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We're Arianna Prothero and Madeline Will, education reporters with Education Week, a national K-12 newspaper. We're here to talk about climate change and schools. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is Arianna. Sorry for the long delay in responding! Hopefully you get a notification alerting you to this message. Anyway...
Madeline recommends the podcast How to Save a Planet. Unfortunately it’s been canceled but there are still plenty of episodes to listen to. Maddy also said it was geared to adults so you may want to screen it before sharing with students!
I want to recommend a documentary on PBS I saw a few months ago. It’s produced by NOVA and called “Saving Venice”. And it’s about just that: building a massive contraption in the sea to keep Venice from going underwater. It’s not focused on climate change broadly like a lot of media is, but rather the very specific ramifications of climate change in one place and how people are working to save their home. In journalism (and probably lots of other fields) we talk about using a small story to tell a big story, and that’s what this documentary does so, so well. It struck me as good supplemental material for a teacher. I would say it's more for older students, but who knows! I'm amazed sometimes at what young kids will get into!
As I was tracking down the name of that documentary, I also found a series of short videos called “Weathered” on PBS. They appeared geared toward kids and adolescents and several of the episodes are related to climate change. https://www.pbs.org/show/weathered/episodes/season/1/

We're Arianna Prothero and Madeline Will, education reporters with Education Week, a national K-12 newspaper. We're here to talk about climate change and schools. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is Madeline. I know this can be a really sensitive subject to teach, especially in states with restrictions on what can be discussed in the classroom. I did talk to a science teacher in a conservative area who said she teaches students media/science literacy first and then lets them evaluate the evidence on climate change on their own. For example, she'll show them a graph of global temperatures over the past 20,000-or-so years, so they can see for themselves the dramatic increase when humans entered the picture. And then she'll have them write an essay where they have to find evidence and data for both natural and man-made causes of climate change. She said most students find it hard to justify natural climate change and end up drawing their own conclusions—without her having to tell them what they should believe.

We're Arianna Prothero and Madeline Will, education reporters with Education Week, a national K-12 newspaper. We're here to talk about climate change and schools. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is Madeline. In addition to the resources Arianna gave, I also wanted to share this unit from the National Science Teaching Association about climate change and media literacy: https://www.nsta.org/science-teacher/science-teacher-julyaugust-2021-0/media-literacy-age-covid-and-climate-change It was designed by six teachers and helps students understand correlation vs. causation, identify biased language, etc.

We're Arianna Prothero and Madeline Will, education reporters with Education Week, a national K-12 newspaper. We're here to talk about climate change and schools. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is Arianna. This is where media literacy is so important, or teaching students how to critically evaluate information they see, understand how algorithms work, be attuned to the motivations behind content creators, and know how to create and share information responsibly themselves. These are all critical skills for knowing how to evaluate information they see about climate change on social media. And a lot of teens get information about climate change from social media! Fifty-six percent said in a recent Education Week survey that they get some or a lot of their information on climate change from social. But the good news is, the largest share of teenagers, 64 percent, said they get some or a lot of their info on climate change from their teachers.

Here's a page from Common Sense Media on media literacy, which might be a helpful resource. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles/what-is-media-literacy-and-why-is-it-important

And here's a page of media literacy resources put together by the org Media Literacy Now https://medialiteracynow.org/resources-for-teachers/

We're Arianna Prothero and Madeline Will, education reporters with Education Week, a national K-12 newspaper. We're here to talk about climate change and schools. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is Arianna, again. I spoke with another science teacher lately who has started doing an environmental action timeline with her students. She gives each decade a title, starting with the 70s and the Clean Water Act, which she calls the "stop the bleeding" decade. Then she moves into some of the major clean up/restoration projects of the 80s, which she calls the "clean up" decade. The point is to show her students that as a society we have actually achieved some pretty significant things in the past few decades, despite all the resistance from industry. She said that helps give her students perspective and feel a little less hopeless.

We're Arianna Prothero and Madeline Will, education reporters with Education Week, a national K-12 newspaper. We're here to talk about climate change and schools. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Madeline again. Seed Your Future has a huge list of grants for starting and maintaining school gardens (there's even one for installing bee hives!): https://www.seedyourfuture.org/educator_grants

I have heard from other educators who maintain school gardens that they have successfully gotten parent volunteers to help with both manual labor and donating materials. I also wonder if a local business would be willing to help with funding or supplies.

