accountability check-ins.

After what we learned with our first foray into remote instruction last spring, we narrowed the goals of our professional development this summer and fall, emphasizing a focus on feedback and conferences within those spaces (as well as in written and video formats, using tools like screencast-o-matic.) The result is that when one observes our remote classrooms, it is now extremely rare to find the whole class in one Zoom session, with the teacher providing direct instruction and whole group practice.

feedback, clarity of personalized directions and instruction, and regular review of individual students’ work, we’ve learned more about what each student does and doesn’t know, and fostered a culture of learning that empowers students to own their work, and allows teachers to better know each students’ needs.

Bryan Barsolou, Special Education teacher, says, “performing deeper dives with such rigorous curriculum allowed us as teachers to develop a keen understanding of who our students were and just how far they could go. I felt that

Indeed, not seeing our silent students has only made clear for some of us, how many of our students were able to look engaged in whole group learning, but were truly lost.

Our teachers were already undergoing a shift from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side” before the pandemic.

However, the difficulty remote learning presented in getting students to engage and participate in whole-group settings accelerated the speed of transformation.

Indeed, not seeing our silent students has only made clear for some of us, how many of our students were able to look engaged in whole group learning, but were truly lost. By focusing on individual

I was able to get the class from a to b much quicker by listening for the nuances that made each learner their unique self in the classroom.”

There is no denying that this approach slows down the breadth of curriculum we cover in our classrooms. We happen to think this is a smart tradeoff. During our ongoing design work we have lived by a motto borrowed from the Navy: “Slow is smooth, and smooth

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 42

...revisiting grading practices to not only allow for, but even reward, revision and resubmission of assignments has given teachers a framework with which to use rubrics and common language about our competencies. is fast.” What conferencing and feedback requires is a level of revision and emphasis of mastering skills that typical pacing calendars will not allow.

Research, however, shows that what is needed for students’ post-secondary success is not an accumulation of information, but a mastery of certain transferable skills, or competencies.

Going Deep, Not Wide Expert involvement, and feedback cycles are instructional strategies which work together in service of a curricular and

learning systems approach rooted in evidence-based best practices. A shift away from accumulation of content knowledge and towards mastery of skills is a massive lift across an entire school, even a small one like ours. Nevertheless, within each classroom a teacher can take small but important steps towards assessing students based on their mastery of skills or competencies, and aligning their learning activities, thusly.

The first is to take a lesson from Universal Design for Learning

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 43

Triangle of Learning (cont.) strategies, and to start with the end in mind. Rather than merely identifying which standards a teacher hopes their students to master, we ask our teachers to consider which of our competencies (transferable skills) students will be exercising in the unit and its related assessments.

By identifying these competencies, teachers and instructional leaders can audit assessments, activities, and lessons to ensure alignment. Likewise, revisiting grading practices to not only allow for, but even reward, revision and resubmission of assignments has given teachers a framework with which to use rubrics and common language about our competencies. Within professional

would like for a specific competency.

These act as the centerpiece of teachers’ conferences with students, and often this translates to students taking more ownership over their work, as they are asked to identify where they have and haven’t met criteria; and are helped by the teacher to recommend for themselves next steps in the areas where they still need improvement.

Some teachers have explicitly taught the competencies students will be working on in a unit, asking students to define the competency for themselves, and identify tasks aligned to each. Others have relied on the implicit teaching of rubrics-based conferences. All OA teachers this year have used the unique

All OA teachers this year have used the unique circumstances of remote learning to try to work competencies into small portions of curriculum (assessments, or even daily assignments.) learning communities, teachers build that common language and understanding of mastery through Looking at Student Work (LASW protocols.) These LASWs are done in teacher meetings, and even in whole team meetings, expanding this work to our entire community.

Our teachers have started to use “singlepoint rubrics” that cite what mastery

circumstances of remote learning to try to work competencies into small portions of curriculum (assessments, or even daily assignments.) This practice is recommended by our partners at Springpoint, and has allowed our teachers to experiment in low-stakes ways, which we are then able to provide feedback on for future practice (a parallel

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 44

process to what we ask teachers to do with our students.)

