With the outbreak of the coronavirus in China and its spreading to other locations outside China, we are seeing both public and international schools closing in Asia. The response to the SARS epidemic in 2003 was similar. At that time I was the instructional technologist for the Upper Primary of the Hong Kong International School (HKIS). I vividly remember the sense of despair and anxiety in our staff trying to make the decision whether to stay in Hong Kong or travel to their home countries. Our parents were desperate for information, especially about how to provide stability and emotional support for their children.

Moving to the present day, I did some reflection this past week about the needs of the students, parents, and staff if our international school might need to close to then go virtual. I am also seeing other folks thinking about virtual school and posting some helpful guidance on tools and platforms that schools can leverage when going virtual. Our menu of tools at HKIS in 2003 was very limited but our focus was not on the technology. Here is a bit of our story.

Our head of school sent out the announcement that the HKIS would close. Those staff members who had not already left Hong Kong leading up to closure were figuring out their next move. We realized that closing the physical doors to our school was not our only option. We could open virtual school doors to our community. We realized that with the majority of our students being local that many would be holed up and isolated in their apartments and houses for who knew how long. It was also clear that their days would probably be unstructured which would only increase their anxiety and that of their parents.

The idea of going virtual was not much of a sell to our principal Bruce Kelsh. His response was to tell me to form a team and to get started immediately to create our Upper Primary Virtual School. The Middle and High schools jumped on board and we began to make our plans. To learn more about those experiences, here is an article describing the effort and some of the lessons we learned.

Now firmly in the present day thinking about what might happen next with the coronavirus, I am putting together a list of ideas for my elementary school. Here is what I have so far.

