Lessons Learned

Instructional Technology - International Education - Wellness

Category: Learning (page 1 of 15)

Shifting from PD to Personalized Learning

This past week I listened to Dan Taylor and John Mikton’s  The International Schools Podcast, in which John interviewed my old podcasting partner Jeff Utecht and his current podcasting partner Tricia Friedman. Listen to the episode as they cover various interesting issues, including professional development (PD). Jeff and Tricia are consultants and PD providers, so they shared many helpful insights on this topic.

What caught my attention was when Jeff noted that we need to move away from the term “professional” development and toward “personal learning.” His statement reminded me of our Ed Tech Co-Op podcast’s episode entitled “Personalizing PD” in 2015. Jeff and I discussed multiple pathways to support educators’ professional learning. Our big takeaway was, yes, build in a system for individualized and personalized learning not just around professional learning but also around personal non-job focused learning. It really was a good and helpful episode, if you ask me, so take a listen. What we said in 2015 is even more relevant today when the pandemic’s conventional practice of bringing in consultants for face-to-face learning is limited.

I wrote Jeff after listening to the podcast, saying that I have no idea where the field of professional development is today. Still, I had a couple brain-pops that might help educators think about their learning. First, we know the term “personalized learning” has been a buzzword for some years regarding student learning. I have covered this topic in my blog on a few occasions. I also developed a section on the Web Resources for Learning website dedicated to helping students design what I call their personal learning system. On that resource page, I mention that educators also develop their own personal learning systems. I think educators would see the connection when one says the term professional learning network or PLN.

Network means being connected to resources and others, while system means how to make the connections and on what topics. So as students might have subject area, information gathering, curation, etc., categories of their Personal Learning System, educators also do the same with their PLNs. An elementary teacher’s “system” might cover subject areas, instructional methods, assessment techniques, etc., along with the tools to reach out to resources and thought leaders while also sending the teacher’s ideas to others in the network. Many tools are social networking but can also include web resource sites, podcasts, blogs, and other information sources that can be curated.

Helping teachers see their learning as networked and part of a system might help them visualize whether they have a PLN or not; they might want to shift from thinking that their school is the leading provider of their professional learning. And as Jeff and I spoke about on the podcast, we need to move away from siloing our learning into professional versus personal. Many folks have their social networking and information resource providers mixing in professional and individual learning. I find that I get a lot of ideas around education by reading and listening to thought leaders who are not educators.

Another idea is to think about how you learn. We discuss how students learn, including which modalities might help support differentiation. We also talk a lot about student agency, including helping students better understand how they learn. So as is often the case, we can apply what we are doing with students to ourselves. 🙂 Look to enhance your agency by thinking about the variety of ways you learn as you look to develop or recalibrate your PLN. I am reminded of a blog post I wrote entitled “How Do Adults Learn?“. It might provide some insights as it was based on current research.

So if you have a PLN, you might have reached out to your instructional coaches, librarian, and possibly some other teachers, significantly those fluent with social networking tools, to help you build your network. If you don’t have a PLN and want to further personalize your learning, you might want to reach out to these folks for content and connection tools to get you started.

Speaking of Jeff, Tricia, John, and Dan, you really should look to follow them on Twitter and/or other networking tools where they are present to add them to your PLN.

Photo by Clint Adair on Unsplash

 

VS – Supporting Social and Emotional Needs

I reached out to our ES teaching teams about the idea of having SEL/Wellness Lead teachers at each of our grade levels who work to integrate social and emotional activities into the weekly planners. I created a Google Doc to share and cross-pollinate the strategies the teams already formulated. Here is the list from our first round of sharing their activities.

SEL & Health (Wellness) Activities for Virtual School

Please populate this page with activities that you are offering your students to help support their social and emotional needs as well as health/fitness. And please list any activities that help connect your students to each other and to you. Thanks!

Note: If you have any students leaving SSIS, please share our Transition Workbook with the parents. It would also be helpful if you could arrange a way for your students to say goodbye. Rob’s students created a goodbye video that they shared with a student who was leaving. We will also look at providing activities to help students deal with closure if we stay virtual through the end of the school year.

EC> 

K>

  • Lots of social and emotional read-alouds, some from our home collection and some from Epic or Vooks. Each teacher takes a turn posting a read-aloud each day of the school week.
  • We have a huge collection of Todd Parr’s books and read those often.
  • We also use Go Noodle for mindfulness and breathing activities as well as just general fun!
  • From time to time we send out personal video messages to individual children and their families via Seesaw to check in and say hello.
  • The team is currently meeting daily with individual students on Google Meets as well as in small groups depending on the need. We have begun a weekly class party every Friday.
  • We will be trialing a whole class morning meeting next Monday and potentially continuing until the end of the year.
  • We sent a google form for parents to complete; asking specific questions about what would be helpful and supportive for them during this time. We asked for feedback about virtual school, what’s working, what isn’t, etc.
  • We have begun to open up our Monday morning Google Meet to parents only. This is a time for them to ask us questions or get advice about their child’s learning and how they are engaging with Virtual School.
  • For two weeks (prior to Spring Break) each teacher shared a wellness post with KG students. We intentionally focused on mental health and wellness by sharing our own ideas and practices at home. One day we might focus on being with our pets, making art, going out in nature, doing yoga, or spending time with family. We made a video and posted it to each child’s Seesaw account.
  •  We’ve just launched an optional weekly activity where children get to be the teachers and share something with their classmates that they want to teach. It is their choice to share whatever they’d like.
  • We encourage play, relaxation, and balance in life through our own actions online and the way we interact with the children and their families virtually.
  • Take virtual field trips together to build community. You can search and find many. Here is one list.
  • Look to ask the parents what they are doing to nurture both (when possible) physical and digital connection time for their children with their friends.


G1> 

  • Wellness Wonders💖~ Every day, we send out a wellness activity via SeeSaw (embedded into Book Creator) in video form (videos are housed here).  The wellness tasks are optional as well as sharing them on Flipgrid.
  • Every two weeks, we compile highlights of our virtual learning and put them together in video celebrations.
  • Take virtual field trips together to build community. You can search and find many. Here is one list.
  • Look to ask the parents what they are doing to nurture both (when possible) physical and digital connection time for their children with their friends.

