Blow it all up

Let's face it, we'll be in distance learning soon. It's a terrible way to teach and learn.  We lose all the wonderful parts of school, the human interaction, and replace it with screen time. 

We need courageous leaders now more than ever.  They need to be willing to blow up the traditional model to best support the needs of students and staff.  

How about this.

Right now, trimesters are 12 weeks with 6 classes.  What if we spend two weeks with each class and create courses that teach the essentials. We'd have to commit to a full trimester of this. We could do this distance based AND in a hybrid model.

WHY?

Kids and families would only have to focus on ONE class, ONE teacher at a time. We'd get to know our students and build strong relationships. 

Yes, it would be weird to not have an established "prep", but if we put our best into our two weeks of teacher workshop creating lessons and building out our courses, think of all the time we would free up to work and be with students. Let's say a teacher with period 1 prep teaches intermediate algebra, they could support the team in building out coursework online for our courses.  We could make wonderful, magical things happen in two weeks of learning with one group of 30 students.

What would that look like?

In my math class, I could have math talks every day with my class of 30 students, get them started on a desmos investigation and have them watch a video on their own. Then after lunch we'd come back for a group assignment instructions and I would let them get together to dig deeper in teams while I was on standby to support various teams.  

In an Art class, the teacher could hold class at school on occasion so the students could spend the day spinning pottery.

In Auto class, students could come to school and build an entire engine as a class after spending a part of each day learning about different components.

Science could have a few experiments each week in the classroom, in small teams, for the teacher to support them.

This most certainly would revolutionize how we teach and learn, but wouldn't it be great if a student who did get sick with COVID-19 only had miss a credit or two as they joined back up when it made sense for them? (Instead of the alternative of making up weeks of work for 6 classes.)

Now is the time to transform what we do.  

Why are we trying to fit a square peg in a round hole?  

Now is the time to blow it all up and make amazing things happen.  Let's seize this opportunity to be creative.