In our personalized projects class, teacher advisors start with specific competency attainments in mind, which they and the student have determined are high priority for the students’ growth. Projects are then designed with the students’ input to allow them opportunities at scaffolding these competencies, and a process for regular activities, feedback, and adjustments to build towards projects that exercise these skills. While in one personalized project class there may be dozens of students working with several teachers, each student is working on a project tailored to their pursuits and inquiry interests, and teachers are using private conferences to help students identify how these are aligned to their competency targets. While this class is new, we have seen the results in student publications in The Boston Globe; a student recording a song with a nationally recognized artist; and a student working with our school-based Trauma-informed education team to develop a youth leadership program curriculum.

What could this look like in a more traditional classroom? For starters it can look like assessments that center a criteria for success and student agency in developing a final product to meet those criteria. If a teacher wants students to

analyze poetry, for instance, the teacher could create a rubric that identifies the precise skills that a student would exercise in order to do this, and then help each student identify the modality in which they will do so. This might result in some students producing their own collection of poetry, others producing a short video, or designing a youtube channel where they and their classmates analyze their favorite songs.

The Big Takeaways By next winter we all hope to be delivering in-person instruction as the backbone of our schools, once again.

When we are able to do so, however, our team at OA will take with us lessons from this year that should change our model for the better. Many of these lessons reshape what we think about when we consider student engagement (and disengagement.) A problem we once tackled as an attendance behavior, we now reconsider as a byproduct of a school’s personalized approach. As we continue to design for more in-person learning, there will be programmatic changes as a result of what we have learned (we will, for instance, almost certainly maintain some online only synchronous and asynchronous courses.)

But our teachers’ instruction will, itself, be improved from our takeaways.

Conferencing will take a center position in our classrooms. Units, assessments,

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 45

and lessons, designed around students exercising growth of particular transferable skills has become a nonnegotiable. And the power of expertise in learning is now, more than ever, at our fingertips through the wonder of videoconferencing, and tele-connections.

We also continue to remind teachers that the best practices around mastery of competencies that we have focused on throughout the pandemic are transferable to every learning environment. Providing students with a clear criteria of success, and frequently using the language of those criterion in our conversations with students about their progress, keeps the focus on their work, rather than on the completion of tasks. In turn, this gives students more

ownership over their own work. And students who hold a sense of ownership over their work are more likely to remain engaged with it. To maintain our momentum, it is critical for teachers and leaders to continue the practices that have led to success: building common language around the competencies that set students up for long-term success, and continuously building on instructional strategies that center the students’ work and not the teachers’ dissemination of information.e Michael Buhl is Executive Director of Opportunity Academy.

Geoffrey Schmidt is School Design Lead of Opportunity Academy for Holyoke Schools.

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 46

An ISBE Approved Provider

Nurturing the Inquiry Mindset 2.0

A Virtual Asynchronous Workshop Series (a.k.a. WATCH WHEN YOU CAN!)

Featuring Trevor MacKenzie Viewing Available December 1, 2020 March 31, 2021

Meet Trevor

Teacher, Consultant, and Author of

Dive into Inquiry

and co-author of

Inquiry Mindset, Trevor, a globally recognized inquiry specialist, supports schools and organizations in adopting an inquiry model to empower learners.

Through intentional planning, mindful application of increasing

student agency and social constructivism, Trevor models how to facilitate inquiry throughout his sessions enabling participants to bring inquiry back to their students.

Inquiry Mindset

Intro/Review to Inquiry Mindset explore the 10 characteristics of

the Inquiry classroom intro to the Types of Student Inquiry and a scaffolded approach to student agency examine the "UnGoogleable" Question and the role of questions to shape learning and units of inquiry revisit provocations to spark curiosity and wonderment

Inquiry Mindset § unpack what the research reveals about the effectiveness of inquirybased learning explore the three barriers to complementing inquiry in the K-12 setting plan steps to remove these barriers from your school and class context

Who should attend?

Teachers, Administrators, Teams

Inquiry Mindset §

define student agency and what it means for students to become inquirers explore how to co-design and coconstruct learning with students examine equitable talk structures to ensure all students have a voice in class that will guide your instruction and shape your lessons leave this session with clear plans to implement more student voice in your lesson design

Office Hours with Trevor meet I , with Trevor and other session participants a chance for Q + two specific dates in anuary and March will be announced

ONLINE REGISTRATION

Up to 6 hours of PD Credit

Article As We Move into 2021, What Are the Remote Learning Priorities

Richard Lange

Deanne Levy

As we move into 2021, little did we know that when ISBE enacted a law on June 7, 2019, that allows school districts statewide to utilize e-learning days in lieu of emergency days, that educators across the state and the country would still be using a variety of distance learning models to conduct classes from remote locations. While some schools started with hybrid models of in person activities as well as remote, some districts have been doing 100% e-learning since last March.