 

G2> 

  • Monday: All class Google Meet where we go through a meeting slide show that has a “to do” list for the day, a greeting, a share and a body break activity, as well as a warm message from the teachers.
  • Tues-Friday these Morning Meeting slide shows are delivered to students to start their day but they go through them on their own.
  • Tues-Fri students receive two Google Meet lessons with their teacher as well as an opportunity for other feedback and question meetings if desired.
  • Friday: Each class holds a community circle time Google Meet. Students have an opportunity to share something from the week they are proud of, enjoyed, etc., or something they are looking forward to on the weekend.
  • Take virtual field trips together to build community. You can search and find many. Here is one list.
  • Look to ask the parents what they are doing to nurture both (when possible) physical and digital connection time for their children with their friends.
  • Look to build into the weekly planner the assignment of physically (when it is allowed) and digitally getting together with friends on a daily basis with friends.

 

G3> 

  • Take virtual field trips together to build community. You can search and find many. Here is one list.
  • We did the Self-love and gratitude challenges from this website before the Spring Break. – https://biglifejournal.com/.
  • Daily Google Meets with all students each morning to start the day, and deal with any misconceptions or questions about activities.
  • Friday’s whole class Google Meet party.
  • Friday group Google meet with their friends.
  • Growth Mindset 5-day challenge – here
  • Sharing of something they did that week, that they are proud of e.g. a craft, drawing, lego, planting a seed, etc. This happens during our Google Meets party on Friday.
  • Take virtual field trips together to build community. You can search and find many. Here is one list.
  • Look to build into the weekly planner the assignment of physically (when it is allowed) and digitally getting together with friends on a daily basis with friends.

 

G4> 

  • Daily full class meetings on Google Meet
  • Random Acts of Kindness (see worksheet below) and listing of 45 acts. The goal is to color in the entire 8 or so activities for the week.
  • Individual and small group check-ins on Google Meet
  • Grade-wide fun Kahoot games on Google Meet each week.
  • “Hobby Week”, “Gratitude Week”, “Random Acts of Kindness Week”, “Poetry Week”, “GoNoodle Week”
  • Take virtual field trips together to build community. You can search and find many. Here is one list.
  • Look to build into the weekly planner the assignment of physically (when it is allowed) and digitally getting together with friends on a daily basis with friends.

 

G5>

  • Daily classroom Google MEETS with the entire class at least once per week, some classrooms do this on a daily basis set at the same time for community-building.
      • students share a rose and a thorn
      • Students share highlights/experiences from their day, weekend, vacation, etc.
      • Students share something they are grateful for
      • Share videos of something funny or inspirational
      • Best practices – i.e., shares re: how students are being successful in VS
  • Weekly themes for which students provide evidence via shares (FlipGrid, etc.).
      • @Grade 4 has been doing some great stuff and gave us some ideas!!
      • Week 1 – student hobbies – Flipgrid share
      • Week 2 – examples of how students are helping others, etc. – Seesaw post
      • Week 3 – healthy eating – provide evidence of – Seesaw post
      • Week 4 – Game week – what games are you playing at home?
      • Ref – Go Noodle for activity ideas
      • Kahoot games were played with the class to have fun with trivia
      • Short videos shared across classes i.e. do cartwheels this week
  • TEAM ANTICS
    • We try to start every team meeting with a joke (supplied by — most of the time)
  • Take virtual field trips together to build community. You can search and find many. Here is one list.
  • Look to build into the weekly planner the assignment of physically (when it is allowed) and digitally getting together with friends on a daily basis with friends.

 

  • Feelings (A series of lessons that I am doing with the grade level to support the students and their transition to MS.)
    • Feelings (lessons 1-3)
      • How to adapt to new school situations
      • Responding to changes in our lives
      • Anxiety about the transition to MS
    • Relationships (Strengths of kindness and social intelligence)
      • Friendships
    • Personal (Strengths of pro-activity and self-control)
      • Self Management
    • What’s coming (layout of what to expect in MS)

VS – Coming Out the Other Side

A Hybrid Approach

What will our world be like coming out the other side of the COVID-19 crisis? At every level from the planet as a whole to individual nations to communities to individuals, this is the question we are starting to ponder. At the moment we cannot really start to see the picture until we get some more data on the processes that nations might follow in trying to take the initial steps out of lockdown life. It looks like China will be our first model to learn from.

Looking specifically at education, what are the pathways forward first in reopening and then moving into sustainable delivery of services at the start of the next school year? An obvious adaptation is that schools must be prepared for a future of providing virtual schooling. This is something we bought into fully at HKIS when we reopened after SARS. Each year we would run a week of practice virtual school in which teachers moved their instructions and learning materials fully online.

Yet there is more to the picture than being either fully opened or virtual. There is an in-between hybrid approach that schools could be providing. Looking specifically at international schools in August, there is the possibility that some parents simply are not going to want the health of their children to be at risk by sending them to regular school if schools do in fact open normally. There is also the case of families and staff who cannot return due to visa and/or lockdown restrictions.

So what does this mean? It could be that some international schools adapt to this stakeholder group by offering ongoing virtual school. Without going too in-depth on this, we need to look at the possibility for elementary schools, for example, to have at least one teacher at each grade level who would be the virtual school teacher. In discussing this with a colleague we concluded that it is just too much to expect teachers to manage their regular classes all day to then facilitate the learning of virtual students.

The specialist teachers from PE to the arts to the librarian also would be providing instruction. But there are not enough of them in my school for example to designate some of them as full-time virtual teachers. This challenge will need some thought. Perhaps some international schools might share virtual specialists?

Another hybrid possibility is with the students who are flourishing during virtual school who really benefit from having more control over the place, pace, and path which many identify with personalized learning. These self-reliant and independent students are also sometimes the more quiet students who find a voice in blended and virtual learning environments. Perhaps schools might offer a pathway for these students that involves virtual learning of core subjects with their coming to campus for the arts and PE classes, life skills, and afterschool co-curricular learning opportunities.

Another angle on this hybrid model is that it allows schools to offer more flexibility and a broader offering of services, especially in the competitive world of international education. We are hearing stories of lower-tiered international schools that have been cutting wages of staff leading to low morale and/or dealing with parent groups unhappy with their virtual school offerings. Those schools in a capitalist market should see fewer applications for the coming school year. The stronger schools that provide quality virtual school learning should find more demand for enrollment with the understanding that across the board the lower economy might decrease the overall size of the applicant pool. It will become a reality that some of the local parents will need to move their students to public schools. And there is also the case to be made that some of the lesser schools with lower tuition still might pick up some transfer students from the more established and higher-cost competitors with cost being the primary driver for some parents.

