Lessons Learned

Page 13 of 47

Virtual School Handbook – Post #1

Documentation and Cross-Pollination

We are now at the end of our seventh week of virtual school. In looking back, our principal and leadership team began the documentation process of how they were “building” a virtual school. I am with this post beginning the process of sharing some of my takeaways as I go through the handbook. I was not involved in developing it so please note that I am presenting just my reading of the handbook. I will be posting just snapshots of actions that really jump out at me. Hopefully what is shared here can support any readers who are just getting started in virtual school.

Lesson Learned 1– Document the design and building of your virtual school. Share the doc with staff for transparency and for communication of guidelines and expectations. Virtual school is another case in schools where we all need to be on the same page. One cannot have teachers using their favorite tech tools and not following a formalized presentation of information to students and parents. Remember that many of your parents are facilitating their children in multiple grades. So supporting your parents and having grace for their position is backed up when they see the same tools and formatting from each of their children’s teachers.

Lesson Learned 2- As I have written a lot about, shifting into virtual school offers many positive opportunities for teachers to create, adapt and grow. Find a way to curate their practices not only to formalize but to cross-pollinate. While everyone might be doing virtual morning meetings, maybe grade 3 gives the students the day before some questions to think about to further the discussion in the morning meeting. I would add that as I have written, it is helpful to have a VS Design Team who gets out into team design meetings to gather information and share it between grade levels.

Here is a screenshot of the table from our VS Handbook used during the first week of VS for our teachers to share ideas. It was used as a place for ideas as we formalized our instruction across the grade levels.

Virtual School – Have a Buddy

March 17, 2020 / David Carpenter / 0 Comments

With our virtual school now in the phase of everyone teaching from home, our teachers are arranging to have a buddy to do daily check-ins with each other. Our single teachers especially need this connection and support. We really need to coach one another to take breaks from technology and to schedule wellness breaks just like we tell our students. 🙂

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash

Early Childhood Virtual School Weekly Planner

March 16, 2020 / David Carpenter / 0 Comments

The teachers at my school impress me daily with their delivery of a virtual school curriculum that supports our learning goals. Here is what our early childhood students are working on this week. 🙂

Virtual Reflection Activity

March 15, 2020 / David Carpenter / 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I put together a reentry activity for our teachers to run during the morning meetings. We are now in week 7 with an unsure completion date for virtual school. With this in mind, I shared the following reflection activity for teachers to do virtually with their students. As noted in an earlier post, fatigue is setting in for many so we need to really focus on wellness.

Virtual School Reflection Activity

The Wellness team recently shared a reflection activity of four questions for you to think about your accomplishments and growth during Virtual School. The focus was on several of the PERMAH pillars along with a growth mindset. We have been waiting to share a similar student reflection activity for when they return to school. With an uncertain reentry date, we cannot wait any longer to share the activity with you. We need to continue your efforts to build a community supporting the social and emotional needs of students while giving them the opportunity to think about their personal growth.

Here are some questions to adapt to your grade level that you can design an activity around. The activity could be as simple as sending out your version of the questions to have students respond using your preferred sharing tool whether it be SeeSaw or something like Padlet.

How are you different today as a learner compared to when you started virtual school?
How are you being stretched as a learner?
What is something you are doing that is really helping with your learning?
What accomplishment are you most proud of as a virtual school student?
What are your favorite brain break activities? What are you doing that gives you energy?

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Support Strategies for Families During COVID-19

March 13, 2020 / David Carpenter / 0 Comments

Tanya Olander, the talented Communications Officer at my school polished this post up for me.

This week, as many of your families are sure to have heard, the World Health Organization (WHO) characterized COVID-19 as a global pandemic.

We all respond differently to crises. It is normal. We can experience feelings of sadness and frustration. During this time, some of us feel stuck, others lonely, as we may spend more hours of the day away from our normal circle of support. Students are no doubt missing friends and teachers.

And although we may not know it, during this time we are also growing, as we learn how to be resilient and how to persevere.

However, growth is not always easy. Particularly not “forced” growth, during times of crisis. That’s why we have collected some strategies for you, as a parent, to use at home. They are inspired by the article “Ten Strategies for Educators’ Wellbeing”.