With that in mind, the authors of this paper decided to conduct an informal survey to see what kinds of challenges school leaders and teachers were facing.

With the help of Dr. Bobb Darnell, educator and

The top two [challenges] that educators selected... were “SEL health and too much screen time for both students and teachers” and “Getting all student to contribute during remote lessons.” professional development consultant, a survey was created in November that asked Chicagoland educators WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 48

to identify their top three challenges from a list of 15 items that seemed to be at the forefront as schools address remote learning. We would like to address some of the responses. (See survey results listed below.) The top two that educators selected (70+ educators responded to the survey ranging from 1 to 51 years of experience in the field of education) were “SEL health and too much screen time for both students and teachers” and “Getting all students to contribute during remote lessons.”

SEL health and too much screen time was the number one concern for our survey responders. This is a concern for fatigue with students, teachers as well as parents. As a result, newly coined phrases such as “zoom fatigue” and “screen exhaustion” have become part of our daily lexicon. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reported in February that now on average, children ages 8-12 in the United States spend 4-6 hours a day watching or using screens, and teens spend up to 9 hours (American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2020).

To encourage positive social emotional health and reduce fatigue in children and adults during this time of distance learning, the following best practices may be used to promote wellness:

• Recognize that not all screen time is equal. Although the hours may be stacking up for all in front of screens, providing students with rich, targeted content matters. Differentiating content for all student’s readiness levels, interests, and learning preferences is a best practice for both remote and in-person learning as it encourages an excitement for learning and reduces feelings of exhaustion. In our survey, educator’s concern about how to differentiate content during distance learning came in at fourth place. There are many resources to help teachers virtually differentiate including (but not limited to) creating interactive discussion boards, using breakout rooms to group students according to areas based upon student’s strengths or areas of need, using online free libraries to offer leveled book options, and incorporating digital manipulatives into lessons.

• Teachers should not be afraid to move on from content if it is not meeting student’s needs. Concerns regarding how to select and abandon content ranked 8th on our survey.

As a best practice, teachers should select research-based content based upon on student’s academic needs and interests in both remote and in-person classroom settings. If the

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 49

Remote Learning Priorities (cont.) content is not sparking engagement, or, if students are not progressing based upon regular informal assessments, it is time to move on and seek new content.

• Look for opportunities to connect with individual students. Study after study shows the positive impact of strong teacher-student relationships (Sparks, 2019). By investing in the time for one-on-one chats, both teachers and students experience more joy, empathy and deeper understanding of needs.

Another challenge our survey confirmed was that educators are concerned about how to get all students to contribute during remote lessons. Students may be experiencing anxiety or trauma during the pandemic, a lack of accessibility to content, challenges with technology, or they may be having difficulty focusing during virtual lessons (or a combination of the above). In addition, some students may not want to keep their camera on during their instruction if they are uncomfortable displaying their home life.

Student engagement looks very different than it has in the past, and as a result: • clear communication regarding expectations for participation is vital • explicit instruction of social and

emotional skills can provide students with the support they need to engage during distance learning • reviewing with students how to use a calendar, organizational tips and tricks, as well as • teaching students how to recognize they are feeling tired or fatigued are just a few of the skills that can be taught.

Many students also struggle with selfdirection during traditional in-person learning, and this struggle can be compounded during distance learning, which was also reflected in the survey results we received. Teaching students how to create personal learning goals and set expectations for their own engagement will help support their self-direction. In addition, scheduling one-on-one check-ins with students and their families can go a long way of understanding potential barriers to engagement and planning next steps.

In addition to the highly ranked concerns discussed above, there were also survey items that received very low tallies with approximately two votes each. They included, “Parents and/or tutors helping students too much” and “Challenges when parents are sending negative emails to the principal about their teaching skills.”

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 50

During the author’s meetings with teachers before the pivot to remote instruction last March, these concerns were discussed regularly. Several teachers the authors worked with discussed that not only was the home computer set up in an area that was not very conducive for homework, (i.e., a computer being used on the kitchen table), lots of noise and distractions in the background and siblings needing to share the computer were compounding the problem. We heard that many parents were right behind their child guiding them with (sometimes wrong) answers to a lesson. The authors also frequently heard about tutors looking up answers on behalf of students. One reason these items have a low ranking on our survey could be that these issues may be resolving themselves somewhat as families become more accustomed to managing remote learning.