Another possibility is that the schools that offer a dual-track approach offer parents a choice when the potential threat of COVID-19 cases growing occurs. The parents with students in school could move their children into the virtual school track as the school remains open if they are not forced to close by the government.

Lots to think about and there are probably many other permutations as international school leaders look at how they will adapt and compete for students in the coming school year.

The Humanity of Schools

I was talking to a teacher who is moving on to a new international school next year. It is a school that also interested me in reading about their approach to teaching and learning. They call their teachers “designers” which is the term that I have used over the years in describing teachers as architects designing and facilitating learning.

I explained that I will be interested to learn how her school which opens in August will prepare for virtual school. Will they focus on the tools? Will they see pedagogy coming first to be supported by the right tools for the task? But mainly, will they see virtual school preparation being about designing ways to support and connect the humanity that is at the center of our school learning communities? I am intrigued to learn how a community of designers forming a new and vibrant school will respond to the possibility of school closure just as they are opening up for the first time.

We will see.

Not a Normal Start

Getting back to the question of what will things look like for international schools coming out the other side of the pandemic, I am thinking a great many of the stakeholders in schools will not be where they usually are energy-wise at the start of the new school year. The social and emotional toll of going through the loss of normalcy in teachers’ personal and professional lives cannot be ignored. The students and their parents will have gone through the process of changing roles and the fatigue of home isolation and seemingly never-ending virtual school.  The emotional piggy banks for so many are low at this point with big questions of what summer travel will look like if it takes place at all.

A parallel storage area of sorts is our capacity to pump out adrenaline that so many have needed to call on, again and again, to work through the challenges of the moment during virtual school. I think of the medical practitioners who drained their energy banks and survived on the adrenaline and last vestiges of their hope and care for others. As we head into the fall and a new school year, our teachers and support staff will, I think, struggle to push through the weariness and fog of mental and emotional fatigue, if lockdowns continue and virtual school is in session.

With the possibility that summer travel could be curtailed due to travel bans, many might not be able to return to their home countries to be with their loved ones. They will also miss out on their normal summer recharging rituals (e.g. going to the beach cottage, attending baseball games, special summertime meals, etc.). The effect of so much loss will be deep.

This makes me feel that international school leaders need to take a very realistic look at their expectations for the start of the new school year. What comes to mind is the need for a huge focus on the normal class community building that occurs with the start of the school year. Emphasis needs to be placed on doing activities that are fun and energizing that help build bonds of connection between students and teachers. I can see the need for taking on fewer academic learning outcomes building in more time for students to work on tasks with depth that helps build their confidence and connection with others.

The reality is that the coronavirus might return in full strength in the fall. With this in mind, we need to be very intentional about recharging everyone’s batteries which will probably be lower than normal coming in. A focus on wellness will need to be front and center going forward which can be supported by having a wellness focus group come together to design both short and long term small initiatives to help design a “wellness toolkit” for individuals, teams and the community. A main tool of the wellness toolbox can be creating and implementing personal wellness plans. The plans can be based on engaging the character strengths within the PERMAH pillars. Staff members could find partners to coach each other in following their wellness plans. A full menu of self-care strategies should be put together with some designated for the individual to provide for him/herself and others provided by the school (e.g., gym memberships, on-campus yoga, and fitness providers, flexible virtual teaching from home or school, ongoing personal wellness PD, etc). And of course, there should be a focus on team wellness with support strategies in place.

An additional support effort can be offered by counselors in partnership with whoever manages the professional learning at one’s school. I can go on and on about “personalizing PD” away from the old sit and git one size fits all but I won’t as we covered it a few times in my old podcasts. The bottom line is wearing my instructional technology cap would be to design a user needs assessment mechanism as in surveys for the team meeting check-ins by admin and counselors to having wellness partners taking each other’s “well-being temperatures” especially around mental health. From this data and that of individuals’ knowledge of Positive Psychology, a menu of learning and self-care opportunities could be developed for face-to-face and online truly personalized for individuals’ needs.

This preparation and ongoing efforts hopefully can delay and offset to some degree the eventual fatigue that we have seen arise these past few months of virtual school. I can see the normal week of PD for returning and new staff focusing less on curriculum and logistics and more on making time to get people together to have fun and nurture our social connections. I also can definitely see a daily afternoon sporting event for interested players with cheering onlookers. Fun and light games like cornhole, bocce ball, and croquet along with beverages and food should become a mainstay way to end each day.

The need for frequent and transparent communication with parents and staff is more important than ever, especially with low batteries and potentially declining morale. Parent communication is a given these days with schools activating their crisis management plans. Our leadership has one voice and has very clearly communicated messages to parents. Just the simple numbering of the emails is a value-added protocol.

Staff will need to know where things stand with enrollment, travel restrictions, and other factors that can affect their contracts. My experience in Israel during the first Gulf War, in Saudi Arabia with a terrorist attack, and again in Hong Kong during SARS was that the administrative team worked diligently to create and communicate contingency plans so that staff knew where things stood with their contracts and options.

Admin and staff obviously need to be on the same page with a feeling of trust and a realistic understanding of expectations balanced by the individual needs of staff and their families. Flexibility and putting the humanity of the community first need to be the guiding mantra. The last thing a school community needs is a vacuum of information and rigidity which opens the door to rumors and an “us vs them” attitude. 🙁

Learning Support

I continue to be so impressed by the professionalism and dedication of the staff at my school. From the business office to the support staff to the teachers to the administration, I find myself constantly pausing and being thankful that I get to work at such a wonderful school.

The same goes for our students who accepted the challenge of virtual school. They have grown their character strengths around being independent, problem solvers, and hard working. Between the teachers and the students, a lot of wonderful teaching and learning has taken place. Our parents also have been incredible taking on new roles in their homes.

Yet we must face that our students are not learning as well as they would in face-to-face school. With many international schools having large EAL populations where English is not spoken at home, we must face the reality that at the start of the new school year many of the students will have lost ground not only in their language acquisition but probably in some of their subject areas as well as in their social development.

Coming out the other end of the pandemic, what will the start of the new school year look like regarding remediation to bring students up to where they would have been pre-pandemic? And how to balance these academic needs when I just wrote about the importance of SEL and community building? Thankfully I am not an administrator possibly trying to juggle these two outcomes… 🙂

A second factor to think about with international schools is that there will probably be a good amount of turnover of students changing schools. At least in my location, there have been schools that have excelled in providing virtual school while others have brought on the ire of their parents for supposedly not delivering the goods. Something tells me there will be some families trying to move up the hierarchy of schools especially knowing that virtual school could happen again in the coming year.

