4 Questions to Help You Plan for Summer Slide

In This Issue...

Reflections from Gateway High School Leaders
RESOURCE: Stymie Summer Slide with a Fun Summer Learning Program
RESOURCE: 4 Questions to Help You Address Learning Loss
LINK: Teaching About Race, Racism and Police Violence
LINK: 3 Ways to Support Students' Emotional Well-Being
LINK (With Quizzes!): Greater Good's Keys to Well-Being
Summer Hiatus: We'll Be Back Soon!

“Leadership and Adult Learning in Unprecedented Times (or Fast and Slow)"

Reflections from Jeff Sprague, Humanities Teacher & Instructional Leader
and Becca Wieder, Director of Curriculum and Instruction @ Gateway High School

In a time where we seem to be remaking every aspect of our daily life and work, it’s helpful to realize that not everything is new. We still need to attend to the personal and relational, even as the technical shifts beg for our time and attention. We still need to prioritize, recognizing that there will always be more work, more needs than we can address in a 40-hour (or 60-hour, or 80-hour) work week. We still need to ground these priorities in what we’re about and where we’re trying to go – in our case, providing engaging, accessible, meaningful learning in service of equitable outcomes for students. There are so many best practices that carry over from “The Before” to now – though their importance has become outsized. In a global pandemic, you need best practices on steroids.

Less is More
Take prioritizing. Always a necessity, the shifting landscape and expansion of student needs means we are narrowing from a wider field, having to let go of even more priorities in order to focus on the non-negotiables of this moment – getting technology into students’ hands, moving graduation online – while holding onto the important questions we will need to address for months and years to come. How will we assess where students are academically and social-emotionally? How will we adjust to the widening range of skill levels and experiences? In order to hold both the urgent and the important, we have to sharpen our focus on what really matters, what is essential, and let the rest fall away. This can be especially challenging when letting go of initiatives into which we had heavily invested, or practices that we particularly enjoy.

Thinking Fast and Slow
Part of prioritizing in a pandemic is recognizing when a quick decision has to be made – we no longer have the luxury of working over new ideas or possibilities in the way we usually would. In a highly collaborative school, that has meant getting frequent feedback from stakeholders so that decisions can be made with everyone’s perspective in mind.

What’s tricky is that we also have to recognize when to slow down and wait for the road ahead to become more clear – so much is beyond our control, and we have seen realities shift dramatically in the course of days. From this tension comes a new best practice: think fast about how to gather information and get ready for the unknown; think slow about big shifts and policy changes until we can be sure our decisions match our values.

We Have Needs Too!
One important reminder we’re always giving ourselves during “regular” school is how our adults need all the same stuff our kids need in order to learn – connection, community, challenge, relevance, etc. Just like students, we adult learners have social-emotional needs. We need to feel a sense of trust and connection with others to genuinely engage in our work together. So, Zoom breakout rooms aren’t just for smaller teams to collaboratively brainstorm and problem-solve. They’re a great small-group setting for silliness and fun, like an icebreaker game or sharing weird highlights of sheltering-in-place. One of the best connecting activities recently was having each person share a stretch for the group to do for ten seconds. After just two minutes, we emerged present, refreshed and connected to each other in yet another new way.

Keep the Feedback Flowing
Lost are all those small ways we get informal feedback in school. School leaders don’t run into staff at the coffee maker or copier and hear how teachers are feeling in more casual ways. Therefore, it’s become even more critical that we build in places for teacher feedback just about every staff meeting. We don’t want to kill people with Google forms, but giving people a chance to share their reflections, ideas and needs for support is essential to holding the many different perspectives on this challenging experience.

It's hard to predict, even now, what the new school year will look like, but with these priorities in mind and a commitment to taking care of each other, we can handle whatever this August brings.

RESOURCE: Stymie Summer Slide with Fun Ongoing Learning Opportunities

Getting your average middle or high schooler to agree to complete optional assignments during the summer sounds, well, laughable.

But this is not shaping up to be an average summer! Most adolescent summer pastimes – sports, trips, swimming, jobs, even lazing around with a group of friends – are on hold or seriously curtailed this year. Even so, the threat of summer slide is no less a reality – even more so, in fact, given that many students have been unable to engage fully in their studies while sheltering in place for a variety of reasons.