Virtual School (VS) Lessons Learned from HKIS During SARS

• Virtual School Leadership Team. Create a leadership team to design the overall plan to then work with and guide the grade-level teams and specialists into implementation. One might not just go with current leadership structures. It depends on what the main responsibilities of the team will be. In our case at HKIS, we needed green hat thinkers who also had experience in using technology. We were a school that used de Bono’s Six Hats thinking approach which could be a helpful framework for our VS leadership and grade-level teams. We also had folks who brought their skills in logistics, communication, facilitation, etc. to the leadership team. Make sure to have a counselor/psychologist on the team to bring the lens of wellness to the discussions and actions.
• Virtual School Plan. The first task of the VS leadership team at HKIS was to construct our VS plan of operations. We began the process by recording lots of questions and “what if’s?” This is where we are fortunate at the ES to have so many facilitators and program developers. Note that the VS plan documentation is an ongoing process. You can get your initial goals, roles, and systems in place. However, your learning, reflecting, and adapting are ongoing as you get feedback from teachers, students, and parents. So be ready to keep your plan up to date with built-in markers to pause, reflect and make changes. All the documentation will obviously pay big dividends down the road if and when you are forced to reopen the virtual school.
• Pedagogy came first– not technology. Our guiding design process at HKIS centered on what we called the Three C’s: Communication, Community, and Content (Interactive). We reviewed the everyday literacy, math, etc. lessons and unit projects (similar to our super units) through the SAMR and TPACK filters looking to create lessons that would have our students easily communicating (and collaborating) with each other and their teachers, building SEL connections (community) while engaging with the interactive content to then move into creating with or without technology. If we are to take a similar approach I would drop the SAMR as it can be confusing for some. A cleaner and simpler approach is Replace, Augment and Transform (RAT). I add “amplify” to augment as we help students share their learning with a greater audience.
• The Instructional Technologist (Instructional Coach for Technology): This is obviously a key role today just as it was back in 2003. I have written a lot about this role with real emphasis that your instructional technologist must be allowed to apply his/her training as an instructional designer and facilitator of the curriculum development process, especially in the case of virtual school. What I have seen happen in the past few years with the growth of more and more educational platforms is that the instructional technologist is in some cases returning to the pre-2000 role of technology coordinator. Back in the day, the tech coordinators were definitely the “tech guys” who were mainly technicians making the computers and printers work. Today I am seeing the instructional technologist not only managing educational platforms and accounts but also being the caretaker of hardware as in iPads, robotics labs, etc. So let your instructional technologist dive into the TPACKing process of guiding teams to work as designers bringing their content, pedagogy, and technology knowledge together to create the lessons and unit projects. If possible, as part of applying individual skill sets in various roles, get your Dreambox, SeeSaw, etc. teacher experts to provide that type of support while their grade-level partners carry more of the curriculum development work. And of course, this designing and creation process is going to be fluid with some getting-started needs that will diminish as teachers feel more comfortable using various technologies.
• Collaboratively develop uniform lessons by grade level teams as opposed to having each teacher go it alone. At HIKS this led to more buy-in from staff feeling the work to be less daunting while benefiting from the more efficient use of time, distributed expertise of teammates, and creativity of teamwork. The leadership team designed protocols and frameworks to help provide a uniform presentation of curriculum and experiences for students. An additional principle was that we tried to break lessons into simpler portions as we obviously did not have the benefit of face-to-face explanations with our students. This leads to thinking about how we do build a system for students to ask questions of each other and their teachers.
• Communication Conduits. Connecting to uniformity for ease of understanding by our stakeholders, we also had protocols for handling information requests, needs for extra social-emotional support, setting good boundaries with parents, etc. The admin team at HKIS had very clear structures on who spoke for the school and when information would go out. This is a larger issue that our admin already has in place but we will need guidelines for parents emailing grade-level teaching teams for information and requests.
• Distributed expertise led to teachers taking on various roles engaging their skill sets as handling the web work, parent communication, liaison with the Virtual School Leadership Team, etc. This approach benefits from having very upfront discussions with team members about their strengths and weaknesses as to where they can best apply their skill sets.
• An added wellness PERMAH benefit at HKIS was that virtual school also connected our teachers who had left with those of us who stayed in Hong Kong. Teachers had more positive emotions due to the relationship building of the grade level teams engaging in creative work leading to flow as well as feelings of achievement and satisfaction of contributing to the well-being of our students and their parents. It was also very evident that giving teachers opportunities to engage their strengths and skills also added to their well-being by connecting to the E and M of PERMAH. Admin provided ongoing emotional and informational update support for staff as well. Moving to the present day, I would introduce the term wellness to our communications while providing a curriculum to help our students and parents better understand how to handle their feelings of fear, anxiety, isolation, etc. that arise in crisis situations. The nature of Positive Psychology is to focus on how to equip ourselves to engage our character strengths within each of the PERMAH pillars to