So how will stronger international schools keep their enrollment up and handle the possible influx of students coming from schools with lesser programs? In speaking to a colleague, one approach would be to possibly have summer school that offers language and other subject learning remediation for new students. This is predicated on the hope that summer school can be taught face to face. If not, we know that virtual schooling cannot match the learning in regular school so a virtual summer bridge program would be limited in its viability.

An additional approach would be to offer EAL standalone homerooms in the elementary division. Our current approach is to mainstream all students with one EAL teacher at each grade level for push-in and some pullout support. But if some schools are bringing in students at lower English levels than they might normally accept, they might need to adapt their program to provide intensive English learning provided by an EAL-trained homeroom teacher at each grade level possibly with the additional support of a dedicated EAL specialist.

As I know very little about the field of language learning, I am doing my usual throwing out a bunch of ideas to think about. 🙂 I would be very interested to hear from administrators and EAL staff as to how they would develop a hybrid program that continues their regular push in EAL support while also offering a pathway for students needing a more full-on English learning program.

Tying things together here, who knows what the new school year will bring. I know that the administrators at my school continue to be proactive as they are looking at multiple contingencies. I am not connected in any way to the managing of our virtual school or involved in planning for the future so please understand that these ideas are my own as I continue to look at challenges as opportunities for innovative and adaptive thinking.

 

Photo Credits:

Tunnel- Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Hands Up- Photo by Jaime Lopes on Unsplash
Car Charging- Photo by Andrew Roberts on Unsplash
Students- Photo by Rachel on Unsplash

Virtual School – Different Types of Communication for Different Needs and Hitting the Pause Button

-Communication-

When you look at any handbook for top priorities in handling a crisis in a school community, the number one priority is to set up clear communication from the head of school to the community.

We are fortunate at my school that our head of school, division principals, and communications team are on top of letting the community know the latest information about virtual school and where things stand with the hopeful reopening. They provide information from the government, strategies to support children studying at home, and health information while also offering reassurance that we are all working together for the benefit of our students and parents.

Our head of school communicates via email and videos. Her videos are especially helpful in making a personal connection while providing a visual image of her leadership in action.  What pops into my head as a history teacher/wellness coach is the voice of President Roosevelt doing his fireside chats. President Roosevelt communicated during the crisis of World War II to bring encouragement, stability, and hope into the lives of the citizens.

With no end in sight for our virtual school and terrible news coming from Europe and North America, I definitely see the need to have our head of school and other leaders provide some sort of fireside chats to our community. We can ask the parents to send in their questions to guide the content of the talks.

Another type of communication in the case of a public health crisis is education for both mental and physical health which we combine under the PERMAH  wellness construct. In the case of my school, the nurse and I take turns posting articles, write-ups, and tips to support the well-being of our staff. We have not opened up the wellness blog to our parents so I hope we can find some way to share needed information with them as well as our students. Something as basic as creating and sharing a video on hand washing which the nurse and I did back at HKIS during SARS is just one way to provide health information to the community.

-Hitting the Pause Button-

While we are fortunate in Vietnam to have limited cases of the coronavirus, we are now in week six of virtual school. Fatigue is setting in for some so it is definitely time to pause, reflect, consolidate and re-calibrate what we are doing and how we will go forward. We are entering a new phase of virtual school with Europe and North America now being engulfed by the spreading wave of the coronavirus.

A few guiding questions for this reflection process could be:

  • What aspects of our efforts are really working well for our student learners? Our parent and nanny facilitators?
  • Which delivery strategies have the greatest return on investment of time and energy with our efforts?
  • Which is offering the lowest return?
  • Are we using technology to meet our pedagogical needs or are we adapting our pedagogy to the tools?
  • Where are our staff, students, and parents regarding their stamina and endurance for the possibility of extended virtual school?
  • We started off with a sprint and we are now in a marathon. Have we adapted? Do we need any course corrections?
  • How intentional are we in making wellness a priority for our community?
  • How are our actions supporting our desire for our collective well-being?
  • What could happen next in Vietnam and in the world that we need to have contingency plans ready for?

One observation for me is that boy howdy we have an incredibly talented and driven group of educators at my school. They dove into the shift from regular to virtual school with a passion to serve their students and their parents. I previously wrote about how I saw several of the PERMAH pillars in action during virtual school at HKIS during SARS. I see the same positive benefits today seventeen later. The wellness benefit of the PERMAH “A for Accomplishment” really stood out back at HKIS and it is the same today.

One big difference between the HKIS virtual school and my current school is that we ran for a month in Hong Kong and now we are in week six not knowing how much longer we will be doing online learning. With no clear end of virtual school in sight, we find ourselves working hard and definitely accomplishing a great deal. But my observation is that we cannot continue to pound away at achievements as a source of energy to support our well-being.

The staff at my school has been pushing forward using lots of energy to the point that it seems like our collective energy reserves are running low. Our normal recharging through face-to-face teaching is obviously missing and we need to acknowledge this.  As we pause and reflect on how we are doing virtual school, I come back to my previous posts and article on the importance of supporting the social-emotional needs of the community. A big lesson learned from HKIS is that the longer virtual school lasted, the more the social and emotional needs of students, staff, and parents became our focus. Back to the present day, it definitely feels like we need to take our collective foot off the gas pedal to find ways to re-energize. One might say that we are in need of an intervention.

As one colleague says, we need to do some “tuning” of our lives to find a balance between our commitments to students, our teaching partners, our parents, our own families, and most importantly ourselves.

Something tells me that educators at the other Asian international schools that closed when we did are experiencing the same revelation. It seems that we need to shift our emphasis from accomplishments to other PERMAH pillars to support our individual and collective well-being. I think the R for Relationships is a good place to revisit while spending time on the character strengths of emotional intelligence and social intelligence.

Photo by Perry Grone on Unsplash

Virtual School Design Team

I mentioned in my Virtual School during SARS post that we formed a leadership team for our virtual school at HKIS that included green hat thinkers. I also wrote about the grade-level teams dividing up the work by the various strengths and talents that the team members presented. While our VS Leadership Team at HKIS did all the organizational, logistics, and curriculum design work, I am now thinking of a new approach to separate leadership and curriculum design into two teams.

Elementary schools have leadership teams made up of administrators, grade-level team leaders, a leader for the specials, possibly a representative for other groups, and of course the instructional coaches. This can add up to a lot of people. While performing their normal duties this works just fine and it can work for running the virtual school with all stakeholders having a voice while receiving information back from the leadership team.

