Remote Learning Program

Why are we offering remote learning?

Development of “how?” should not begin without a clear understanding of “why?” In our remote learning programs, all decisions, rules, expectations, and suggestions must be judged through our question of “Why are we offering remote learning?”

In descending order of importance:

1. To reduce isolation and the social effects of physical distancing. Students, families, and educators are anxious about the medical emergency facing our global community, and do not know how long it will last. The most important thing we can do for our students and educators is to help them feel connected and together.

2. To maintain a sense of normalcy. Students and the community look to our school for a sense of stability and normalcy. Through our actions and communications, we can deliver a message with the same tone of the classic “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

3. To keep students intellectually active and engaged. Offering online academic work can literally give students something productive to do. Though some have enjoyed a “honeymoon period” of “snow days” at first, many students are reaching a point where they are looking for engaging and interesting activities. When combined with physical and social isolation, a lack of productivity can weigh heavily on students’ and families’ emotional state.

4. To prevent regression or learning loss. Like physical exercise, intellectual effort requires regular maintenance. We can offer academic work to help students continue participating in the role of Lifelong Learners. That is, the practice of learning is more important than the content they are learning.

5. To deliver our planned curriculum. This reason is of significantly lesser importance than the reasons above. In normal times, perhaps, we can hope that curriculum is a high priority. In these challenging times, we should remember that students are learning a lot right now about science and our society, things they’ll remember for their entire lives. Our already-written curriculum is a convenient tool during remote learning, but it is not the reason we are offering remote learning.

Difficulty in transitioning to online learning

Converting traditional classrooms into emergency remote learning will be a new experience for many teachers. There will be technical challenges and pedagogical challenges, and previously carefully-crafted units and lesson plans may have to undergo significant change in order to match the virtual setting.

We understand that most of the HHS faculty have minimal training in delivering this type of instruction, and none have experience in converting a curriculum quickly. Some activities might translate to remote learning without difficulty, but some may experience unpredictable problems. This move to remote learning is an emergency measure, not permanent one, and it is important to remember that teachers, students, administrators, and families will be doing the best they can under complex and stressful conditions.

We do not expect perfection in this uncertain time. We are hoping to maintain education as best as we can, so that we can pick up where we left off when the shutdown ends. We all need to be patient with ourselves and others.

One key to maintaining the learning will be a shared set of expectations, so that students, families, teachers, and administrators can have some predictability and consistency. These expectations are designed to allow learning to continue throughout the shutdown while still recognizing some important factors:

Considerations/Factors

• School may be closed for an unknown amount of time

• We cannot replicate our curriculum in this short amount of time. But we can create meaningful shorter learning experiences through remote learning platforms.

• Teachers are not trained for full remote teaching. However, most have some small amount of experience with video conferencing due to preparation for our prior first week of Enrichment Learning.

• Home conditions for many students and teachers make remote learning challenging, and we cannot make assumptions about home conditions based on the course level

• Teachers and student will likely have very high stress levels during this time period and beyond

With these factors in mind, we recommend the following expectations for how classes can be conducted remotely during the emergency.

Lesson Planning

• We are continuing our policy of reinforcing the content and skills learned before March 13. Teachers may also infuse new content into their lessons as a way to introduce deeper learning, but must appreciate that current conditions make a progressive sequence of concepts unviable.
  
  It is highly possible, that, at some point during our remote learning program, students may become unable to participate in remote learning, due to illness, home conditions, economic factors, technical problems, or some other issue. Lesson plans should be designed so that it is not critical if a student has to miss a unit or two. Students should be able to rejoin a class after an extended “absence” without the need to complete all of the missed work first.
  
  Additionally, we cannot make assumptions about these issues based on course level, as if to say that “students in college prep classes” can do this, or “students in AP classes” will be able to do that.

• In Phase II, we are emphasizing “deeper learning.” The purpose is to extend students’ skills through a combination of already-learned material and new content.

According to Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine, authors of In Search of Deeper Learning, deeper learning is characterized by:

3. • 1. 1. Mastery: knowledge of content, transfer of knowledge, pattern recognition and expertise, understanding the structure of a discipline

        2. Identity: driven by intrinsic motivation and the learner's perception of relevance. This inherently involves student choice of a topic

        3. Creativity: acting or doing something in the field.
           

• The best units of study will include medium-length projects (one or two weeks long) where students are challenged to learn new material and show their learning in creative ways. These units allow students to explore a course’s curriculum more thoroughly in ways that might have been time-inefficient in the normal school setting. This type of learning allows for the most flexibility for both teachers and students, and allows “live” video conference time to focus on facilitating and answering questions.

• Remote learning does not mean online instruction. Well-crafted remote learning units at the high school level could include significant independent non-digital learning while students explore, conduct research, or create artistic or academic works. Remote learning need not necessarily include Meet or Zoom “lectures,” though they will include live sessions to promote teacher-student and student-student interaction.