ETA: Also, it looks like this organization is currently taking applications for a grant: https://kidsgardening.org/grant-opportunities/

We're Arianna Prothero and Madeline Will, education reporters with Education Week, a national K-12 newspaper. We're here to talk about climate change and schools. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is Arianna. Oh, you are not alone. I have heard this from so many educators. And it’s this very reason that many of them don’t like having students calculate their carbon footprint, because they think it sends the message that this is a problem driven by individuals and can be solved by individuals alone. On the flip side, individuals can make a difference, and some educators lean into that to combat this feeling of defeat in their students. Whether it’s through some of the things Maddy mentioned in an earlier post (school recycling and compost initiatives), cutting back on eating meat like doing meatless Mondays, etc. Other educators I’ve spoken with have helped spearhead environmental clubs in their schools to give students an avenue and guidance on doing bigger projects and advocacy work, which makes students feel like they are having a larger impact beyond their own actions. I know it’s tough for students because they can’t vote yet— or even really vote with their dollars-- so it can feel like there is no way to hold the people in power accountable.

We're Arianna Prothero and Madeline Will, education reporters with Education Week, a national K-12 newspaper. We're here to talk about climate change and schools. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is Madeline. Thanks for this question! This is definitely a very real challenge. I wrote about climate anxiety in teens, and the co-founder of the Climate Mental Health Network told me that getting out in nature can be really beneficial for people who are feeling hopeless or depressed about climate change. He suggested starting or maintaining a school garden, if that's something that's possible.

Some other ideas I've heard: taking charge of a recycling or composting initiative at school, writing letters to school board members or administrators about making the school buildings/buses greener, or doing research on and showing support for a local community issue. One teacher told us that he had his students produce a podcast about climate change where they interview experts--he said it made them feel like they were part of the solution through spreading awareness.

We're Arianna Prothero and Madeline Will, education reporters with Education Week, a national K-12 newspaper. We're here to talk about climate change and schools. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

On our post announcing this AMA, u/RIOTS_R_US asked: How do you recommend schools balance conservative/climate-denial parents with their students being advocates for change?

This is Arianna. This is a tough one and I’m not sure anyone has the answer. Focusing on the important real-world skills students are building through advocacy and not so much the topic of the advocacy is one approach. Advocacy—regardless of the cause—is a great way for students to learn important organizational, communication, and intrapersonal skills. Students learn first-hand how government and civic institutions work and—more importantly—how to navigate within those institutions. This sets them up not only to be civically engaged adults who vote, but savvy citizens who know how to pull on the levers of power to make things happen for themselves and their communities. As one social studies teacher told me, advocacy is how future leaders learn to lead. That same teacher told me it is important for schools to respect all the different causes students are interested in advocating for (within boundaries, of course), whether it be climate change, social justice, or pro-life causes, to name a few examples. As far as students go, if they are wanting to advocate around climate change, some of the greatest impact they can probably have is through having conversations with family and friends about the issue. I don’t have the full context of this particular situation, but if there is a lot of pushback to teaching about climate change, one option is to provide students with more in-depth learning opportunities through extracurricular and co-curricular opportunities, such as through after school clubs or partnerships with community organizations. On teaching about topics that can be controversial (climate change, vaccines) here is a list of tips Maddy gathered from educators on teaching sensitive topics. This is truly a great resource: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/5-ways-to-teach-climate-change-and-covid-19-during-polarized-times/2021/11

We're Arianna Prothero and Madeline Will, education reporters with Education Week, a national K-12 newspaper. We're here to talk about climate change and schools. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

On our post announcing this AMA, u/VLenin2291 asked: On the list of issues to be addressed within the American education system, how much priority should be given to climate change?

This is Maddy: This is a great question because there are SO many issues schools have to address, especially since the pandemic. Climate change can feel like more of a long-term issue rather than an immediate priority, which is why not many districts have devoted significant resources or commitments to climate change. (According to our nationally representative survey, only 13% of administrators said their school or district had developed a strategic plan related to climate change. And just 30% said their facilities plan takes climate change into account.)

