Callahan Elementary School’s nurse Maureen Gearty developed this flowchart for families in the Norwood, MA community to determine if students should attend school. Students are asked to complete a self-screening at home before coming to school. Families of younger students should help their children follow the screening protocol.
Mask breaks are also being built into the school day across the country. Many schools use mealtimes and recess as common points in their schedules for mask breaks, and some even choose to designate additional times throughout the day for more breaks.
Cedar Rapids created priority standards in the 2020-2021 school year in response to marked limitations on learning time due to the pandemic and a derecho. The power standards created clarity for teachers and school leaders on how to prioritize teaching and learning given the suboptimal conditions.
This is a sample schedule that middle schoolers at Cedar Rapids Community School District used for remote learning.
Cedar Rapids recognizes that instruction would likely be stronger if content teachers rotated classrooms, but district leaders had to accept the tradeoffs of synchronous online learning to reduce teachers’ interactions with multiple cohorts of students throughout the day. To mitigate this somewhat, Cedar Rapids is allowing teachers to rotate advisory classrooms on three-week intervals, allowing students to have in-person connections with each core subject teacher for three weeks during a twelve-week timespan.
This is a sample staff schedule Cedar Rapids Community School District used. Students stayed in the same physical classroom throughout the day and would receive instruction virtually and synchronously.
This resource includes suggestions on how to assess key strengths and gaps in both academic and non-academic areas and offers practical ideas for providing targeted support during the pandemic with a focus on two key domains: social-emotional learning and academics.
The Forest School at Trilith is a 21st-century micro-school, grades K-12, with learner-driven technology, Socratic discussions, hands-on projects, and real-world apprenticeships in an intentionally diverse and character-forging community.
