Adapting Education Communities to the New Learning Reality: What We’ve Learned So Far
As I write this, it’s been five weeks since Zealous and all other schools throughout Eagle County switched to a digital learning model in support of social distancing efforts. Throughout the county, teachers and administrators have worked quickly to transition to the new realities of virtual learning.
While this has been a daunting undertaking for educators everywhere, Zealous has found itself uniquely positioned to tackle these challenges head-on. Transitioning to a digital learning model requires effective leadership, innovation, adaptability, and creative problem-solving — all qualities that our coaches and students practice every day.
Of course, we’ve still faced a learning curve as we temporarily move out of our physical classroom and into the wild, wild west of online learning. In the process, we’ve learned a lot about the factors that create an effective digital learning model.
We’ll no doubt continue to learn new lessons over the coming weeks, but here’s what we’ve discovered so far about the ingredients that make up a successful online learning environment.
Effective Digital Learning: What It Takes
Buy-in from the school community
From the start, we knew that we’d need full participation from students and full support from parents to make an online learning model as effective as possible. So on the last day of in-person classes, we designed a Community Academic Contract to establish community expectations for the weeks and months ahead.
This contract outlined roles and responsibilities for students, coaches, and parents:
Students agree to complete their assigned work, participate in regular check-ins with their coaches, collaborate with other students, respond to communications from coaches and school staff, “own their own learning,” and so on
Coaches agree to adapt their lessons to a remote delivery platform (Google Classrooms), adapt group projects to enable student-to-student interactions via digital platforms, hold regular office hours, and continue providing highly individualized communication and support for each learner
Parents agree to create consistent study environments within the home, communicate with coaches when necessary, and generally support their kids and their learning
Effective technologies
We’ve already been using Google Classrooms as a learning management system (LMS) for the past 18 months. It’s a versatile tool that helps us deliver assignments, share links on the web, provide students with instructions for various projects, administer quizzes, and more. Using this platform within a more traditional learning environment already provided a lot of benefits — for instance, it lets students stay up-to-date while sick or traveling for sports.
Those benefits have grown exponentially since transitioning to an online learning model. Our students and coaches had already incorporated this technology into their everyday learning habits, making the transition to more robust use of Google Classrooms that much easier. Having pre-established strong routines with this LMS has been a major boon.
Human interaction and Strong Student-Coach Relationships
Technological access and know-how is an essential component of online learning, but it’s just one leg of the stool. The relationship between learners and their coaches is also critical.
Too often, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is overlooked in the high-stakes testing culture that secondary schools across the country have adopted. Our broader educational system is often fixated on academic grade levels but working against kids’ basic needs. Our system fails to ask caring questions about kids’ families and whether they feel supported at home. Instead, it marches students into test-prep lessons where they learn how to regurgitate the opinion of an author or replicate the automation of a machine while solving math problems.
It would be all too easy to slip into these habits while teaching online. But it’s simply not enough for teachers to spend a long weekend uploading everything to a LMS for kids to then figure it out and complete work solo. Larger assignments require the same care in rolling out as they would back in the classroom. Kids should be given the opportunity to hear one another, ask questions, and collect clarity on assignments before they undertake them.
Bottom line? Strong rubrics are valuable, but learners still need human interaction to successfully complete assignments, remain engaged with their learning, and feel valued as human beings. Whether in a physical classroom or online, a healthy rhythm of communication between coaches and students is critical not just to academic success but also for supporting the social and emotional wellbeing of kids.
At Zealous, we maintain a six-to-one student/coach ratio so coaches and students are able to work closely with each other and develop strong rapport. Those relationships have proved invaluable to our online learning model. Students feel comfortable reaching out to their coaches over email, the phone, and so on — and vice versa. No student gets overlooked.
Emphasis on Mental Health
Since the first day that we went online, Zealous coaches have been developing ideas for fun activities that feed students’ passions, expose them to new ideas, keep them engaged in their learning, and give them something to look forward to on any particular day or week.
So far, we’ve hosted a distance LEGO competition, used Netflix Party to watch movies “together,” invited students and community members to take virtual tours of museums around the world, launched a storytelling competition, and more.
Making these opportunities available to a broad range of kids at and beyond Zealous Schools is essential to the mental health of children throughout our community.
Accommodating Diverse Learning Styles
At Zealous, we celebrate how students are intelligent instead of asking whether they are. (We’re heavily influenced by Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences; learn more here if you’re interested!)
The asynchronous nature of remote learning opens up new opportunities for some students to thrive and creates new challenges for others. No matter the medium, all students need holistic learning assessments that uncover their unique traits as a learner.
This mentality is par for the course at Zealous. Our coaches are perpetually in the habit of developing individualized assessments and learning plans for each of our students. When students accelerate their learning via the online format, we’re encouraging and facilitating their new pace. When students don’t take to the virtual format, we work with them individually to craft an action plan that’s suited to their learning style.
We hope schools across the country will use this time as an opportunity to embrace a broader body of research and considerations when it comes to designing support for learners.
Getting Kids Outdoors
It’s always important for kids to spend time outdoors, and now is no exception. While safe social distancing is of course required, we’ve been designing creative assignments that encourage students to get some fresh air and move their bodies outside.
So far, we’ve crafted assignments that involve collecting photos or journaling in nature — facilitating creativity and outdoor engagement. We’ve safely delivered sanitized “Tinker Kits” that give students an opportunity to work on something new. Our coaches have even shared kid-friendly workout videos that let kids follow along from their yard or another safe outdoor space.
Putting It All Together
While an online learning model necessitates a variety of hurdles for secondary educators, it’s also ripe with opportunities.
At Zealous, we’re embracing the chance to connect with and teach our students in new ways, to further strengthen our skills as facilitators and coaches, and to build our school community’s capacities for communication.
This time also presents an opportunity for the broader education system to ensure that we connect the biggest problems we’re facing as a species and as communities to the topics students engage with in schools.
No matter whether we’re teaching on- or off-line, let’s make sure we’re providing students with a chance to engage with topics pertaining to public health, climate change, local policy issues, globalization, and more.
For instance, let’s tweak our science curricula so it’s focused on CO2 drawdown and other pressing matters. Let’s discuss local issues (virtually!) with resource managers and policy leaders. Let’s give students ample opportunity to engage in project-based learning that could pave the way for new discoveries. Let’s foster resilient communities through our diets, our habits, our compassion, and the way we ask questions.
Here at Zealous, we’re seizing this opportunity to provide our learners with simulations that prepare them meaningfully for the future of our economy, academia, and the world at large.