Another item at the bottom of the list was how to initiate various types of brain breaks and chair exercises. This item may have scored low on our survey because teachers may already realize how important it is for students to get up and move, as this is a best practice in both in-person and remote learning.

One principal shared that this item was so important that she was giving awards to the teacher who had the most unique lessons that asked students to be actively

moving. She would then take the winning lesson and share this activity with her entire staff.

In the “fill in the blank’’ section, educators were able to add their own items that were not a part of the survey. Some of the free responses included were: make learning as relevant as possible, how to create in class discussions, enhancing literary skills, how to manage breakout groups, what can principals realistically expect from teachers, and how to get students to interact with each other during online learning. All of these issues are very critical at all grade levels.

The biggest challenge reported for administrators is how much to expect from their staff members. Many are frustrated since we are still exploring new territory after 7 to 8 months of unprecedented distance learning.

Informal surveys such as this one we’ve discussed here help to identify immediate concerns, target professional development needed for staff, and determine if any additional resources would be helpful. On the following page please find the full informal survey and results.

As 2020 comes to a close and the second semester begins shortly, many administrators are reassessing hybrid situations knowing how important it is

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 51

Remote Learning Priorities (cont.)

Survey Results and Votes from 70+ Educators

Survey Option

Votes

SEL health and too much screen time for both students and teachers

37

Getting all students to contribute during remote lessons

36

Encouraging students to be self-directed learners

27

Challenges differentiating during remote learning

26

Worried about standards or levels of mastery for performance

13

Encouraging students to turn in work

13

Technology challenges (e.g., kids can’t hear the discussions, difficulty logging in) 12 Challenges of selecting and abandoning curriculum

12

Weak Wi-Fi signals or none at all

9

Addressing student’s needs if they are concerned with showing their home life

7

Types of brain breaks and chair exercises

7

Parents/tutors helping students too much

3

Student generated musical playlists the teacher uses prior to the lessons

2

Challenges when parents are sending negative emails to the principal about the teacher’s skills

2

Leading in the pandemic

2

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 52

to get students back into the classroom, even if for just a portion of the week.

It’s important that all stakeholders work collaboratively together for a safe return to the classroom. Of course, many more issues may pop up as we continue to move forward, and flexibility is paramount in always re-evaluating the needs of the students and staff. The road ahead will continue to set precedents for maximizing distance learning opportunities.

Deanne Rotfeld Levy serves in an adjunct role as a University Supervisor at National Louis University coaching student teaching candidates through their certification within the National College of Education.

Deanne also provides special education consultation services for Branching Minds regarding processes related to MTSS, intervention plants, collaboration, and special education reporting. Deanne has previously served as Vice President of Customer Success for Discovery Education and as the Executive Director of Account Management for Amplify Education, as well as a Chicago Public Schools special education teacher and case manager. Deanne holds a Master of Arts in Teaching Special Education from NationalLouis University.

Richard E. Lange is the University Teacher Candidate Placement Coordinator at Amundsen H. S., Chicago, and adjunct faculty instructor and student teacher

supervisor at National Louis University, Chicago. He has done education consulting and workshop presentations on mentoring of new teachers and differentiation strategies in the classroom at more than 30 school districts in five states as well as Germany, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Singapore. He is a board member of Illinois ASCD and served on various ASCD constituents services committees. He was also the U.S. representative for the World Council Gifted and Talented Children.

Author of numerous articles on education and coauthor of A Life Saver for New Teachers: Mentoring Case Studies to Navigate the Initial Years, Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2011

References AACAP. (2020, February 20). Screen Time and Children. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://www.aacap.org/ AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_ for_Families/FFF-Guide/ChildrenAnd-Watching-TV-054.aspx Sparks, S. (2020, December 09). Why Teacher-Student Relationships Matter.

Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://www.edweek.org/teachinglearning/why-teacher-studentrelationships-matter/2019/03

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 53

19

20

Upcoming Events

Embracing the Core of Innovative Teaching and Learning to Thrive in Any Learning Space with George Couros February 4th | 5:30 pm February 11th | 4:30 pm Online George Couros will discuss the importance of changing pedagogies while identifying the “core” values we need to focus on so that we can ensure our communities find success both in an academic setting, as well as embracing the innovator’s mindset both in and out of school. Each session will run from 60 90 minutes.