Encourage Reflection

Virtual School students are likely going through a range of emotions. This is healthy and normal. Talk to your child about how they are feeling. It is not unusual that children are angry about the school closure, and about the coronavirus. There is so much they do not understand, and that can cause them to feel frustrated. Ask them to reflect on how they feel about their accomplishments and their efforts.

Create Routines

In school, there are clearly defined routines. Routines help us feel calmer and in control. We know what to expect. Currently, teachers are working on helping students establish those routines within Virtual School. See how those routines can be expanded to include ways to support your health and wellness, too. Connect with friends, go outdoors, find ways to exercise and of course, get plenty of sleep.

Set Limits on News Consumption

We are all naturally curious about what is happening with the coronavirus in Vietnam and the world. We hear news from our friends and from news sources. Older students connect to each other and news sources via social media. But do not get caught in checking constantly. This is not healthy for ourselves, or our families. A daily routine can be to set aside time to check the news and then return to your tasks at hand.

Get the Facts

Another part of our digital lives is knowing where to get factual information that we can trust. Our Middle School and High School students know all about questioning news sources to make sure the information is true and valid. Our elementary students are just learning about media literacy. Work with them. Discuss what they are reading and where they are hearing things that they are bringing up.

Listen to Your Emotions

It is really important to reflect and think about how you are doing. For our Elementary students, we call this self-awareness. Self-awareness is a life skill that helps us understand our feelings and needs. The more you understand about yourself, the more you can take steps to take care of yourself. One helpful way for our children to grow their self-awareness is to keep a journal and, or to take time to speak with a parent or friend about their day.

Here are some questions that you, as a parent can ask, or in some cases prompt your children to ask themselves.

What went well today?
What is one thing that you appreciated today?
An emotion I experienced today was…, and I felt this way because…
One thing that inspired me today was…
What didn’t work today? What can you learn from that?
One thing I learned about myself today is…
A small win today was…

Ask Your Family to Share Stories of Challenges They Overcame

Hearing grandparents’ and parents’ stories about how they overcame challenges, can give you the strength to overcome your own difficulties. Ask them to share their stories with you. When we are resilient we draw on many character strengths such as courage, hope, and gratitude. Also, hearing stories from our family members is also a great way to get to learn more about the history of our family.

Take a Brain Break

Charge your batteries with a break away from your daily routine of work or schoolwork. Creative activities are great for that: doodling or drawing, singing, dancing, and going out to take pictures. Try to incorporate something creative into each day.

Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Physical Activity

There are many advantages to maintaining our physical health during times like these. It helps us focus and it keeps us fit. Come up with ways that you can exercise indoors and outdoors – the PE teachers in each division have shared great resources and are always happy to share more. Also, when you exercise with friends, you will have the additional benefit of strengthening relationships.

Be Proactive

Don’t wait for someone to suggest something to you. Why not take the initiative and be the planner? Pull out a board game for your family to play after dinner, plan a surprise for your sister or best friend, or meet a classmate in the park. Being proactive in making plans, makes us feel more in control while experiencing the positive emotion of hope.

At the end of all of our efforts and strategies, probably one of the most important things for our well-being centers around the emotional support that we give and receive from those around us.

Our school community is a big part of our lives and it is important to remember that we are all in this together. There are others going through the same emotions as you are. You are not alone. Seek help from any of the school resources, and tell someone how you are feeling. Reach out to a friend.

Together, we can keep our community happy and healthy.

Photo by Anna Pritchard on Unsplash

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

March 10, 2020 / David Carpenter / 0 Comments

-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- Videoconferencing Tips

March 3, 2020 / David Carpenter / 0 Comments

The administration at my school is doing an incredible job putting protocols and systems in place to support virtual school. Our next step in preparation for the possibility of home quarantine is to have everyone work from home tomorrow. Our head of school will start the day off via a video conference with all staff. We will then move into our normal daily virtual school routine. Our teachers have been video conferencing with their students for several weeks so it will be new to do so from home.

In preparation for lots of video conferencing with colleagues and students, our technology director sent out the following guidelines.