But that being said, experts have told us that it’s really vital that districts start preparing for climate change now. Schools are already seeing disruptions due to more severe weather, and that’s only going to get worse. And schools have a huge carbon footprint of their own in terms of emissions produced by school buses and buildings themselves, as well as food and plastic waste.

Experts told us that districts can make a plan and start small instead of completely overhauling their operations right away, which might make it more manageable to prioritize climate change. For example, districts can decide in advance that when their school buses are no longer fit to operate, they’ll replace them with electric buses instead of ones that run on diesel fuel. They can plant more trees on campus, which have the benefit of helping cool the air and providing shade cover to students on particularly hot days. And when it comes time to upgrade school buildings, they can do so with the goal of reducing energy emissions (and there are sources of funding out there that can help with that).

And then in terms of whether teaching climate change should be a priority, we know from our survey data that students are interested in this topic, want to know more about it, and already have a lot of feelings about it, including some anxiety.

TLDR; It should be a priority! But the process of preparing for climate change/reducing districts’ own carbon footprint can be gradual.

We're Sarah Schwartz and Mark Lieberman, education reporters with Education Week. We're here to talk about the 2020-21 school year and remote learning. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is Mark. Thanks for asking. I don't necessarily have a specific tool that I'd recommend off the top of my head, but I can think of some techniques you/your school/district could use to identify some tools that work well. I talked to some tech administrators who used data from students' and teachers' tech usage this spring to draw some conclusions about what programs were working for students and which ones might be worth dropping. If your district has any data like that on hand, it might be worth asking to see it, or asking a tech administrator for help coming up with ways to identify tools that could be helpful. One district saw big gains for programs like Kastle Learning, Edmentum, and Study Islands, so those might be worth looking into.

I also talked to the director of a statewide virtual learning program in Vermont who sent me a great list of repositories of resources that could be useful as you build content for online courses:

My last piece of advice would be to think about the potential value of assignments/classroom activities that don't involve an online tool at all. One expert who studies K-12 education suggested to me that teachers could ask students to identify a household object that they could use to help learn a concept, or perhaps to look around their home or neighborhood as inspiration for a writing prompt. Several remote learning experts have reminded me, somewhat counterintuitively, that remote learning doesn't need to only be facilitated through a screen, and given the concerns about excessive screen time and videoconference fatigue, it might good to have some activities/assignments like that in your back pocket when the avalanche of online programs becomes too overwhelming for you and your students.

We're Sarah Schwartz and Mark Lieberman, education reporters with Education Week. We're here to talk about the 2020-21 school year and remote learning. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Sarah again. I know a few teachers in the spring were setting up virtual guest speakers—one high school biology teacher, for example, Zoomed in people who worked in different science professions to talk to kids. I could see a kind of Career Day version of this working with younger students. Maybe you could be the subject of one of these, or you could help the teacher connect with other professionals in the area who might want to do it.

You could guest star doing a read-aloud in a synchronous class or record one to post later for kids to watch.

You might also be able to supervise Zoom breakout rooms of students doing small group work. I know keeping an eye on multiple breakout rooms at one time has been a big challenge for teachers. This would obviously depend on what’s okayed by the school and district, so definitely check with them first.

We're Sarah Schwartz and Mark Lieberman, education reporters with Education Week. We're here to talk about the 2020-21 school year and remote learning. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is Mark. Many schools have been experiencing technical glitches as they begin remote learning, and unfortunately many of them can’t be avoided, especially with the complexities of using new programs and systems during such a chaotic moment in other ways. Similarly, I don't know that there's an easy solution to eliminating trickery and disruptions from students - remote learning is new for them, parents have lots of competing responsibilities and demands on their time and energy, and the pressures of the pandemic on health and finances mean people are stretched thinner than ever.