What might be unwieldy is the curriculum collaboration design work that needs a special skill set from its members. This is where a portion of the overall VS Leadership Team could provide the nucleus for a VS Design Team. The VS Design Team not only provides ongoing curriculum development but also works as a skunkworks for longer-term research and program design especially if the virtual school continues over the long term. Additional members would be the teachers who have the strengths of creativity, curiosity, and zest along with a good understanding of using technology effectively. They would need to be especially creative regarding pedagogy. The tech background doesn’t have to be a prerequisite as the instructional technologist can lead out on how to make the instructional strategies viable for virtual delivery. This is where school leaders who really know the talents of their staff can review their profiles to construct the VS Design Team.

The instructional coaches would be the main communicators working with the grade levels and specials teachers. They would be the busy bees gathering the learning outcomes from the teams and bringing that information to the VS Design Team to then do their design work. This would especially be the case for the transdisciplinary units of study.  The team’s work would go into a lesson database (curriculum mapping tool or Google Docs for example) with the coaches returning to the teams to unpack the strategies and fine-tune them for delivery.

The value of this approach is that the VS Design Team would not only come up with delivery approaches that could be used across grade levels but also would cross-pollinate by curating and iterating the ideas that come in from the teams. It is important to note that there must be trust and buy-in from all the teams to hand off some of their design work.  One cannot have the VS Design Team come up with instructional strategies that are then ignored by some teams.

An additional design approach is to nurture the real innovators on staff to let them do mini-pilots playing a bit in their virtual sandboxes. This approach is supported by the School Retool “hacking mindset” approach to redesigning school cultures to be more nimble and innovative.

Source

It is important to remember that the first couple of stages of virtual school mainly deals with setting up systems (i.e., delivery, communication, etc.). The next phase has the teachers in a more comfortable place where creativity and innovation really can come into play as they deliver their math and literacy curricula. The longer virtual school lasts, the more important it is to find ways to strive for helping students move up Bloom’s Taxonomy aiming for concept learning while building in collaboration for learning and for social-emotional support. And the longer virtual school lasts, the more the grade level teaching teams need to teach the units of study. So if your units of study involve inquiry, project, and problem-based learning, look to your VS Design Team to find age-appropriate ways to support these pedagogical approaches.

To balance the big ideas and efforts to try small pilots look to bring in your learning support teachers to fine-tune your design efforts. They specialize in individualization breaking learning down into concrete step-by-step processes. Just as we naturally differentiate for content, process, and product in face-to-face learning, we need to do the same with our virtual instruction. Some students will only need a little explanation while others will need lots of scaffolding, especially when working in teams on project work. Count on your learning support teachers to help with this process.

There is one more member of your VS Design Team- the counselor or as I say, the Wellness Coach. The longer students are away from the normal social-emotional support of being in school with their classmates and teachers, the more they need very intentional sharing of information and strategies to support their well-being. I would add wellness as a subject area for teaching teams to incorporate into their lessons. The Wellness Coach is the person to find out what teams are already doing regarding wellness to then share their activities across grade levels. The Wellness Coach can curate those activities and add new ones to have a central database of lessons to help students learn about their wellness while also providing activities for each of the PERMAH pillars guiding students to engage their character strengths.

One final thought is that we don’t need virtual school to bring innovators together to create, craft, and share powerful instructional and assessment strategies. If our schools are truly innovative learning communities, we of course find ways to nurture and cross-pollinate our ideas also during regular school. 🙂

 

First Image Source

Virtual Elementary School – Looking Back To SARS in Hong Kong

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.

Positive Psychology & Character Strengths Podcasts and TED Talks

Do you listen to podcasts? How about watching TED Talks? Are you interested in Positive Psychology? If so, the following are links to discussions about Positive Psychology. If you are new to podcasts and would like help setting up a podcast app on your phone, please reach out to friends in the know or search for a web tutorial to get you set up to listen and learn.

8 Podcasts on Positive Psychology. The folks at Positive Psychology shared this listing that includes descriptions.

10 Talks on VIA Character Strengths and Virtues

Photo by Juja Han on Unsplash

Wellness: The Umbrella Construct

A Captain Obvious moment here. As we try to package and “sell” our programs to a busy clientele, in this case, teachers and parents, it only makes sense to demonstrate how the program has interrelated purposes that meet multiple learning needs for our students. Thus, when we talk about wellness, we are talking about its umbrella nature of combining under PERMAH several very everyday initiatives that are found in our schools.

The three everyday efforts that come to mind as part of the process of supporting the whole child are social/emotional, (digital) citizenship, and health learning. These are pretty standard areas of concern for schools. However, I wonder how many schools communicate to stakeholders just how interconnected they are.

Let’s start with health which connects directly with the H in PERMAH. There is straightforward physical health. Then there is of course mental health which connects to what we now call “digital health” which also connects to emotional and social regulation which connects to the Positive Emotions and Relationships in PERMAH. Whew, I need to take a connections break. That is a lot of connectivity!

A big part of working to increase one’s well-being and hopefully flourish is to use PERMAH and the character strengths to self-reflect to then take action steps where we need to grow within the PERMAH pillars by engaging various strengths. The process of self-reflection and increased self-understanding connects to the social and emotional regulation that are foundational elements of CASEL’s listing of social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies. The character strengths of kindness, love, self-regulation, and social intelligence directly support the SEL competencies.

How Might An Educational Services Company (ESC) Support International Schools?

What advice would you give an educational services company (ESC) that wants to break into the international school market? When I lived in the U.S., I consulted with a few providers who offered after-school activity programs, so my experience was minimal. But I can put on my instructional technology hat to think as a designer looking at challenges and opportunities to develop some plans moving forward.

I am reminded that the first step to supporting clients in determining their needs. My son Sam adds to this point that the ESC should not look at the client’s needs only within the scope of the services that they can provide. They should be ready to say, “we don’t have the know-how to help you with difficulty, but we can help find someone who does.”

With international schools, it is essential to focus on their mission and values at the center of one’s services. We need to recognize that schools, in general, are conventional places, so starting to make things run better comes first, followed then by helping school leaders feel comfortable with new ideas.

Even progressive-minded parents who want their children to develop their thinking skills want the same experience they had as students. I remember a talk that Daniel Pink gave our staff at one of my schools. He said to be very careful in using words such as “innovative or cutting edge” in describing new programs.

