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Posts Tagged ‘global pandemic’

School on a Dial

Posted in Assessment, Change, Personalized Learning, tagged , , on June 3, 2020| 7 Comments »

I want to pick up on the idea of school on a dial that I introduced in my last blog post – The End of Snow Days?

School for a long time has been something you turn on or off.  School is turned off on the weekends, during Christmas, Spring Break and the summer.  And it is turned on from 9-3 Monday to Friday from September to June.  It is a switch.  The day after Labour Day we turn the switch on and across British Columbia hundreds of thousands of students arrive in buildings joined by tens of thousands of teachers and other staff.

Unlike most jurisdictions in the world, British Columbia did not turn off the switch for in-person schooling when the pandemic hit in the middle of March.  We changed this switch to a dial and introduced five different settings on this dial.  Here is one recent image describing the five stages:

Since spring break, and up until this week we had been in Stage 4.  There were a limited number of students attending school – these were largely the children of Essential Service Workers and vulnerable and special needs students.  The vast majority of students were learning remotely.  This week, we moved to Stage 3 and saw thousands of student returning to schools part-time and on a voluntary basis.

Of course, with it already being June, many are turning their attention to September.  We all would hope to be at Stage 1 – and stay in Stage 1 – but we also need to plan for other eventualities.   So, back to this notion of school as a dial and not a switch.  If we think of it as a dial, if there is a second-wave of Covid-19, we can dial-down the in-person instruction, and if BC continues to plank the curve, we can dial-up the in-person instruction.  The challenge for a school system is how do you design learning and schooling that lets you move between the various stages on a dial and not get caught thinking of it as a switch (models are for another post).

This also raises a larger question about the future of education and the idea of in-person instruction being on a dial. Right now, the dial is being controlled by the virus.  The virus threat is lower in BC, so the dial for in-person instruction goes up.  And this will be the pattern in the short term.

But I have heard from both staff and students that they have found more success with partial remote learning than they were finding in the traditional classroom, particularly at high school.  So post-virus, how might we let students control their own dial? Or staff?  How could we design structures that allowed some students and staff to attend in-person everyday, some only a few days a week, and maybe others vary rarely?  It makes my head hurt – but it is a conversation worth having. 

I think of Alan November’s question that has long inspired me when he speaks of the classroom, “Who owns the learning?”, the teacher or the student,  in the post virus world, I think as we look at structures, we may want to ask, “Who owns the dial?”

More to come . . .

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The Goldilocks Dilemma

Posted in Change, SD45, tagged , , , on April 21, 2020| 3 Comments »

We all know the story of Goldilocks sneaking into the house of the 3 bears – and first trying the big bowl of porridge and finding it too hot.  And then the medium sized bowl of porridge and finding it too cold.  Finally, eating up the small bowl of porridge that was just right.  In some ways, as we carve out new territory with remote learning, we have been dishing out the bears porridge and our students have been Goldilocks.

We have done our best for remote learning to not be “too hot” or “too cold” but rather “just right”.

While there is some universal understanding of whether porridge is too hot or too cold, when in comes to remote learning there is more variance. A couple weeks in, we seem to agree that virtual lessons all day, where we try to recreate school by taking the block schedule and putting it online is too hot. Some jurisdictions are trying this, but having students in front of screens on one-way lectures for 5 hours a day is not what most people are looking for. At the too cold end of the spectrum, stories of leaving kids with minimal contact leaves them without community and connections.  (Worth noting I have personally had both requests that we provide 5-6 hours a day of streaming online one-way classes and alternatively that we not contact a family until we return to in-person learning).

The challenge is that between these extremes, where we search for the “just right” it is not the same for everyone.  There are so many variables for families.  For some there is rich technology and parents at home able to assist.  In other homes, just the opposite is true.  And we have been clear to say that marks will not fall for students who commit to their learning during this time, but old habits of being driven by marks are still very present for many families.  And the ramp-up in new skills for staff is also varied.  It is amazing the new technology skills our staff have learned in just a couple of weeks.

So as we continue forward the search for just right is ongoing.  We are regularly asking our students and parents if we are hitting the mark and differentiating where we can.  We want students to be turning off their phone notifications, setting their own deadlines for work and spending chunks of time uninterrupted on their work – these are good life skills.  We also want families to remember that learning is not just about stuff from books.  We want our students to be physically active, and pursuing their passions, and looking at the various extension options we are offering through our district website.

Students are not falling behind.  It is a global pandemic – we are all in this together.  And when we return to more normal times it is our job to meet students where they are and help move them forward.

In the meantime, we will keep trying to get the porridge the right temperature for you.  

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