enhance our well-being and thrive. It is important to note that the same efforts must be provided to support staff with their wellness needs as they deal with the isolation that comes from a virtual school. I would recommend that a wellness/self-care curriculum be developed for staff that is offered face-to-face and/or virtually depending on the status of being on campus or not. It is obvious to point that teachers and students get so much energy from being with each other. The loss of energy and potential of experiencing more negative emotions becomes more and more evident with the loss of daily classroom routines and face-to-face contact during the longer virtual school runs. As for the present moment, we already have our PERMAH and Character Strengths lesson idea resources on the web and ready to roll. We can take small steps limiting the language of Positive Psychology and PERMAH by simply using the terms our students know as the value of relationships, the positive feelings that go with accomplishment, and the strengths of being creative and self-understanding for example. One structure to support this process would be to designate a wellness or SEL lead on each of the grade-level teams. This person would work with me to design SEL activities that would be a part of the regular curriculum just like the regular subject areas.
• Self-Management and Study Skills. It goes without saying that students take a leap in their development around self-management skills and the character strength of self-control. Our younger students of course need a great deal of parental supervision while our upper primary students are more self-reliant to some extent. The virtual school puts our students into an entirely different learning environment with limited interaction with their teachers. One support mechanism is to provide lesson(s) to help students construct their daily learning plan (i.e., goals, task listing with time expectations, use of a timer, etc.) that includes breaks from technology with designated wellness breaks. The wellness coach (counselor) could support the effort by creating a website of wellness activities for students, teachers, and parents to draw from. A guiding principle would be to get everyone, including teachers, to take nature breaks several times a day.
• Interdisciplinary Learning. Our specials teachers at HKIS were a big part of the design effort to offer integration and standalone learning opportunities for their content areas. They came up with lots of creative and FUN activities for students to do. The librarian played a key role in providing online resources of databases, reading resources, etc.
• Our Coaching Model. The instructional technologist, the science coordinator, and the librarian led the VS leadership team at HKIS. We are fortunate at the ES to have three coaches, learning support teachers, two counselors, and EAL instructors to help lead and share their areas of expertise collaborating with the VS leadership and the grade-level teams in their design and implementation work.
• Web Resources for Independent Learning. We did build a section of our web presence to house links to online resources for students to explore on their own. We need to remember that our regular curriculum will only take up a portion of our students’ days. The supplemental enrichment resources at HKIS offered self-directed learning opportunities that included inquiry and research. I am reminded that we also had a section for parents for their FAQs which cut down on the need to respond with full explanations to parent emails. Our leadership team would need to decide whether to have one central listing of sites broken down into categories and age-appropriate sections or to have each grade level have its own resources page. Connecting to having roles on the grade level teams, one role can be the curator of web resources. Here is one listing of web resources divided into four themes. There are many other curated lists that we can draw from.
• Social and Emotional Support. Our biggest lesson learned was that through the structures, systems, and connections of VS that we helped our students and their parents feel a part of a community. I cannot stress enough how important this was. One needs to recognize how isolating it was for some of our families who chose not to go out for walks and visits with others. Other parents chose to not be so isolated. As noted in the article, some students who lived close together would congregate at someone’s home for their face-to-face version of school interacting with our VS curriculum. Some parents organized the day into blocks for LA, math, social studies, etc. Note in a couple places in this post that our staff also benefited socially and emotionally with their running of the virtual school which offered routines and ways to engage with the pillars of PERMAH. Do understand that the longer virtual school runs, the more social and emotional support takes precedence over other goals and academic needs. So we should look at every opportunity to have our students interact with each other. The interaction can take place in virtual synchronous morning meetings, sharing photos, recorded audio and video messages, working in teams on projects, and so on. Simply find ways for shared face time! I also would definitely broach the idea going forward to work with staff, students, and families to create some sort of wellness plan using PERMAH and the Character Strengths. Goal-setting within the PERMAH pillars with supportive action steps could be a part of the wellness plan template.
• Social and Emotional Support for Staff. Just as in regular school, the administration needs to be out and about nurturing connections, taking “moral temperatures” and cross-pollinating ideas. The art of active listening through acknowledging, validating, and celebrating more than ever must be taking place as achieving and “stretching” teachers need support with their well-being by school leaders. As mentioned, I would also look to form a wellness support team to come up with self-care and morale-building activities if we are able to work from school. We could definitely put together a menu of “afterschool activities” for staff if we get to work from school. We also need to draw on the expertise of the counselors/psychologist and outside-of-the-school mental health providers to provide information about mental health and how and where to get support, if needed.