The elephant in the room for some international schools is that their students are so managed and over-scheduled outside of school. Some students miss out on the typical developmental learning opportunities of unstructured play and making independent choices. Having free time and opportunities to become more independent is a problem that some schools are taking on through parent education outreach. I am guessing that the ESC could combine Outward Bound style activities with unstructured times giving students more “real life” experiences. It is a subject that an ESC should seek to learn more about.

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My approach here is to list needs and support strategies for the stakeholder populations of international schools. As stated previously, the first step is determining the stakeholders’ needs to design the programs to meet the needs. The needs will vary depending on factors such as what programs are already offered, locality and school culture (i.e., school mission), and school leadership mindset (i.e., static “That Is The Way We Have Always Done It” vs. a growth and openness to possibilities mindset). The themes of personalization, coaching, and accessibility, as well as self-discovery and personal growth, run through the strategies and constructs.

The following are ideas that I have written or podcasted about that could be developed by an ESC to offer services to their clients. The following strategies and program offerings cut across, in several cases, the student, staff, and parent stakeholder populations.

Resource Websites/Portals: Challenge> Students, teachers, and parents need access to valid information to support their roles as learners, teachers, and parents. Students- Libraries often provide a good listing of databases for general research but too often, students turn to search engines for their schoolwork. Teachers- Many teachers prepare learning modules posted in their school Learning Management System (LMS), so they often look for new resources. Parents- Some international schools have some form or other of a parenting resources web page, but they might still need a consultation to improve them. Another needed resource list for parents is orientation support for the school, community, and country.

ESC Services>

Students- Work with interested staff to build out the current LMS information resources portal for skill and subject-specific content or develop a particular resource website, if needed. An ESC can draw from many web resource sites to connect to the teaching and learning needs of their client schools. My Web Resources for Learning is an example site I did not create for one specific school, so it is a bit general, and some of the links need updating.

Teachers- My Web Resources site has a teacher section that can be used as an example. Connecting to personalization, teachers need specific books, videos, instructional strategies, web resources, etc., to improve their day-to-day teaching and units of study. The ESC either has resource finders on staff or hires independent contractors (think Etsy model). I wrote about this in my Information Brokers blog post.

Parents- Parents don’t always have access to parenting books in their native language, so they need valid information on parenting and other topics such as orientation to a new school and country, school calendars, events, parent workshops, etc. Parents also can be supported by helping them connect.

In the early 2000s, Justin Hardman designed and built a multi-faceted community sharing and learning portal for Hong Kong International School (HKIS). It was called myDragonNet. You can read the article we wrote about to give you an idea of what Justin created. Justin was way ahead of his time with the myDragonNet Learning Management System (LMS) because it provided space in the portal for parents and the greater community to connect. It had a social networking feel, as groups could set up mini-portal within the system. I would like to know whether or not current commercial LMS providers offer modules for community members. So I can see an ESC working with the current LMS to adapt functionality or build a separate portal for parents and community groups. Helping schools design and construct a parent portal would be high on my list of services offered. An added component would be to offer face-to-face and online courses for parents to help them construct their parenting toolkit.

Personal Learning Plan: Challenge> We want our students to be engaged and to take ownership of their learning. However, as students progress through the school divisions, they sometimes become passive and reactive to the high stakes programs like A.P. and I.B. They learn to play the game of school. Thus, how can we give students more agency, engagement, and control over their learning?

In the U.S., students who have documented special needs by law must have an Individualized Education Program (IEP). I have heard of some schools with leaders who realized that all students could benefit from personalized learning plans, creating them for all students.

Teachers- See Personal Teaching System response below, as teachers can benefit from having a professional learning plan to improve their Teaching System. Too often, schools bring in consultant P.D. providers who offer a one-size, sit-and-get delivery experience. Just like their students, teachers deserve a differentiated approach that hopefully involves some individualization.

Parents- The often-used line is that parents don’t receive a how-to parenting manual with the birth of their children. Fortunately, we have many authors and websites that can help us create our parenting toolkit.

ESC Services>

Students- I need help seeing the ESC coming in to help design learning plans for all students for several reasons. But I can see them consulting and coaching, providing a template and menus with learning strategies to draw from. The students should be at the center of the learning plan design process, working with their teachers and parents as coaches to design and follow through on their plans. Each student should have a learning plan as part of their portfolio.

Here are a couple of related blog posts.

Parents- One of the first steps parents can take in designing how they will raise their children is to construct a family mission statement. I can see the ESC providing face-to-face and virtual workshops to give parents the blueprint to work with their children to create their family mission statement. Over time we bring our children into the mission statement development process to redesign our statements with the byproduct of helping orient them to understanding one’s values and how to act with them in mind.

Personal Teaching System: Challenge> Many international schools provide their teachers with ongoing professional learning opportunities. This doesn’t sound like a problem. The difficulty can be with teachers who feel overwhelmed with instructional strategies, assessment techniques, etc. In reality, good teachers develop their personal “teaching toolkit” to design and deliver learning experiences for their students. Teachers choose from approaches such as Project-based, Problem-based, and Inquiry while creating activities that help differentiate the content, process, and products for flexible grouping of students. Fortunate young teachers have mentors and Personal Learning Communities (PLC) in their schools and Professional Learning Networks (PLN) that also help grow their teaching system.

ESC Services>

Teachers- I wrote about this topic in a blog post where I noted a place for consultancy companies to be like an information broker but for finding thought leaders and practitioners for teachers to follow via Twitter, blogs, podcasts, and other conduits to improve their teaching. An ESC could provide mentoring and coaching in person and virtually, starting a network of retired teachers interested in coaching teachers new to the profession. As mentioned earlier, I don’t think bringing in consultants to deliver a one size fits all P.D. experience is as effective as guiding teachers to personalize their P.D. by giving them a menu of podcasters, bloggers, authors, and other experts to include in their Personal and Professional Learning Network (PLN). When you add in the process of being coached to develop a learning plan with goals and activities, our teachers take ownership of their P.D. which then has more follow-through in the classroom. Here is our Edtech Co-Op podcast show on the topic of personalizing P.D.

Personal Life Plan: Challenge> Children and adults face an information-overloaded world with ever-increasing expectations for performance in school and at work. This leads to growing anxiety levels and declining well-being in our populations. Students and Teachers- The overlapping with Personal Learning Plan and having a Life Plan seems obvious. We don’t just plan for and learn at school. We learn for life, so a pathway forward is helpful.

