This summer I had the opportunity to embark in two important professional development courses. One was with Lee Ann Jung on assessment and reporting during online learning. Although a lot of it was related to the battles, educators face in navigating reliability in assessing children in an online environment, there was also a lot of content that centered around topics like the importance of multiple means of expression, goal attainment scoring and building academic integrity in students, which are things we want in all of our classrooms whether we are in person or doing distance learning. The other course I took was a MS responsive classroom course, it was so refreshing to me after being an instructional coach this year to learn some more techniques that I can use with kids to deepen their socio-emotional learning, constructive collaboration and in light of the times, zoom in on identity building and ownership.
Through all of this learning and plenty of time on my hands, during Co-vid, and not being able to nurture my traveling spirit or see as many good friends as I would normally in a summer, I have been conjuring up what my ideal classroom would look like this coming school year, particularly because I am due to be starting teaching MS Humanities in person, in Madrid, in the next few months.
I have come up with a number of categories for establishing how I could feel safe as a teacher, parent, and provide equal security for my students and their parents going into this school year which has all of us wondering, what is going to happen?
The Space.
In a perfect world, no matter what age, I think that the ideal space may be in a house that was transformed into a school for its students. Of course, this would include an outdoor space for children of all ages to relax or play in, a space where both toddlers and teenagers could contribute to a garden, or design a playground, or mud kitchen or what not. It would include a kitchen where kids could learn how to cook, and healthy meals were provided by a chef for younger kids, likewise, with kids in secondary or older, it would be a place where math and chemistry competencies and concepts could be embedded into a small group cooking the class' lunch. Masks would be worn by kids above the age of 6, and in secondary kids would come to an agreement through debate whether they would prefer plastic shields between their work or eating spaces or to use the plastic hats on top of their masks. Finally, and this is what will throw people over the edge, there would be no more than 12 kids in the house/ class etc, with no more than 2 adults also entering and exiting the house. Wifi would be readily available and there would be a room to do virtual video calls with experts outside of the teacher's area of expertise particularly related to content or what not.
Time.
The school day would be set by the times agreed on by the group of parents whose kids were in the house with a maximum of an 8 hour day and within that 8 hours, at least 1-2 hours (age dependent) for eating and play/ relax. This way the parents would have ownership of the owners and understand the multiple perspectives playing into opening up a school and meeting the needs of all stakeholders in the community.
Teachers.
Teachers would wear masks and face shields as needed. They would maintain distance but also realize that by nature, we are human beings, and there are times that call for compassion, appropriate touch, and parents would respect the professional judgment of the teachers to make those decisions, like they do with family members or friends. Teachers would be given a hazard pay bonus because of the situation they are putting themselves in each day until a vaccine has been released.
Tuition.
Tuition would cost $10,000 per kid and contribute to hiring the space for the school and paying the teachers salary and health insurance. In order to diversify classrooms racially and class wise, these pod-schools would partner with tech conglomerates such as Google, Apple, Microsoft etc to bring more diversity through offering scholarships into these pod schools while not devaluing the importance of the space and qualifications of the teachers.
Global Citizenship and Service.
Teachers would be trained in responsive classroom or another agreed upon socio-emotional set of practices to help support children through this trivial and tumultuous time in everyone's lives. Children would be made aware in age appropriate ways of the global issues we are facing and be empowered to work independently and collaboratively to combat one of those issues. In that regard, we would be lifting the level of student's social awareness, by giving them ownership and problem solving skills in trying to combat one of the global issues people in and out of their communities are facing daily. This would be not only integrated into the curriculum, it would be a part of the day, or week that is dedicated to the generating ideas, nurturing of those ideas, building and rebuilding of those ideas and then putting those ideas into practice and educating others about the issue at hand.
Boot camps.
Since summer school and vacation are not fitting the traditional mold this year. Boot camps would be provided for students for free, 2-4 weeks before the school started. These boot camps would be lead by various teachers, community members and mainly be done online, depending the age appropriateness but would range in topic. For kids under the age of 6, you may be looking at routines we follow at school to take care of ourselves, take care of others and to take care of this place. For kids under the age of 8, you might be looking at a course on navigating the tech we'll use Or how our classrooms, lives, communities, world has changed in a year. Finally, for secondary students, we may be looking at how to truly own our learning, or better yet how to show our learning in multiple ways.
Assessment.
Grades would be kept in place using a set of power standards per core subject. Teachers would work with instructional coaches and administrators to tease out the power standards and progressions for the year. For example, if there was a MS Humanities class that had 8 power standards, an instructional coach would work with the team to tease out what might these standards look like in October, December, February and April and June during the year mirroring a goal attainment scoring model. Students would then work in partnerships with their teachers to make goals to progress along the continuums. More basic structures would be provided for early childhood not only around competency skills but also around kinesthetic (ie. fine motor skills) and social emotional competencies (working with others). Above all, students would be given the opportunity to demonstrate their learning through their median of choice. Teachers would work as coaches for kids, partnering with them to help them make decisions about what median works best for them, and on what strategies to access to help them achieve their co-constructed learning plan.
Parent Partnerships.
Parents would become partners more than they have ever been. Weekly emails would be sent out to the parents about areas of strength and areas for improvement and strategies that parents can use at home to reinforce their children's individual learning targets. Parents would meet with teachers at the beginning of the year to discuss their child's hopes and dreams in an interview that would end with the student participating in the conversation as well and sharing his/ her opinions, feelings, ideas about the parent's intentions with the teacher and parents. Parents would be expected to contribute to the community whether that was to provide a virtual read aloud, pick up groceries for lunch, print out flyers for the global citizenship project the students are working on, etc. Parents and teachers would meet every other month to discuss successes and give feedback to teachers on what is working for their children and not working. Parents would work with the teacher and other parents to help support families that may need extra support.
This is dreamy but it isn't impossible. My hopes with these pod schools as well is that in the future, when we hopefully, are able to be more free in our communication and movement again, that all these pod schools might generate different waves and schools of thought which would evolve into a working and adult world with people who had an array of tool kits both personally and professionally and a deeper sense of empathy for all.
#educhat #2021schoolyear #bethechange
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