27

26

3

MORE INFORMATION

4

Reading and Writing Strategies for the Online and In-Person Classroom with Jennifer Serravallo February 9th | 9:00am - 4:00pm Live Online Drawing from Jen’s bestselling resources Connecting with Students Online, The Reading Strategies Book and The Writing Strategies Book, this virtual workshop will help you pinpoint goals for your readers and writers and support them over time as they work toward those goals in online or brick-and-mortar classrooms.

Art Based Therapeutic Interventions for the Classroom with Katie Kamholz February 18th | 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm February 25th | 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm Online Workshop participants will learn several art-based therapeutic interventions that can be implemented throughout class time in order to increase mindfulness & resiliency, assist with challenging class transition time, and support student learning and growth.

28

5

MORE INFORMATION

Teacher Well-Being Featuring Carla Tantillo Philibert March 10th | 3:00pm - 5:00pm Online This fun, engaging workshop targets strategies for well-being, focused on your whole self— you personally, as an educator, parent, partner, friend, and community member.

11

10

MORE INFORMATION

MORE INFORMATION

12

Increasing Academic Rigor by Prioritizing SEL with Janet Moore March 24th | 9:00 am - 12:00pm Live Online A classroom that prioritizes SEL during academic learning actually empowers students to perform at higher levels of

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 54

19

2

t c O 1

30

29

model of SEL that’s easy to integrate into everyday content instruction, no matter what subject or grade level you teach.

rigor by teaching them to recognize and manage the stress that would normally hold them back.

MORE INFORMATION

MORE INFORMATION

What Can Be Learned from Great Business, Military, Political, Social & Sports Leaders Presented by Don Kachur April 28th | 9:00am - 2:30pm Zoom - Live Event with On-Demand Viewing Options This leadership course will help participants review the characteristics of effective leadership, analyze the principles of leadership used by recognized leaders within business, military, political, social issues, and sports, and prepare a Developmental Application Plan to achieve success within their own educational setting.

7

6

13

MORE INFORMATION

15

MORE INFORMATION

14

All Learning is Social and Emotional: Helping Students Develop Essential Skills for the Classroom and Beyond with Nancy Frey April 29th | 9:00am - 3:30pm Zoom If you teach kids rather than standards, and if you want all kids to get what they need to thrive, Nancy Frey offers a solution: a comprehensive, five-part

20

8

Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead and Live without Barriers with Jo Boaler May 6th | 9:30am - 3:00pm Live Online In this workshop, Dr. Boaler will expand on the best practices presented in Mathematical Mindsets by revealing six keys to unlock learning potential across all content areas and in life.

21

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 55

22

School Spotlight Ball-Chatham CUSD #5 One District’s Journey

Douglas Wood

Hybrid, remote, and virtual learning have become the new norm in education due to COVID19. Regardless of which side of the fence you are on, the impact of this virus, and the response to it, has been monumental, to say the least. This impact will affect us for the rest of our lives. Much to the same degree that people remember where they were when certain historical events occurred, so too will we remember the events leading up to, during, and after the COVID19 pandemic.

We have a dashboard on our webpage to inform our community of positive cases and quarantines. One year ago, I would not have fathomed this as something we needed to communicate on a regular basis.

As of this moment in writing, I have received a letter to review prior to sending it to our community informing them of a positive COVID case in one of our schools.

The letter defines dates, times, protocol, and followup information. This occurs on a daily or nearly daily basis. We have a dashboard on our webpage to inform WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 56

our community of positive cases and quarantines. One year ago, I would not have fathomed this as something we needed to communicate on a regular basis. Yes, maybe contest results,

specific to the population they serve.

There is no “one size fits all” plan, and there is no perfect plan. Having this brief introduction sets the tone for how we responded to this major crisis

Food distribution became of paramount importance because many of our students depend on the meals we provide at school. happenings in the district, staff and student success, but not a virus update.

in our lives; in our students, staff, and community lives.

So now what? When this all began in March 2020, I believe we all figured that it would soon pass. However, it was important for schools to prepare, in case things did not change or got worse.

Unfortunately, things began to get worse.

In the beginning, school leaders, teachers and support staff began preparing elaborate plans to adjust to the new reality. There were fully remote plans, in-person plans, and hybrid plans. Each school developed what they believed to be in the best interest of their learners and school community as a whole.

