A few days ago, over the weekend, the governor of our state decided to close school down for at least 2 weeks due to concerns related to the Coronavirus. When I say close school down I mean close the “physical school.” Educators, for now, are still expected to work from home providing digital learning opportunities for our students...something that 30 years ago I never could have imagined...regardless of the circumstances.
Yesterday about 23 staff members of my school met, at school, and began the process of figuring out what remote digital learning was going to look like for our students during this extremely unique period in our world’s history. This involved a few things.
First we had to engage in the tedious task of taking student Chromebooks and adapters out of the cart they are housed in daily for charging. It is my opinion, as I do not know this for a fact, that the person who designed these carts was definitely NOT connected at all to education as...on a good day...it is difficult to get the Chromebooks in and out. I am fortunate to work with 9 and 10 year olds so that task is a classroom job that I give to 2 students weekly. They are really good at it. Unfortunately, none of them was in the room with me when I had to start this task. And...we did not realize at the time, that a Phillips-head screwdriver was going to be needed to release the cords from the back of the cart. Our school only had one (yes one) such tool available so we had to share. We then had to place the devices out on student desks along with a sign-out and agreement statement families would have to sign when they came in to get all of this.
Next came the task of helping colleagues who are not well versed in technology (yes they do still roam this earth)...supporting them by helping them create Google Classroom platforms to post content for students to “educationally consume” while they are out of “physical school.” This particular task was left to 3 of us...myself and two other colleagues that use Google Classroom with their students on a daily basis. When the prospect of having to work from home became more and more of a reality I thought, “My students and I have been ‘training’ for this all year long.” My students are Google Classroom masters...we use the platform each day for a variety of “readerly and writerly” content/curricular based experiences. After giving our colleagues a “Google Classroom 101” training the next step was...wait for families to come pick up their technology.
When I wasn’t talking to families I was creating documents and content for Google Classroom to share with families explaining how to access both Google Classroom and the portal our students use through our school system’s website. I wanted to get as much of the infrastructure in place so that the rest of the time...spent at home...would be relatively simple. As families came to get their child’s device I used the opportunity to explain how and when I would begin posting content for the students to interact with. Conversations were brief as family members used their lunch time or break time from work to come get the technology their child was going to be using. We wished each other well and told each other to stay healthy...reassuring ourselves that we would get through this-together!
Communication is going to be crucial during this time. I’m using the Remind app to keep in contact with my families. I work really hard at the beginning of the year to get families on board with Remind as it has proven to be a very valuable resource for me for several years. The app allows me to contact families individually and as a larger group for announcements I need to give to the entire classroom community.
We are in very unfamiliar territory with all that is happening right now. The best way to get through it together is to keep the lines of communication open which is exactly what I am doing.