This spring, as schools limped across the virtual learning finish line, the consensus on virtual learning amongst educators was that this form of schooling could never match the quality of in-person learning—and the jury was out on whether there was any value in it at all. The reason for this bleak outlook is that our students are living through a natural disaster without precedent, and there was no way of going back to what once was (as Seth Lavin remarked wonderfully about school at the outset of COVID-19).
The expectation that our society and schools could care for the most marginalized and completely reorganize in a matter of days was clearly unrealistic. But over the past several months, we at High Jump have found that with the right framework, e-learning can make the best out of a bad situation.
This summer at High Jump, our nonprofit did what we do every summer: provide five weeks of academic courses and social and emotional learning for over 400 middle and high school students of limited economic means. We created our new model after a thorough literature review of best practices in e-learning, focus groups, and interviews with teachers, parents, and school leaders.
[pullquote]While I knew that we couldn’t replicate our traditional summer program, we were all surprised by the overwhelmingly positive response from students, families and teachers.[/pullquote] And as we begin a new school year with much anxiety about how to educate our students, I would like to provide a summary of those findings and some of our biggest takeaways.
First, here are the surprising results:
These were the biggest takeaways from our model:
What we did for our students this summer was not easy. [pullquote]The teachers and staff worked harder than they ever have before, and we still felt as if it wasn’t enough for our students.[/pullquote] We struggled to address students’ desire for time to talk socially with friends, and managing screen time got more difficult each week.
Caring for families' basic needs, such as food insecurity, took on a much bigger role within our program than it ever has before. As we move into the fall, and hopefully out of this environment sometime this school year, we are already looking at ways to maintain that level of engagement and support for our families and students and hope that others can build upon this model and the lessons we have learned.
Nate Pietrini, Ed.D. is the Executive Director of High Jump, a Chicago Public Schools (CPS) parent, and a former CPS teacher and principal.
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