I am going to share our journey. At the onset of COVID19, we all instantly came together as a community. This was no surprise. Ball-Chatham is known for its ability to come together in times of crisis and set a path toward a better future. Our school district partners with local organizations such as Titan Fuel, and the BCEF (Ball-Chatham Education Foundation) to provide meal service and other resources for our families. Food distribution became of paramount importance because many of our students depend on the meals we provide at school. Our Food Service Director and his team, along with staff that volunteered - inclusive of teachers, support staff, and all district level and building level administrators pitched in to help package and distribute food and meals. It was truly a team effort.

Typically, there are previous plans or templates to help guide a response to an emergency. There were no such plans available, and to further the challenge, plans or templates designed were for that specific school and/or district.

Each district may have different needs

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 57

School Spotlight (cont.)

Of equal importance was assuring our families that we could continue providing the high quality educational services they had come to expect over the years. So much of this was dependent on the ability to sustain connectivity with our students now that the learning activities were going to be provided remotely. Fortunately, prior to the onset of COVID19, we implemented our 1:1 Chromebook plan in grades 3-12. Soon thereafter, we provided Chromebooks for all K-2 students as well. Our Director of Technology and his team worked miracles and the transition was seamless.

The reality was that although it looked seamless to our families, it was a monumental task that our staff handled with grace.

Occurring simultaneously with the above-mentioned activities, our district office administration, building leaders, and teacher leaders instantly began developing plans, protocol, timelines, and expectations as we saw the pandemic worsening, and the Governor’s proclamations being extended. Everyone had thought at the time that there is no way this could last beyond the end of the 2019-2020 school year. Having endured this COVID19 pandemic; surely we can rid ourselves of this and begin anew in the fall for the 2020-2021 school year.

The Spring remote learning experience/ experiment, risk/reward, and failures/

achievements are a thing of the past…

Not so fast!

Our teams continued to work on plans for the 2020-2021 school year. As the start of the year drew closer, things weren’t getting better. COVID19 cases of positivity were increasing, infection rates, positive rates, and death were being reported at an alarming rate. We still didn’t know the extent of this new virus, and the havoc it would cause.

After the Governor’s office provided guidelines at the end of June 2020, it provided boundaries from which schools could plan with some sense of confidence. Our plan was developed and presented at our July 2020 regular meeting. This plan was adopted. As we inched closer to the beginning of the school year, rates continued to climb.

I scheduled an emergency meeting to advocate for starting the school year remotely. The recommendation was voted down by our Board of Education.

Now what?

Our students, staff, school board members, and community members are divided on this issue. Some believe we should be fully remote, others believe we should have all students in class all day.

This issue became more and more divisive among Board members, students and the

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 58

community as the days progressed. In the meantime, our team was doing all that we could to develop a plan that would work well for everyone; knowing, no matter what the outcome, not everyone would be happy. The media sensed the divide and they delved into specifics to further develop their stories. This, too, added pressure for us all.

Approximately ten days before the start of the 2020-2021 school year, it had become apparent that we were not going to be able to fulfill the expectation

impossibility. I scheduled another meeting to transition the high school to full remote (PK-8 would still be hybrid).

The Board voted in favor 6-1 of the new recommendation. For the first twelve weeks of the 2020-2021 school year, we maintained this model. We have excellent teachers and staff, so the community was much in favor of our teachers teaching our students, rather than through a third party, or strictly through a virtual setting.

In early to mid-October, our region experienced a decline in cases, so we

Our greatest achievement has been maintaining the six-foot social distance guideline. When contact tracing, we have discovered the six-foot protocol to be our saving grace. In addition, we have had no spread within our facilities as a result of a positive case. of starting our high school in the hybrid model, thus we extended the start of the school year by one week so we could further develop our plan. With COVID19 case numbers rising, our enrollment shifted extensively from 40 students registering to attend remotely, to 1,400.

Our plan to involve a third-party vendor to assist with the 40-50 students, had now become a financial and operational

began to discuss implementing the hybrid plan for the high school as well, beginning the first or second week of November. After discussions and meetings with the Union leadership, a plan of action was developed and implemented. The key to this plan moving forward was the agreement to allow for live streaming at the high school so that we could continue to offer

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 59

School Spotlight (cont.) all courses to our students and have our teachers teaching all of the content.