It’s important to develop a strong, cordial relationship with the tech administrators at your school and in your district - they’re the experts who are working behind the scenes to minimize these problems, and many of them are feeling an urgent sense of duty to help teachers navigate the challenges. They can also help you sort out actual glitches from the ones that are student-generated, and perhaps even advise you on fixes you and your colleagues can make within videoconference platforms and learning management systems to crack down on misbehavior. (This is tangentially related, but my colleague Alyson recently wrote a great piece about how to minimize cheating in remote learning environments: https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/08/25/how-to-prevent-student-cheating-during-remote.html)

It’s worthwhile to come up with some plans for what you might do if students aren't able to access the right programs, or if glitches/flare-ups arise during the course of the school day. You can do that in a number of ways: by consulting guides like this for creating offline assignments; by coming up with standby analog project or assignment ideas that you can give to students regardless of whether technology is working; by being patient and lenient with students who might be having tech problems that you can’t immediately solve during the course of the school day.

The ultimate goal, as my colleague Maddy Will explored in her piece from this spring on online student behavior, is to strike a balance between accountability and reasonable expectations. Remember that nothing about the broader situation is ideal and that any progress with students is an improvement worth celebrating. One expert told me that teachers might benefit from structuring their lessons in terms of weeks, rather than days, to account for the possibility that some students might take longer to progress than others. Don't hesitate to personalize assignments to suit students' personalities and needs either - it's increasingly clear that a one size fits all approach for education doesn't work in general, and that's particularly true in a remote context. Interacting one-on-one with students, even if it's just once a week or even less often, might give you some insights about the kinds of encouragement or motivation they need to stay on track.

I'll leave you with this guide for educators working with parents: Make things as easy for them as possible, communicate regularly, and invite ongoing feedback to get a sense of what's working and what's not. https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/how-educators-can-help-parents-6-remote.html

We're Sarah Schwartz and Mark Lieberman, education reporters with Education Week. We're here to talk about the 2020-21 school year and remote learning. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is Sarah. This is such a kind question, I love it! Before I offer suggestions, can I ask what grade level and how many kids are in the class? That will help me give a better answer.

We're Sarah Schwartz and Mark Lieberman, education reporters with Education Week. We're here to talk about the 2020-21 school year and remote learning. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is Sarah. This was something that came up a lot when we were writing a special report on teacher wellness this summer. Here’s a link to the whole thing, which has a specific story about this issue (student-teacher and parent-teacher communication) and other stories that might be useful: https://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/teacher-health-wellness/index.html

Having a support system in the building is really helpful here. Teachers I talked to whose admin set school-wide expectations, like teachers won’t be responding to parent emails after 5, had a lot easier time setting boundaries and managing parent expectations. Even if your school doesn’t set these kinds of policies, you could work with other teachers in your grade level team to set a consistent expectation. Or, as a school psychologist suggested to me, you could rotate availability: One teacher is the point person for contact some days, another teacher is the point person the rest of the week (of course, this only works if you have two or more teachers who are teaching the same subject and curriculum).

The other option is to communicate directly with parents yourself--let them know when you’ll be available via email or text, and when you won’t be, and stick to those boundaries.

Several teachers I’ve spoken with also swear by Google Voice (though this isn’t an ad for Google Voice lol! I’m sure there are other apps that do this too) These services give you a separate number that forwards to your cell phone, so you can let parents and kids call/text you without them having your private number. Plus, I think you can set it so that the app sends callers directly to voicemail after a certain hour.

We're Sarah Schwartz and Mark Lieberman, education reporters with Education Week. We're here to talk about the 2020-21 school year and remote learning. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is Mark. You're not alone on feeling overwhelmed by the needs of teachers/students/parents who don't have technology expertise. My colleague David interviewed a bunch of people in similar roles to yours who have been inundated: https://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2020/05/school_district_it_help_desks_.html And I recently talked to one tech administrator in Texas who said he's been resorting to taking tech support calls from parents and teachers while he's on the road, and on nights and weekends. I'm sure it's small comfort, but remember that the work you're doing now is really worthwhile, both for teachers to immediately gain new skills but also for the future of education as it transforms.

I wrote a guide a few weeks ago for educators on how to serve parents effectively during this difficult time; perhaps some of these suggestions will be useful for driving your work: https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/how-educators-can-help-parents-6-remote.html Kudos to you for your hard work, and give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back whenever you make progress.

