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Education DIVE
As coronavirus vaccine candidates enter trials, with some of the earliest predictions landing availability sometime early next year, leaders are raising alarms around the possibility of parents and children who may seek exemptions from the requirement.
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Tech & Learning
Districts around the country are sharing plans for the reopening of schools this fall. In many cases the plans are rather complex and impractical for working families. For example, many have schedules in which students attend school part time, which could involve being in school buildings two to three days per week or having schedules that require being in the building for just the morning or afternoon. It may even vary from week to week.
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By Patrick Gleeson (commentary)
An April 2020 overview of K-12 job losses notes that, more than 10 years after the Great Recession, employment in public schools hasn't fully recovered from 2008’s Great Recession. The research further indicates that without support from the federal government, the revenue shortfalls related to the current crisis will be dramatically worse.
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We Are Teachers
As a school leader, you know the drill. One of your teachers only uses Remind, and her grade-level team does too. Another says Class Dojo is the only app that works for him, so he's using that to communicate with parents. Some of your teachers use SignUpGenius for scheduling and volunteering, while others are devoted Google Calendar and Office 365 fans. At this point, you can't even remember all of your logins — and your students' families probably can't either. Now that online schooling is a reality for many of us, the stakes are even higher.
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Chalkbeat
As coronavirus cases continue to climb in many states across the country, school districts both large and small are reaching the same conclusion: It's safer to start the year virtually. Los Angeles Unified, the nation's second-largest school district, announced plans jointly with San Diego Unified on Monday that they would start the school year with online instruction, citing "skyrocketing" coronavirus infection rates in California.
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NPR
Jeanne Norris is a teacher, the wife of a teacher and the mother of an 8-year-old in St. Louis. She'd love to send her son back to school in August. But, she says, "I feel like my government and my fellow citizens have put me in a position where it's not really in the best interests of our family." Norris has a long list of reasons why. She says she has taught in buildings where ventilation systems are outdated and malfunctioning, and even soap for hand-washing is in short supply.
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Education DIVE
When schools reopen, students will be greeted by plexiglass barriers, partitions and new classroom configurations designed to keep them as far apart as possible. Masks will likely be mandatory, class cohorts will be small, and movement will be inhibited. Students will be sectioned off throughout the school, from offices to auditoriums to stages and gyms. Hallways will be one-directional, if possible, and passing times will be staggered to reduce traffic.
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Our extensive online curriculum includes over 280 graduate-level, self-paced courses in 20 different subject areas. Get help with:
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EdSurge
Below the requests for highlighters, colored pencils and glue sticks, past the descriptions of spiral notebooks, two-pocket folders and three-ring binders, is a newly added line on many school supply lists for the 2020-2021 academic year — one that illustrates just how much the world has changed since spring.
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Education Week
Tracking student attendance under remote learning this spring was complicated and oftentimes ad hoc, a messy process that could continue to be a big problem if schools return to full-time virtual learning anytime this school year or do some combination of in-person and online education. Consider the case of Queens High School for Information, Research, and Technology in New York City. Several weeks after the city school system transitioned to virtual instruction, a new link appeared on the school's website.
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eSchool News
Not sure what to expect in this coming school year? Will your school district begin the year with in-person classroom instruction? Or will your district start the year with remote learning? Or will instruction be a combination of both? If you are grappling with these questions, you are not alone. In the western North Carolina school district where we teach, we are preparing for several possible teaching scenarios. But regardless of how your district will provide instruction this fall, teachers need a strong academic scaffold to build upon.
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Education Week
Fewer students will be able to ride the bus to school due to COVID-19 precautions when the 2020-2021 school year begins. That has left school systems scrambling to find fair and consistent ways of determining who will receive district transportation — and how to meet the needs of students who won't.
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Harvard Business Review
In the coming weeks, as quarantine restrictions loosen, companies around the world will begin bringing people back to the workplace. While some may be eager to finally get out of their house, a good number of people are still anxious. And if you're among them, you aren't alone.
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Training Industry Magazine
If your boss called in sick tomorrow, would you be happy or sad? Does the thought of no boss in the office or no boss at your afternoon meeting instantly get you pumped? In a recent study, a sample of 341 LinkedIn participants were asked whether they were happier and less stressed when their boss called in sick, was absent from work or went on vacation — 88% said yes!
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Fast Company
In our research conducted in collaboration with the University of North Colorado Social Research lab, we found five reasons that people don't speak up to contribute solutions, suggest micro-innovations, or advocate for customers.
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Entrepreneur (commentary)
Eric Solomon, a contributor for Entrepreneur, writes: "During my last full-time job as an executive leader, my colleagues and I were asked to stand in front of the entire company and talk about which of the organization's corporate values resonated with us the most. Our choices: self-awareness, positive energy, judgment, intellectual honesty and empathy. These values, along with others like integrity, courage, passion, and fun, might look familiar. They're the list of company values taped up in corner offices and corridors around the world, even if most employees never know they exist."
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Inc. (commentary)
Alison Green, a contributor for Inc., writes: "I know selecting interviewees and employees is not truly 'fair,' but how much should my pet peeves impact the decision to interview someone? For instance, someone sent me a LinkedIn invite a week before their résumé was sent to me to consider. I do not send invites to people I don't know and I don't accept invites from people I don't know."