Check Your Frame

Make sure your space is tidy and that the wall, or background, provides enough contrast for the viewer to see you clearly. Although we will be in our homes, we still have to keep up professional appearances. Not sure what will show in the frame? Take a selfie with Photo Booth to see what viewers will see, or just turn on your camera before hosting a session to double-check what students will see.

Location, Location, Location

Choose a location in your home that has minimal distractions and background noise. Headsets are great for making sure you have even clear audio, both for yourself and your viewers.

Watch that Back-Lighting!

Turn your computer so that you’re side-lit or front-lit. Sitting with your back to a window or bright source of light will make everything in the foreground, which means you, dark.

Check the Sound Quality

Ambient sound can reduce the quality of your audio dramatically and impact the viewer’s ability to hear you significantly. To minimize the risk of that happening:

Switch off all background noise – music, tv, etc will otherwise be transmitted through the microphone and interfere with your audio.
Remind people in your vicinity that you are in a video conference and their voices and actions will be picked up by the microphone.

DURING VIDEO-CONFERENCING

Begin with Clear Online Classroom Protocols

Let students know the protocol for asking questions. Do you want them to interrupt you as you’re speaking (with a question or a raised hand) or will you have time at the end of the session for questions? Let them know.
Go out of your way to give students an opportunity to present their views.
Encourage students to mute their microphones and have their own course-related discussion, if applicable. Although some instructors don’t like this practice, it can help the students create a virtual group and support community.
Small group discussion activities with a report-out time encourage students to discuss a topic and express their thoughts. Plus students get a break from passively watching if it is a presentation.

Maintain Good Eye Contact

Remember to try to keep a “face-to-face” feeling even if it is “screen-to-screen”. Look up, be engaged and try to keep students engaged. Just as in class, they should be present during your conference or lesson, not engaged in other activities, unless the lesson requires it.

VIDEO-CONFERENCING FROM HOME, IN SHORT

DO

Check your framing before video conferencing
Have a tidy background
Switch off all background audio
Dress professionally
Restrict possible distractions and interruptions – e.g. children, pets, visitors
Prepare students with expectations for the session
Move and gesture slowly and smoothly, checking that students are not experiencing lag or delays
Maintain appropriate on-camera posture
Speak in a strong, clear voice

DON’T

Sit with your back to a window or bright light
Sit too far away or too close to the microphone/camera

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Resilience and Handling Burnout

February 24, 2020 / David Carpenter / 0 Comments

Our approach to struggles and difficult times at my school is to try to engage with the constructive Positive Psychology approach to life. There are times like right now when staff members can take an appraisal of their current state to then use the PERMAH pillars and their character strengths to take action.

The following articles are provided to help you self-assess to then move forward.

How To Be Kinder To Yourself by Susan David. (Includes link to TED Talk on the power of emotional courage.)

How Resilience Works by Diane Coutu

Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not About How You Endure by Shawn Achor (Author of The Happiness Advantage)

Steps To Take When You Are Starting To Feel Burned Out by Monique Valcour

The following article is from the Black Dog Institute. It is a “research institute that aims to reduce the incidence of mental illness and the stigma around it”.

What Is Stress And How Can You Manage It? Explained

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Virtual School – Self-Management, Study Skills and Wellness

February 18, 2020 / David Carpenter / 0 Comments

We are now in the third week of virtual school going through the phase of building our systems in place and responding to the needs of our stakeholders. Teachers and administrators gathered feedback from students and parents who are continuing their supervision role with their children.

One of the big takeaways so far is that students are being stretched out of their safety zone with expectations to become more self-directed. This includes developing their study skills around managing work that they previously had teachers guiding them through in the classroom. We also know that virtual school is keeping students in a sitting position glued to their devices for much of their day.

From my previous post on virtual school during SARS, here are some main points to ponder as we look at the needs of our students.

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. Admin provided ongoing emotional and informational update support for staff as well. Moving to the present day, I would really think about introducing 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. 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. 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.

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Virtual School Design Team

February 16, 2020 / David Carpenter / 0 Comments

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

Photo by Victor Garcia on Unsplash

Instructional Technology - International Education - Wellness