Our high school has been in session (Hybrid) since November 16th, and we have not had a pause in attendance/ instruction because of everyone’s due diligence to consistently maintain disinfecting procedures, masking, and social distancing protocols each day.

Our greatest achievement has been maintaining the six-foot social distance guideline. When contact tracing, we have discovered the six-foot protocol to be our saving grace. In addition, we have had no spread within our facilities as a result of a positive case.

contributed tremendously to the success of our program.

This long and arduous journey has been challenging for us all. We have experienced success and failure just as other school districts have. As with most challenges, we become better for having had the experience. Although I would prefer not to go through this again once it has passed, I must say, there have been silver linings along the way; nuggets of goodness that we all become better as a result.

For example, our teachers, as good as they are, challenged themselves and took

We know that in-person instruction is best for most students but having a digital component expands the relevance of what we are teaching.

There is so much that can be shared; Too much to mention in this brief article. I would be remiss if not to share the incredible efforts of my staff. Our custodial team, cafeteria workers, aides, teachers, administrators, and directors; all contributed significantly and continue to do so for our school community.

In addition, our parents, families, and businesses have been patient, flexible, and understanding. They too have

risks they may otherwise not have taken.

I have always professed to our staff that failure is an option. Try it, change it, throw it away and start anew. Yes, take that hybrid, remote, livestream teaching moment and maximize its potential.

This isn’t new for our students. They are among the first generation to have experienced a fully technological-based environment, whether in or out of school.

We know that in-person instruction is

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 60

best for most students but having a digital component expands the relevance of what we are teaching. It is a learning platform most all students—primary, intermediate, and high school—are comfortable with. If we make a mistake, we own it and fix it. We need to be and support “Educational Entrepreneurs.”

Forge ahead!

it to be from the assumption of good—to do what is best for kids and community.

It is the end of the first semester and we have completed eighteen weeks of hybrid in-person/remote instruction for approximately 4,800 students. To be quite honest, I thought after one to two weeks we would have to go full remote.

This wasn’t the case. We may have had to endure some battles along the way, and I am sure we will have a few more challenges before this is all said and done. As a school and district leader, you often receive accolades for the success of your team. We also receive the brunt of things beyond our control. I am fortunate to have an excellent administrative team, staff of teachers, and support staff to have made this educational experiment a success. The end results are still to be determined. It was a cumulative effort by all, and our school community is better because of these individuals. I would also be remiss not to credit the Board of Education for challenging recommendations and decisions through the planning process. There were disagreements at times, but I do believe

“Not all families can afford the ‘luxuries’ others can. Many homes have a parent or two who can help with e-learning. At a house where one of our students lives, he (as a 10 year old) is the teacher. He works tirelessly helping his 2nd grade sister do her school work as well as helping another behaviorally-challenged 4th grade sibling. After they go to bed, he works on his homework. Wi-Fi is limited to a cell phone but he does the best he can. I have taken it upon myself and a few of my colleagues to make sure that he has breakfast and lunch daily, as well as Friday night pizza. One morning a week, I go to his driveway and we work on ELA and Math. We work amongst the broken glass, trash, and occasional dirty diaper in the street. This young man is gifted and he is working so hard to keep his siblings afloat, himself afloat, and make life a little easier for his aunt who works a full-time job while taking care of and supporting three kids.”

In closing, the brief story below was shared by one of our 5th grade teachers that developed as a result of having experienced the trials and tribulations of the COVID19 pandemic and the challenges that exist.

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 61

School Spotlight (cont.)

If we learn anything from this experience, it is that we must be understanding, forgiving, compassionate, and above all we must rise to the challenge because it’s about the kids, and we are in the kid business!

We since have worked with all our families to make sure Wi-Fi is not an issue. This is one of many stories that you and I could share. It is heartbreaking and inspiring all at the same time. If we learn anything from this experience, it is that we must be understanding, forgiving, compassionate, and above all we must rise to the challenge because it’s about the kids, and we are in the kid business!

I have three simple guiding principles that I live by and I believe we all should apply to our craft:

• An idea or pursuit must begin or end with “it is best for kids.” If not, adjust your sails • Respect is non-negotiable • Work from the assumption of good Apply these simple principles to your daily work if you don’t already do so, and thank you for the tireless and important work you do each day for your students and families.