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It is going to be of the utmost importance to be able to provide students with both in-class, as well as distance learning opportunities for the upcoming school year. We are all hopeful that life will get back to normal within the next 6 to 12 months. Unfortunately, the reality is that we all need to be prepared for our daily routines to continue remotely for the foreseeable future. Learn more about how Essential Skills can help you be ready for the 2020/21 school year.
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The Lead Change Group
Teams with a low conversational capacity frequently get pulled away from the sweet spot. When a tough topic arises, some people heat up while others shut down. Some people dominate the discussion while others don't say a peep. Sometimes the conversation turns argumentative and nothing gets accomplished, or if a decision is reached, it's often forced upon people and there is collateral damage of hurt feelings and damaged relationships. Good work isn't possible when the team is pulled out of the sweet spot.
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Forbes
Is the pandemic fueling your perfectionism? How people respond to crisis is as nuanced as individuals themselves. High stress. Uncertainty. No clear line of sight. Extenuating circumstances have become our everyday experience during the pandemic. For perfectionists, these circumstances are a huge temptation to double down on familiar, and often unproductive, habits, such as excessive preparation, overwork and unrealistic expectations for oneself and others. Over time, these habits create undue stress and pressure, which can slowly bring perfectionists to their breaking points.
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Education Week
The chorus of demands for Congress to provide a big new relief package for schools is growing louder. But such aid is only useful if it's actually spent. So why, as schools scramble to reopen more than three months after the first round of K-12 coronavirus relief money was signed into law, do reports indicate that a small share of it has been spent?
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District Administration Magazine
When online learning students in Kansas' rural Ulysses Public Schools can't access a website a teacher has sent them to, they can use software installed on their computers to send an immediate request for approval to the district's IT team. The IT team received about 25 to 50 such requests a day in the days right after the shift to remote instruction, says Dennis Gonzales, the technology director. IT staff granted access through the Impero software once they confirmed the teacher had provided the link.
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EdTech Magazine
A quick search of the words "interoperability" and "education" yields over 21 million results. Considering this massive volume, this combination of topics is clearly on the hearts and minds of teachers and students. However, a quick survey would show that this is not the case. Other than those who are quick with their affixes and root words, there is barely a soul outside of an IT role who can give you a close definition.
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eSchool News
In the middle of the abrupt changes to the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year, edtech companies offered resources and access to help educators, students and parents make the best of at-home learning. Here is insight from a select few of those edtech leaders.
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Classcraft
In an effort to adapt to the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, many school administrators are going virtual overnight and are, understandably, feeling slightly overwhelmed. Transitioning from a brick-and-mortar to a virtual school is no small task, and you may find yourself in uncharted territory.
So, where do you start?
Here are five questions you should ask about online learning to help get you started.
By Brian Stack (commentary)
As the clock starts to click down on summer vacation, many educators are still left wondering exactly what the 2020-21 school year will bring as a result of the pandemic. Will things finally settle down and allow schools to return to normal? Will we see a spike in COVID-19 cases, thus leading to significant changes to school operations? Can teachers ever get "comfortable" with their situation, their schedule, and their routines?
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THE Journal
Plenty of discussions about the use of artificial intelligence talk about how AI could help educators by shrinking the amount of time they have to spend on the trivia that pervades their work and freeing them up to focus on the job of teaching. In the latest CoSN IT leadership survey, more than half of respondents (55 percent) said that AI would have a significant or even transformational impact on teaching and learning within the next five years, if privacy issues can be addressed to everybody's satisfaction.
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EdTech Magazine
Back-to-school planning has never been more different than it is now. School districts nationwide are preparing for multiple reopening scenarios — from full-on remote learning to a hybrid approach — amid health and safety concerns connected to the coronavirus pandemic. But teaching online is hard, especially if educators don't have the training and support to do it. Many teachers can attest to that, after schools unexpectedly closed and transitioned to remote learning as a stopgap measure last spring. Some struggled to keep students engaged with online activities, while others had students who were unable to participate because they lacked access to devices or an internet connection.
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eSchool News
Jon Castelhano, Executive Director of Technology at Gilbert Public Schools in suburban Phoenix, Arizona, is making lemonade. Instead of stopgap measures to make it through the COVID-19 crisis, his district is crafting strategic changes with an eye toward the long term. These are ideas long talked about but never implemented in the 40 schools that serve 34,000 students. For it to work, faculty need to reinvent themselves too. In this conversation with eSchool News, Jon describes how they intend to do just that.
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MiddleWeb (commentary)
Elizabeth Stein, a contributor for MiddleWeb, writes: "This feels like the perfect time to revisit one of my favorite posts of all time here at Two Teachers in the Room. Although it dates back to 2013, parts of the post continue to be relevant. In fact, during these remote learning times, it seems to me more relevant than ever before."
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We Are Teachers
Given recent events, many of us are trying to take a hard and humble look at racism. We're reading books and watching videos as we seek to fill in gaps in understanding and deepen empathy. Many states attempt to address inequity between students by strengthening teacher preparation and rewarding the choice to work in lower-performing schools.