ESC Services>

Students- As with the Personal Learning Plan, the ESC would work as consults and coaches to help schools design and implement this program. The Personal Life Plan would encompass the whole child with sections dedicated to life skills, character development, wellness to include physical and mental well-being, etc. In other words, please look at the Positive Education model’s six pillars and supporting character strengths in designing the plan template for your students. A possible helpful connection would be to design a process for students to create their mission statements with the learning plan providing actionable strategies to living the mission statement values.

This is where the coaching services come into play. I can see an ESC, especially in M.S. and H.S., providing one-to-one life coaching services for students. In the Elementary School, the ESC consultants could partner with the school counselor (life coach) and the teachers to develop a robust wellness program. Looking at the student’s physical, intellectual, emotional, and social needs, the students could use several learning systems (e.g., portfolio, personal planner) along with goal-setting to map out their plan to be well and to thrive. Here are a few blog posts on wellness and the counselor as a life coach.

Teachers- I can see the ESC providing life coaches to help teachers design and implement individual wellness plans, including writing individual and family mission statements.

Personal Learning System: Challenge> Back to the stressful and information-overloaded world we live in, students, teachers, and parents can benefit from a framework that harnesses technology and learning hacks to support their learning.

ESC Services>

Students, Teachers, and Parents- With technology being so intrusive into our lives and, at times, managing us, I think an ESC could work with instructional coaches and teachers to help students manage the technology to support and enrich their learning. I write a lot about this on the Personal Learning System page of  Web Resources for Learning. I can see the ESC offering workshops for teachers and parents and coaching services to help them find the apps, websites, and other resources to be more efficient and productive and hopefully more “digitally” well in their lives. The ESC could offer online courses at the parent portal not just for developing a learning system but also for other needs as requested by the parents.

There is an overlap with technology in life planning, life coaching, and the personal learning system. The focus is using technology to enhance lives which means developing a technology/media use plan that supports balanced living and well-being.

The themes of personalization, coaching, and providing web-based resources run through these programs in some form or another. Schools have been working on “personalized learning” for some time, primarily as it supports individualization and differentiation while also connecting to inquiry and student agency. Teachers and instructional coaches work as designers who coach students to own and guide much of their learning. It is similar in the adult world with life coaches.

While living outside Washington, DC, I spoke to many driven, on-top-of-their-game people. I noticed that several of them had a personal chef, a financial coach, a fitness coach, a life coach, etc. My experience with international communities is similar in that I meet many very driven people. Sometimes people who are busy and have the funds want to be as efficient and productive in covering their needs as possible while working towards actualization with their personal growth. Coaching brings expertise into their lives. It is an excellent opportunity for educational services companies. Thus, international schools should see how they might adapt to provide the coaching model in how they support their stakeholders. 

Offer Afterschool Activities (ASA)- 

While this post aims at what an ESC can offer international schools, it is also the case that schools can go in-house, hire co-coordinators and build their programs as in after-school programs. This is what schools do. Hopefully, these ideas, especially on ASAs, make sense for school leaders as I believe that ASAs offer a massive opportunity for international schools further to meet the learning needs of their students and parents while supporting the school’s mission.

My first advice to an ESC with after-school activities is to see what some of the big dogs of Asian international schools are offering. This doesn’t mean you are going to find groundbreaking approaches. I see a massive opportunity to bring fresh eyes and some unconventional thinking to view how international schools do after-school activities. A couple of starting points in rethinking after-school programs would be looking at the student’s needs and interests and the school’s mission. We then work backward as designers to develop an overall plan while simultaneously piloting some classes to gather data in developing our blueprint. Here is what I found for Hong Kong International School.

Thinking beyond elementary school, an ESC can also look to Middle and High schools to offer skill-based after-school enrichment and mentoring for student-led clubs. Here is a listing at the Shanghai American School offering 100+ clubs for their students. While many of those clubs are student-initiated and student-managed, as they should be, I see lower-level international schools needing consultation and coaching to offer clubs connected to the school’s mission and student interest. They also, at times, will need outside expertise for mentoring clubs, especially ones looking for community outreach and real-life experiences. And something tells me that some schools need athletic coaches as well.

I could see when developmentally applicable to offer “junior versions” of M.S. clubs, as David Perkins says of activities that work for older students and can be redesigned for younger students.

One challenge for elementary schools is asking teachers, after long days of teaching to offer after-school classes. I am still determining where the big schools are in making teachers teach after-school classes, but I do remember seeing lots of outside contractors coming into the Upper Primary at the end of each day when I was at HKIS. I have a few ideas listed below that can take after-school teaching classes off our teachers’ plates.

When I consulted a couple of years ago with an ESC specializing in after-school classes, we spoke about developing and documenting their curriculum so that new teachers could walk in and access the web-hosted lessons. Of course, this only applied to some classes like instrumental music or upper-level painting, but it could work for most lighter content offerings. This also meant that the Educational Services Company was independent of their teachers’ individual interests and talents.

With the curriculum ready for new teachers, I can see international schools supporting their teaching assistants to teach the after-school classes to earn extra pay. Here is an example of a web-hosted class that I started that could be taught by someone other than myself.

One category of offerings could be to offer classes to prepare teams for international enrichment competitions such as Future Problem SolversOdyssey of the Mind, etc. One can offer standalone classes built around themes such as peace and reconciliation (i.e., The World Peace Game, speaking and presentation skills (i.e., perhaps a student version of Toastmasters that includes ICL presentation literacies, etc.), and of course, all the possibilities that come with STEAM. There are also a lot of individual competitions that mentoring could support students to compete in.

A second idea that the owner of the ECS and I spoke about was to offer a series of classes in a discipline in that students would earn badges toward certification. Here is an example of what I called The Digital Scholars Program, which covers study skills, (digital) citizenship, and some digital literacy skills. Another example could be certification in wellness following the PERMAH model, including the “H” for health and the Positive Education approach to strengths education.

The third idea is that once the classes are created and taught face to face, then think about offering them in a blended fashion and possibly later in virtual form for students outside one’s international school. This takes me back to a meeting a long time ago at HKIS when the instructional technologists were meeting and talking about possibilities. We had come off the successful running of virtual school during SARS. We noted that the HKIS brand was solid and worth expanding. This led us to think about how the school might start offering online courses for students outside of HKIS.