Dr. Douglas A Wood is the Superintendent for Ball-Chatham CUSD #5

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 62

IL ASCD Area Representatives In 2014 when IL ASCD reorganized our leadership team, the role of Area Representative was created. Our “Area Reps” as we call them are a link to and from the various regions of our state. IL ASCD follows the same areas established by the Regional Offices of Education.

Our Area Reps are led by two members of our IL ASCD Board of Directors, Scott Estes and Andrew Lobdell. Scott and Andrew are the Co-Leaders of our Membership and Partnerships Focus Area.

Denise Makowski Cyrus H. McCormick Elementary School 773.535.7252 dmakowski@cps.edu

Andrew Lobdell

Principal of the Junior High School in the Lena - Winslow School District # 202 815.369.3116 lobdella@le-win.net

Current Area Reps AREA

AREA AREA AREA AREA AREA

1: (Green)

2: 3: 4: 5: 6:

Chicago North Cook South Cook (Dark Blue) (Yellow) (Pink) (Light Blue) (Gold)

April Jordan Jennie Winters Josh Barron Chad Dougherty Heather Bowman Kelly Glennon Annette Hartlieb Clarence Gross

Contact information for them can be found HERE.

The roles of the IL ASCD Area Representatives are: • Encouraging IL ASCD membership to educators in their local areas; • Assisting with professional development; • Attend board meetings and the annual leadership retreat, when possible; • Disseminating information from IL ASCD board meetings or other sanctioned IL ASCD activities to local school districts or other regional members • Being a two-way communication vehicle between the local IL ASCD members regarding IL ASCD or any educational issues.

• Keeping IL ASCD Board of Directors apprised of pertinent information regarding personnel issues (e.g., job vacancies, job promotions) and district program awards/recognition within the local area.

• Communicating regularly with IL ASCD Executive Director and the Co-Leaders of the Membership and Partnerships Focus Area.

An ISBE Approved Provider

Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead and Live without Barriers May 6, 2021

JO

Live On-LIne

BOALER

3:30 pm

8:30 am 6 P.D. Hours

Recent years have seen an explosion of scientific Who should attend? evidence, from neuroscience, psychology and Teachers, administrators, coaches, education showing that there is a different way counselors, anyone wanting to to teach and learn, available to us all. When improve leading, & learning people take a limitless approach to learning – in content areas and in life – different pathways Registration Includes a copy of open up to them, leading to higher, more Jo's Book Limitless Mind equitable and more enjoyable achievement.

Mindset messages are important but they do not take root unless they are accompanied by a multiplicity approach to content and life.

“Boaler is one of those rare and remarkable educators who not only know the secret of great teaching but also know how to give that gift to others.”

Carol Dweck, author of Mindset In this workshop, Dr. Boaler will expand on the best practices presented in Mathematical Mindsets by revealing six keys to unlock learning potential across all content areas and in life. She will share the explosion of scientific evidence from neuroscience, psychology and education that supports a different way to teach and learn— one that creates equitable and engaging learning.

Dr Jo Boaler is the Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education at Stanford University. Former roles have included being the Marie Curie Professor of Mathematics Education in England, and a maths teacher in London comprehensive schools. She is a White House presenter on women and girls.

She recently formed youcubed.org to give teachers, parents and students the resources they need to excite students about mathematics. She was named by the BBC as one of the 8 educators “changing the face of education”.

ONLINE REGISTRATION

OUR MISSION “To build the capacity of educational leaders to enhance the quality of teaching and learning” EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE President—Akemi Sessler (Arlington Heights SD 25) President-Elect—Belinda Veillon (Nippersink 2 & Richmond Burton CHSD 157) Past-President—Dee Ann Schnautz (Mt. Vernon SD 80) Treasurer— Doug Wood (Ball-Chatham CUSD #5) Media Director—Debbie Poffinbarger (ROE 40) Secretary—Amy MacCrindle (Huntley 158)

FOCUS AREA LEADERS Membership and Partnerships

JOIN OUR ONLINE COMMUNITY! Get involved with our social media:

Denise Makowski (CPS) Andrew Lobdell (Lena-Winslow SD 202) Communications and Publications E. Scott England (Fairfield PSD 112) Jeff Prickett (McHenry High School District 156) Advocacy and Influence Richard Lange (National Louis University) Brenda Mendoza (West Aurora SD 129) Program Development Bev Taylor (Oak Brook)

WINTER 2020 | VOLUME 66 | NUMBER 4 | PAGE 66