• Not every assignment or daily task requires a submission. Students can be tasked with reading, watching educational videos, or other work without the need to turn something in.

Schedule and Format

• Teachers should plan that students can participate in about 50 minutes of lessons or activities per class per day. DESE recommends (3/26/20) that we “...support students to engage in meaningful and productive learning for approximately half the length of a regular school day. We expect this learning to take place via a combination of educator-directed learning and student self-directed learning.” At HHS, a 3.5 hour day calculates to about 50 minutes learning per block.

• A daily schedule will be maintained, allowing for predictable timing of Meet or Zoom sessions. Each class will follow the daily “50-Minute Budget” rule: no more than 50 minutes of combined instruction, discussion, and independent work each day.

• • The blocks will not rotate. For example, A Block will stay at 9:00 on Monday and 11:00 on Thursday. However, we will evaluate the schedule at the end of each week and make any needed adjustments based on feedback from students, faculty and families.

  • Teachers will conduct whole-class sessions via Google Meet or Zoom during scheduled times. Meet or Zoom sessions are for instructions, discussion, and social interaction.

    • • • Teachers should plan a weekly minimum of two, 15-minute Meet/Zoom sessions, and a weekly maximum of two, 50-minute sessions for each of their classes.

        • Teachers should not plan whole-class sessions outside of the scheduled class times.

• All daily activities, whether whole-class Meet/Zoom sessions or independent work, must be announced in Google Classroom before 5pm the previous day.

• If possible, whole-class Meet and Zoom sessions should be recorded and then posted/shared via Google Drive and Google Classroom, for students who are unable to attend at the scheduled time due to technical issues or family commitments.

• Independent work should be designed so that students can complete it at any time during the day (“asynchronously”).

• All work and Meet/Zoom session times for the day should be posted prior to 5 pm the previous day. If teachers prefer, they may post assignments and meetings in advance (for example, posting a week’s worth of assignments on Sunday night).

• Teachers should practice flexibility in regard to due dates, as a student’s ability to complete assignments might not be under their control.

DSB

• DSB is a time for study, student-teacher conferences, enrichment, club meetings, and other optional enrichment activities (to be determined). Students are not expected or required to participate in DSB activities. However, for predictable scheduling, clubs that wish to meet are requested to schedule virtual meetings during this time if possible.

• Just like during in-school DSB, teachers may choose to offer one-on-one help for individual students during this time. However, as in-school DSB, this is not a time for whole-class instruction.

• As during normal school instruction, students should be given appropriate feedback about the progress of their learning and the quality of their work. Even more than usual, the focus must be on improving student learning rather than grades.

• Classic tests and quizzes will be unreliable due to our inability to guarantee that students work independently or within time constraints. Teachers should consider alternate forms of assessments, such as

  1. Extended creative projects that “show what you have learned”

     • • Video creation

       • Video response to a prompt a la Flipgrid

       • Audio recordings

       • Online portfolios

       • Google forms feedback

       • Artistic or other creative projects

  2. Written responses such as essays, journals, or similar, with prompts not easily “Googled”

  3. “Take home” tests and quizzes, specifically designed to allow group collaboration and extended time.

  4. Any other interesting way to document learning. Teacher creativity and experimentation is encouraged.
     

• All assigned work during the remote learning period may be considered “required,” at the teacher’s discretion. In gradebooks, new “graded” work will be recorded as "collected" or "incomplete.”

Term 3 & Term 4

• The Term 3 schedule will conclude on April 17th and the Term 4 schedule will begin on April 27, after April Vacation. Once Term 4 begins, students will follow their Term 4 course schedule, attending Meet/Zoom sessions and completing assigned work. If the district were to make changes to April vacation or the last day of school, this might result in alterations to some of the dates mentioned above.

• End of course grades will be either traditional letter grades or Credit/No Credit, depending on when the course was scheduled to end.

• Courses earning a Credit/No Credit will not be included in a student’s GPA/QPA.

• There will be no traditional final assessments/exams given for T3 and T4. Final grades will be calculated as if these assessments were “Exempt.”

• Given that final assessments are cancelled, seniors last day will be Friday May 29th, pending any additional guidance from the state.

• Senior Events are still being assessed and no changes have been made as of now. We are actively meeting with senior officers and advisors to plan our next steps.

• Students should plan to check both Google Classroom and their school email accounts daily for news and announcements.

• Vital school news (e.g. announcements from Ms. Bottomley or Dr. Jackson) will still be delivered by email to parents and via Google Classroom to students, and then also posted on the remote learning website.

• The Enrichment Learning website will be renamed as the Remote Learning website. It will be a public repository for email blast announcements, counseling resources, school lunch information, and other information of importance to the school at large.

• Classes will use Google Classroom for basic communication. Teachers who were previously using Moodle, teacher websites, or other tools may continue to do so, but Google Classroom should be the “launch pad” for communications with students during the shutdown.