The fourth idea is to work with one’s PTA and counseling staff to design and teach classes for parents. Helping busy parents expand their parenting toolkit already happens in many international schools, with counselors teaching parent workshops and PTAs bringing in guest speakers. The next step is a needs assessment to design a curriculum for the workshops. Whether they are offered during regular school hours or after school is okay, but marketing them as adult ASAs is another way to connect with parents. And just as for the students, it would be a bonus to offer them in blended and virtual fashion for parents who cannot attend face-to-face classes. And who knows, the ESC offers more leisure-oriented classes such as cooking, fitness, etc. This connects to the life coaching and wellness theme mentioned earlier. Check out my blog post on creating a parent portal for more information on this topic.

And then there are “academies.” Academies are where some overworked and over-managed international students go at the end of the school day to study languages, math, test prep, etc. Students start attending academies early in elementary school and continue through high school. I wonder if this situation occurs in international schools worldwide, but it is prevalent in Asia.

I won’t get into the politics and parenting of sending students to academies. Still, I would like to know what they would look like if offered on the international school campus. The optics might be wrong, especially with schools that try to get families to let their children go home after school to play and rest before they do their homework. I wonder if school-based academies offer school leaders opportunities to improve the content and delivery while working with families to think about decreasing the time their children spend in classes. Academies could be a place for supporting all the personalized support strategies listed in this post, including tutoring. Coaches at the academy could facilitate skill-building in their students across several life categories, including character strengths, wellness, and communication skills, to name a few possibilities.

This is an area where the ESC could advise and run the academies for the school, making sure to connect to the school’s mission and values.

One of the providers I worked with in the U.S. ran summer camps at schools and parks all around the Washington, DC, area. I can see an ESC doing the same for their international client schools, not just in the summer but also during the long winter break for families that are not traveling.

Offer Blended to Virtual Delivery Support

Blended learning is becoming more and more the norm in schools with the growth of Learning Management Systems with less time spent in class providing direct instruction. Many international schools have the personnel and systems to support blended learning. But something tells me that some schools have the tech infrastructure, but they need guidance to leverage it to deliver the opportunities that blended learning can provide. Educational services companies could provide the needed expertise in this area.

One big lesson that we learned at HKIS was that providing blended learning is the first step towards being equipped to handle a school crisis that leads to school closure. I see an ESC providing schools the know-how to fully develop their crisis plan and prepare the school to go virtual in case of closure.

Offer Administration Support

I am listing this stakeholder group because they have so much to do in their jobs, especially around planning, accreditation, local regulations, budgets, etc. With so much to do operationally, some schools might need the expertise and outsourcing that educational services companies can provide to support new initiatives and program management. Here are a few examples of standard programs and processes that some schools might need support to manage.

  • professional learning opportunities for staff
  • curriculum development and mapping
  • school crisis management plan development and implementation
  • policy and procedure documentation
  • change management

School leaders already naturally turn to the world of consultants. Educational services companies are consultants, yes, but there are not many who offer a wide array of expertise. I would like to know if enterprising ESCs offer a broker service giving their school clients menus of specialized consultant options with their backgrounds, costs, etc., to help decide who to hire.

In Conclusion-

I enjoy reading business articles and books. I especially enjoy listening to podcasts with interviews of thought leaders. Something tells me that educational service companies led by business and education minds offer their client schools attractive opportunities to support all their stakeholder populations.

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Personalized Student Planner to Support Learning and Wellness

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I have previously written about various learning delivery systems (LMSs, portfolios, blogs, WebQuests, etc.). Today, as I wrap my brain around how we will eventually weave our wellness program into the curriculum and fabric of my school, another delivery system comes to mind- the student planner.

As I have not been a classroom teacher for quite some time, I am unfamiliar with what present-day student planners look like and how schools use them beyond the conventional use of writing down assignments.

I searched for digital examples of planners but did not find much more than calendars with to-do lists and some goal-setting sections. When I searched for images, I came up with more. For example, the following image captures my ideas of embedding study skills into the planner.

 

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The photo below gives another idea of helping students with their self-understanding. The inclusion of learning instruments infers the idea of students having a learning toolkit that connects to my Personal Learning System(PLS) blog posts and the PLS section of Web Resources for Learning.

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I don’t want to embarrass myself too much with my lack of knowledge around planners with you, the reader, saying, “David, your ideas have been in use for 20 years!”. Thus, I will offer a few broad ideas, followed by further research on how schools support learning with student planners. I would love to have readers use the comment tool to post how their schools use planners beyond calendars, to-do lists, and homework recordings. 🙂

So my big, and I am sure the old idea, is to put on a designer cap to use the planner to support learning school-wide or divisional initiatives and programs. Examples are the school mission and values, life skills (i.e., wellness, SEL, Habits of Mind, etc.), study skills, Information and Communication Literacies (ICL), field trip support, etc. With many schools providing student portfolios, one may leave the traditional curriculum scaffolding to the portfolios and the LMS. This could provide the usual structure of question prompts for learning reflection, learning goals, resource links, whole units as learning modules, WebQuests, etc.

A second big and probably not doable idea would be to make the planners personal- to give students some choice in the design and content. Form a design team to outline the sections of the planner with clear connections to the initiatives, programs, themes, skills, etc., that the staff wants to promote. The next step would be to differentiate by giving students a choice over design features such as color, theme, layout, and other format aspects. The customization continues around the themes, skills, etc., where students can have their interests (talk about personalized learning!) and guide them through adding more content pages on topics that interest them in their learning. 

An example could be the Character Lab strengths and overall wellness, with students having a basic FYI for each strength with a choice to add more in-depth content with more pages. Health outside of school, regarding diet, sleep, getting outdoors, physical activities, etc., would be high on my list to help students build routines and healthy habits. There also could be a planner section dedicated to learning outside of school with listings on how to volunteer, apply for a job, design family outings, etc.

I have been working with a high school student to design a wellness app with modules for PERMAH, Character Strengths, goal-setting, etc. You will need to differentiate between your wellness app and the wellness aspect of your planner if your school does both. 🙂

Yes, one reason for the improbability of this endeavor is the time, knowledge, and money it would take. This is where I wonder if any companies make student planners who are already or thinking about going into the growing personalization market. If you can go online to customize your sneakers, a company can work with a school to create a website with the desired format and content choices for students to log into and design their planners. This sort of gets at my idea of teachers hiring an “information broker” to gather content, lesson ideas, and resources to design their units of study.

The education market can be lucrative, with companies like SeeSaw for portfolios and SchoolBuddy for afterschool activity management finding their niches. So there may be companies out there moving into the personal planner market. Adding to the customization would be offering both a paper and app version of the planner for further individualization.

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