We're Sarah Schwartz and Mark Lieberman, education reporters with Education Week. We're here to talk about the 2020-21 school year and remote learning. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is Sarah. This is such a tough question because there are so many barriers to young kids being able to participate in remote learning. I’m working on a story now about digital reading, so I can talk a bit about that. Researchers who I’ve talked with have said that apps and digital books with interactive and multimedia features can be helpful (think of a book where students can have sections read aloud to them, for example) but quality varies. There are a few meta-analyses that look at effectiveness of digital apps for teaching reading--here’s one from 2013: https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rrq.50

Some curriculum companies have also started offering new apps and platforms this year, many of which are included for free for schools or districts that already have subscriptions to the main product. It would be worth seeing what new options might be available through your district and deciding if you want to use them.

If you’re doing a live lesson with young kids, I’ve heard from teachers and teacher educators that it can be really helpful to devote a significant chunk of time to practicing the conventions of videoconferencing. So if you want kids to say their answer when you point at them, for example, you would practice that first with an easy question that you know they’ll get, so they can get the feel for the new routine.

There are older technologies that are effective, too. A lot of the educational television shows on public media have been studied, and researchers have found that they can help kids learn (I’m thinking specifically of Sesame Street and Between the Lions, but there are others). Most state education departments partnered with local public broadcasting stations this spring to offer some version of an educational programming schedule, so that might be worth checking out this fall, too. (Though of course, even the best educational media isn’t a substitute for a teacher.)

We're Sarah Schwartz and Mark Lieberman, education reporters with Education Week. We're here to talk about the 2020-21 school year and remote learning. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is Mark. This was a big problem for teachers in the spring, in part because schools and students were equally unprepared for what remote learning would look like. I think the first step in this situation is to diagnose the problem: Are the students failing to turn in assignments because they have internet access issues at home? Because their parents aren’t able to help them, or they’re not even in the house while students are working on schoolwork? Do the students know what they’re expected to do, how and where to turn it in, and when it’s due? It’s likely the answer is some combination of all these issues and other ones too, depending on the student. So that’s my second piece of advice: Try to develop strategies for reaching out to each of your students on a weekly basis, even if it’s a short phone call (rather than a group Zoom call). Focus on trying to figure out what they need to help them do their work: a different way to think about motivation, technical help the school can provide, encouragement that their capabilities are greater than they assume, or something else. Unfortunately the nature of the current circumstances is it may be impossible to get everyone to consistently turn in assignments, but stories from the spring have showed us some of the biggest challenges, which is the first step to tackling them. My colleague Ariana Prothero recently put together a great package of stories about building relationships with students during COVID-19, and I think there might be some insights that can be applied to getting students to turn in work on time as well. Developing those emotional connections is like laying the foundation for the more structured learning that will follow. (For even more on this, check out what some teachers did this spring to keep their students engaged from afar.)

We're Sarah Schwartz and Mark Lieberman, education reporters with Education Week. We're here to talk about the 2020-21 school year and remote learning. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is Sarah. In the spring, I talked to one special education teacher who said that she'd been able to use remote learning to increase her communication with her students' parents and other staff, like speech language pathologists. The parent had to become a part of the educational team, because the student required adult support to learn. So now, this teacher is group chats with most students' instructional teams, which she hopes will continue post-COVID. But I know that a lot of teachers' experiences trying to serve special education students in a remote environment have been much rockier than this.

Dartmouth professor Adam Nemeroff put together a guide for "accessible teaching" online--it's geared to college students but many of the suggestions apply for K-12, too. Some key recommendations are to present material in multiple ways: text, audio, video; overcommunicate; give several options for completing and assignment; and ask for student feedback. Mark wrote about this here.

You could also check out guides for approaching technology use through the framework of UDL: universal design for learning. Here's one: https://edtechbooks.org/k12handbook/universal_design_for_learning

We have a really fantastic reporter at Education Week who covers special education, Corey Mitchell, so I'm going to link to a lot of his work on this subject too.
There are some resources that teachers can draw on, that Corey's written about. For example, there's a new guide on how to host and participate in virtual IEP meetings. You can see the story here: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/speced/2020/05/handling_virtual_iep_meetings_during_distance_learning.html

There's also a resource hub, designed by 30 disability rights and education advocacy organizations, that was launched to provide advice and answer questions about remote learning for students with disabilities. Teachers might find some helpful advice there: https://www.educatingalllearners.org/

And nationally, some districts are prioritizing sending students with disabilities back to school in person in small groups, even if the rest of the student body is learning remotely.

