“When we first went out, and we were distributing all these Chromebooks on the fly, we thought about just having it be optional, extended learning,” said Pamela Swanson, superintendent of Westminster Public Schools outside Denver. But then “we agreed that kids need to be in class, so to speak.” The district already had an internal learning-management system that housed lesson plans, organized assignments and tracked student progress online, she said. Now, with students logging into it from home, “this is school until further notice.”
“We flipped this switch almost literally overnight,” Ms. Swanson said. “We need to continually talk to our teachers about giving them grace. We don’t expect you to be experts in this right away.”
She added: “That’s a tough message for teachers, because they want to be perfect. But that’s not possible.”