• Parent Buy-In to VS and Their Role as Teachers. This happened naturally but I would make it more intentional in our effort. We could possibly put a parenting/teaching set of guidelines together. We would also need to do the same for nannies if the parents are going to work. And note that some families will choose not to participate and/or be sporadic with their engagement.
• Delivery Tools and Platforms. The intent of this write-up is to not list the delivery tools we used at HKIS. There are so many good ones to choose from now. What I would think about is how to package research assignments and super unit projects. One approach would be to use some adaptation of WebQuests especially when inquiry is involved. To the point of keeping the directions simple and clear, it makes sense to think of formatting the learning in some sort of learning module for “one-stop learning”. While WebQuests have been around for over 20 years, they check a lot of boxes for clear task and rubric identification, collaboration through roles, inquiry, higher-level thinking skills, and learning project creation. They also make the research process simpler by providing a listing of resource sites within the learning module. And regarding tools and platforms, it is helpful to have either a central or by-grade-level virtual school toolbox for students and parents to access tutorials for all the technologies. Also, make sure to have one central posting place for assignments whether on a weekly or bimonthly timeline. In using a variety of tools for different purposes such as creation, curation, collaboration, and/or communication (i.e., Information and Communication Skills- ICL), it can become confusing for students and parents to know exactly what is expected and when it is due. So make sure to have the central assignment place for easy reference whether it is in your LMS. Google Docs or a website.
• Cross-Pollination. Just as in regular school, we had pockets of innovation taking place within grade-level teams. It was my good fortune to watch creative teachers find ways to design learning activities that supported our “Three C’s” approach while I also was able to share their ideas with the other teams. As mentioned, at the ES we have a great many coaches and specialists who can bring their skills to each team while picking up innovative approaches to carry and diffuse out into our learning community. It made sense for us at HKIS to start slowly helping to guide our students into learning virtually. But as our students got the hang of things so did we which led to richer and deeper learning experiences.
• Opportunity. Our experience during SARS at HKIS was difficult at times. Thankfully there were no cases of illness within our community. Instead of allowing hysteria and troubling emotions to rule our thoughts, our community like many when facing challenges, worked together to make the most of the moment to shine and to excel. Disruption and challenge definitely can provide opportunities to reflect and engage our growth mindsets to then charge forward. This was the case for some of our teachers who tended towards a bit of a static mindset. I can still see several of their faces beaming at what they accomplished especially when previously being reticent in using technology. Many of our students made leaps in their development becoming more self-driven and independent. Our early adopters who sometimes did not get recognition for their creativity and innovation really shined when given the opportunity to showcase their ideas.
• Reentry and Reflection. Build opportunities for students and staff to reflect on their experiences during virtual school. There is of course the social-emotional processing that needs to take place. The very positive personal growth also deserves time and attention. Back to the theme of disruption, we learned that with positive attitudes and growth mindsets students and staff found ways to engage their character strengths and skill sets to experience real personal growth.
• Transferability. We learned a lot about differentiation through innovative pedagogy delivered via technology when not able to provide face-to-face instruction. Many of our quiet students found their voice thus growing their confidence by fully engaging in virtual learning. Some of our teachers found ways to continue aspects of their online content and activity work thus moving into more blended instruction during regular school.
• Co-Curricular Learning. After-school activities were a major part of the learning taking place at HKIS. From orchestra to sports to crafts, you name it, we had teachers and contractors providing engaging learning opportunities after school for our students. I cannot remember if we offered some of the activities virtually during SARS but I can say I would definitely try to find a way to include them in some fashion in the present circumstances. Disruption leads to opportunity so I can see after-school providers finding ways to virtually connect with students to run their activities and keep their businesses afloat. As noted, the SEL needs of students to be connected with one another and to participate in energy-providing activities that lead them to engage their Character Strengths (i.e., creativity, curiosity, social intelligence, etc.) means that we really should think about how we can deliver the benefits that co-curricular learning offers.

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After virtual school at HKIS, we started running an annual practice week of virtual school in which all members of our community practiced virtual learning. Here are some questions that came up in one of our initial planning meetings. There is some overlap with what is covered earlier in this write-up but some of the questions offer new insights.

•     What will your online assignments/lessons look like?
•     How will they support what you normally would be covering in class?
•     How will they involve cooperative learning?
•     How will they be project or problem or inquiry-based?
•     How will you avoid fluff work?
•     How can multimedia teacher-created lessons engage students more than static worksheet ones?
•     How will some assignments involve doing research that the student can access online?
•     How do we continue our normal curriculum?
•     How will you build community?
•     How will you support one another?
•     What would our enduring understandings be if we should close down?
•     How would we reach those understandings through the curriculum?
•     Who would be responsible for what areas?
•     Then what technology will support what we want to do?
•     And how can the TAs help us?

Image Source: Learning & Leading with Technology. Volume 32. Number 8.