Gateway High faculty have assembled an impressive array of activities in all disciplines for students to take on during the summer. As they are ungraded and optional, all are designed to be relevant to students’ lives, maximize student choice, and be fun! It’s a great opportunity to go-in depth into topics constrained by the typical school schedule or that aren’t quite covered by state standards. And while it’s true most students probably have literally nothing better to do, the deal is made sweeter by a prize raffle: completed projects earn entries into two different raffles for teen-friendly gift cards.

Click here to check out the wide variety of summer activities GHS faculty have dreamed up or customize this spreadsheet template with your own assignments. The list also comes with this Student FAQ explaining the how and, more importantly, the why of the program to help kids get on board.

RESOURCE: 4 Questions to Help You Address Learning Loss

Fun incentive programs or no, schools will be dealing with the reality of meeting new students this fall who will likely need a lot of support: in covering learning they may have missed in the spring, adjusting to schedules that will probably be unlike both the regular school year or distance learning as currently practiced, and in processing their feelings about this extended pandemic – all on top of the normally fraught transition to a new grade level! The more we can plan for this reality early on, the better equipped we’ll be to make the first few weeks and months of school as effective as possible.

This document, designed for department planning meetings, is meant to generate ideas about what students will need, what you as an educator will need, and how to creatively meet those needs. Together, your team will consider:

Social Emotional Support for Students - How can we diagnose where students are and build more social-emotional work into the first quarter of the year?
Community Building - How can we strengthen community in Quarter 1?
Supporting Students’ Non-Cognitive Skill Growth - We’re going to continue asking students to be more independent. In what ways do we need to be coaches, and how do we plan for that?
Curriculum - How can we plan for a curriculum that may need to shift, considering what instruction was missed in Q4 and that we may need to teach remotely again?

Check out the full notetaker and set up a Zoom meeting with your colleagues – a little forethought about these questions now will pay dividends in August, whether you find yourself at the front of a classroom, teaching from your couch, or a little of both.

LINK: Teaching About Race, Racism and Police Violence

Depending on the age of your students, most are probably aware of the recent high profile news stories about police violence and the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade. They may have questions about these tragedies or want to talk about it in class. Teaching Tolerance keeps an ongoing portal of resources to help educators work with students around these painful topics, including lesson plans, professional development resources, and guidance around helping students cope with anxiety and fear.

LINK: 3 Ways to Support Students’ Emotional Well-Being During the Pandemic

Transitions are tough on kids, and whether we’re thinking about the transition as this notable school year ends and gives way to a socially distanced summer or the transition when students return to us, they’re going to have some big feelings. This article from Edutopia has some great ideas for simple things teachers and schools can do to support students’ social emotional well-being during tough times, even when distance learning:

“How you engage with your own thoughts may matter more than how you engage with others. While students are learning in novel ways, from their home computers and physically distant from peers, they can evaluate and reflect on their own thinking during time when they would typically be transitioning to a new class or eating lunch. Modeling why and how to use metacognition—awareness and understanding of one’s own thought process—is an important component of digital instruction.
Think closely about opportunities for student self-reflection. When students learn something new, feel challenged, or are asked to engage in higher-order thinking like evaluating content or synthesizing ideas, teachers can model interpersonal development. For example, after guiding students through new content, ask them to record their answers to two reflective questions: “What did I feel successful with during this new learning and why?” and “What was challenging during this new learning and why?”

Read the full article here.

LINK (With Quizzes!): Greater Good’s Keys to Well-Being

You’re not spending much time this summer abroad or even poolside, but that doesn’t mean you’re (only) relegated to bingeing The Office again. The scientists at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Center have identified ten “building blocks of individual and community well-being,” all of which you can attend to at home and in your neighborhood:

Altruism
Awe
Bridging Differences
Compassion
Diversity
Empathy
Forgiveness
Gratitude
Happiness
Mindfulness
Social Connection

Check out this portal for tons of thoughtful articles, activities, meditations and more to help you work on these traits a little bit every day – complete with fun quizzes to help you get a sense of your personal strengths and growth areas. Wishing you a summer of peace, joy, and very good television!

So Long for Now – Summer Hiatus

Thank you for reading HomeRoom! We hope you've gleaned some tips and wisdom that have been helpful to you and your students through what is certain to go down in history as one of the weirdest semesters ever. We're taking a short break for the summer, but we'll be back in mid-July with Early Impact, a newsletter designed to help you plan for your best school year yet.

What would help you get ready for the 2020-21 school year? Let us know and we'll be sure to address it in Early Impact. Otherwise, have a great summer and we'll see you soon!

Know a friend or colleague who’d be interested in resources like HomeRoom? Forward along and encourage them to subscribe!

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