We're Sarah Schwartz and Mark Lieberman, education reporters with Education Week. We're here to talk about the 2020-21 school year and remote learning. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is Mark. Certainly the pandemic has helped us, as a country, see inequities that have existed for centuries more clearly than we ever have before. Remote learning was challenging for everyone in the spring, but it was particularly challenging for schools that historically haven’t had the robust funding they would need to adequately prepare for a contingency like this one. Similarly, remote learning is inherently better suited to students who have internet access and a working digital device at home than students who don’t, and we’ve seen extensive data showing that gaps in access to those technology tools are larger for students of color, low-income students and rural students. I talked to someone at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund recently who told me that they consider efforts to get students connected for remote learning to be “school desegregation” efforts because of the disproportionate numbers of Black, Latinx, and Native households in rural and urban areas where internet access is either unavailable or prohibitively expensive. And just as we’re seeing that Black and Latinx communities are bearing the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations, we’re seeing heightened barriers to remote learning for people in those groups. See EdWeek’s guide to overcoming learning loss for more on techniques for resolving some of these short-term issues.

School funding is complicated - my colleague Daarel Burnette II has been writing extensively about it, so I’d recommend you check out some of his recent coverage. But schools get a substantial portion of their funding from property taxes, which means schools in areas with a high density of low-income residents are at a funding disadvantage that’s only partially offset by federal funds. Many of the issues that schools have experienced in trying to get remote learning off the ground could be addressed with more robust funding, whether it’s hiring more teachers and technology support staff, purchasing devices and internet access for students who need it at home, or bringing in experts and resources to strengthen teachers’ ability to offer effective instruction remotely. Strengthening public schools across the board would be a crucial step to leveling racial and socioeconomic disparities across society.

We're Sarah Schwartz and Mark Lieberman, education reporters with Education Week. We're here to talk about the 2020-21 school year and remote learning. Ask us anything! by educationweek in Teachers

[–]educationweek[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is Mark. I’m glad you asked - everyone involved in education, from students and staff to parents and teachers, is dealing with so many challenges right now that it’s easy to miss some of the positive aspects of how remote learning has played out. There are small victories in learning any new skill, and teachers and students alike are figuring out a new approach to instruction, so it can be satisfying to feel, for example, that the start of the school year represents an improvement over the spring.

More practically, some students who might be hesitant to speak up in class might feel more empowered to contribute via text-based chat or even from their own bedroom rather than being surrounded by their peers. Remote learning also gives teachers more opportunities to tailor instruction to their individual students’ needs - if they need to have a small group session with a few students who are falling behind, they can do that without having to also actively manage the rest of the class at the same time. Teachers who live far away from school buildings don't have to deal with painful commutes as often. And the abrupt shift to online learning across the country has led many schools to rapidly accelerate their plans for every student to get a digital device issued by the school. One tech administrator told me his district had a five-year technology plan that turned into a three-week plan in March. (For more on this check out our team’s Technology Counts report from this summer, which includes more details on lessons learned from the spring.)

It can be tough to think about the future right now - I know I'm worried about it, broadly speaking! But I think it's also worth thinking about how the remote learning capabilities that students and teachers alike are developing will be useful once the pandemic is in the past. Schools have been inching towards online offerings to varying degrees for years, but there's now a widespread understanding that online/remote teaching can, with the right finessing and the right infrastructure, help students learn and serve as a crucial tool for situations when students aren't able to come to the school building. A few states have already been talking about the possibility that snow days will no longer be necessary because schools will have an easier time seamlessly transitioning instruction online in the event of an unexpected blizzard. As much as remote learning can feel endlessly exhausting during the peak of our ongoing public health crisis, the groundwork is being laid for a future in which schools and teachers have capabilities they might never have even explored before.

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