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“Together, We Thrive,” the latest series of webinars and resources from Classcraft, is designed to equip educators with the tools they need to support students through MTSS or PBIS, maintain consistency when shifting between in-person and remote learning, actively engage parents, and promote equity. Join us!
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Implement student backpack tags and parent car line signs to create a safer, faster, and more organized dismissal process. Easy to hang parent car line signs and a variety of student backpack tags for car riders, bus riders, walkers, after school care, and more! Different colors for different grades. Visit The Little Sign Company at www.carvisorsign.com
Learn more
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We Are Teachers (commentary)
Glenda Cohen, a contributor for We Are Teachers, writes: "In a different world than we live in today, I would be celebrating this month. Why? Because in August, it will be five years since I was diagnosed with breast cancer — a huge milestone in any cancer patient's life. But I won't be celebrating. How can I when I'm more fearful now than when I heard my original diagnosis? I'm fearful because I may be forced to return to teach in a district where I question their commitment to protecting my health and safety. I'm a teacher worried about what the fall will bring."
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Education Week
Big state and national tests always require finely tuned coordination among researchers and schools. During the pandemic, large-scale assessments could become a complicated mess — if they can be pulled off at all. Large-scale tests — from the Nation's Report Card to state accountability exams — face an uphill climb next year, experts say, amid concerns that administering them could expose staff and students to a higher risk of coronavirus and prove difficult to do consistently among the shifting school set-ups expected next year.
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MiddleWeb
Reading teachers work hard to meet the needs of individual students in small group settings. And yet, many students continue to struggle while reading self-selected books. This struggle works against their sense of agency and identity as readers. What can we do to build stronger bridges from guided reading with specialists to independent reading?
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Edutopia
Prior to the pandemic, dozens of states had begun offering standardized tests online, a trend that's expected to grow rapidly as schools adapt to social distancing. But according to a large-scale 2019 study, students who took such tests online lagged behind their peers who took paper tests, performing as if they'd lost several months of academic learning.
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Language Magazine
As Franklin Roosevelt famously stated in his 1932 inaugural address, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." These ringing words probably also apply to the teaching of poetry. For a whole host of reasons, many people — not only teachers but general readers as well — feel intimidated by poetry. For teachers, a fear of this kind either inhibits their teaching or leads to their not teaching poetry at all. Often, English teachers just "don't get around to it" during their courses.
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MassLive
Roughly one out of every four teachers in the United States, amounting to nearly 1.5 million instructors, have a condition that puts them at a higher risk of developing serious illness from the coronavirus, a new report has found. Looking at data from the 2018 National Health Interview Survey, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 1.47 million school teachers are particularly in danger of becoming significantly ill if they contract the viral respiratory infection, either due to a preexisting medical condition or their age. The news comes as officials continue to debate the safety of instructors and students, across K-12 and higher-education institutions, returning to school in the fall.
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The 74
On June 30, Sen. Lamar Alexander convened the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to hear four health experts — including Dr. Anthony Fauci — provide an update on COVID-19, including how K-12 leaders and other stakeholders can open schools safely this fall. Alexander was direct in offering his thoughts: "The question before the country today is not about whether to go back to school, but how to do it safely."
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West Virginia MetroNews Network
Cooks, custodians and bus drivers will be crucial to opening West Virginia schools as the coronavirus pandemic continues this fall. But the president of the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association, the union that represents those workers, says only about half are comfortable so far. "Half the people say "all right, this is nothing," they're going to go back to normal, "let's hit it," said union leader Joe White.
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The Detroit News
With Michigan schools moving online in March, many students lost their daily exercise outlet. Recently, the University of Michigan started an initiative to help kids stay active at home. The university created the InPACT at Home program, an online, free-use initiative designed to be a year-long, daily routine. The program is headed by Rebecca Hasson, associate professor of kinesiology and nutritional health and director of the Childhood Disparities Research Laboratory.
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Super Star Online: Phonics, Reading & Math. Engaging and Affordable interactive online courses for campus and distance learning.
“Your Kids will Love Learning with Super Star”! MORE
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Education Week
When schools closed this spring to curb the spread of coronavirus, special education administrators feared the risk of complaints — and potential legal action — from parents and disability rights advocates for running afoul of federal civil rights laws. Stressed over concerns that they'd be swamped with lawsuits if they could not offer a comparable education for all students, including those with disabilities, some districts were even initially reluctant to offer any online learning.
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NAESP
The National Association of Elementary School Principals and AASA, The School Superintendents Association, are pleased to announce the first cohort of 20 emerging leaders to complete the National Aspiring Principals Academy. The professional learning program, led by the two groups, is designed to support aspiring principals in acquiring the essential knowledge, skills and practices needed to advance to the next leadership level.
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NAESP
NAESP's new principal panel is the first and only national program dedicated to gathering and sharing the experiences of new principals in rural, urban and suburban schools across the country. Panelists participate in online surveys each year on a relevant topic, which take less than 10 minutes to complete. Panelists receive the survey results and resource recommendations from their peers.
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