In this MIT Teaching Systems Lab report, Justin Reich (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Jal Mehta (Harvard Graduate School of Education) draw on extensive outreach to students, teachers, principals, parents, district administrators, state officials, and other stakeholders to suggest seven principles for reopening schools this fall. Reich and Mehta assume that most schools will be operating with a hybrid or remote learning plan for at least the first part of the 2020-21 year.
These principles are not intended to address the all-important planning that’s being done to keep students and staff safe. Rather, Reich and Mehta focus on helping schools think through their core values and provide access to the best resources to support work with students and families. Several insights guided their research:
- The coronavirus has created a highly complex and uncertain situation with very few known solutions.
- In situations like this, the best approach is lots of experimentation in the field, with teams looking at the results to figure out what works.
- To avoid incoherence, experimentation must be implemented with shared values so local innovators are rowing in the same direction.
- It’s important to decide on a few common structures – for example, a shared technology platform – to facilitate communication and collaboration.
- A culture of trust and inclusion is vital; as Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
Here are Reich’s and Mehta’s design principles, each with a few examples of how it might play out in schools and districts.
• Find ways to build relationships. “The trust forged between teachers and students,” say Reich and Mehta, “inspires learners to do their work, enables teachers to offer candid feedback and criticism, and helps teachers learn to find the keys that unlock student potential and learning.” When the coronavirus disrupted the 2019-20 school year, educators already had six months of interactions under their belts. 2020-21 will be different, making it essential to find ways to build strong relationships.
Ideas: (a) a “call a teacher” button on the school’s website that makes it easy for students to ask questions and get help from a staff member (perhaps the librarian) designated to be available all day long; (b) advisories in which small groups of students (perhaps 10) meet regularly with a staff member on Zoom; (c) looping, with the teachers from 2019-20 moving up with their students to the next grade; and (d) eSports and Rec leagues with online games like Valorant.
• Rethinking instruction with equity in mind. “Inequity is structurally baked into the system,” say Reich and Mehta, “and thus we need to directly address it if it is going to enable all students to succeed.” In addition, studies show that average- and lower-achieving students take the biggest hit with remote learning, widening the achievement gap. The implication: schools need to take a hard look at systems, culture, and pedagogy, include stakeholders in decision-making, give children of color and poverty a fair shake, and make classroom experiences “relevant, purposeful, and meaningful for all learners.”
Ideas: (a) reaching out to selected students to take part in planning instruction and activities for the 2020-21 school year; (b) designing curriculum units on race, protests, and the pandemic; and (c) building in time with the most vulnerable students, who might be designated to be in school every day.
• Amplify student agency. With less direct educator supervision over several months, students have been pushed to become more responsible for their own learning. Schools have tried to replicate the regular structures from afar, but it hasn’t always worked. Reich and Mehta believe we’ll be more successful if we “lean into students’ growing sense of agency, and find ways to build on and amplify it.” The more choice and involvement students have with the curriculum, the more motivated and engaged they will be.
Ideas: (a) start the year with a celebration of what students learned in the spring months and special things they created; (b) use school as a “base camp” for virtual trips to explore careers, scientific topics, history, and more; and (c) devote senior year to volunteering – for example, helping out with a first-grade class.
• Marie-Kondo the curriculum. This is essential because of lost time during the spring of 2020 and the built-in inefficiencies of remote learning. Schools should retain what creates joy and deprioritize what’s non-essential, say Reich and Mehta, “making sure students study a rich array of topics, but they study fewer of them and more deeply.”
Ideas: (a) have teacher teams take inventory and decide on essential topics and skills and those that spiral and are sequential and cumulative; (b) develop a competency-based set of assignments, rubrics, and assessments; (c) implement block scheduling to reduce transitions and clutter within each school day; and (d) maximize virtual visitors.
• Take full advantage of in-person time. Being in a school building with face-to-face contact with educators will be a scarce and precious resource next year, and schools need to be intentional about what’s best done in person and what’s better at home.
Ideas: (a) launching clubs, electives, and extracurriculars in the school, so when students attend, they’re experiencing something they really enjoy; (b) flipping the curriculum so home is for lecture-type instruction and projects, school for discussion, sharing, and relationships; and (c) home is for projects, school is for tutoring and small-group work.
• Nurture home and community learning. “The coronavirus fundamentally shifts the relationship between home and school,” say Reich and Mehta. Schools improvised this spring, asking parents to monitor school learning, but for the opening months of the coming school year, educators need to build stronger partnerships with families and communities so students can get their work done away from school. “Whenever possible,” say Reich and Mehta, “parents, neighbors, family members, and caregivers need to plan to devote a substantial amount of time next year to providing supervision and learning support to students.” Schools play a key role in orchestrating support for students whose families are not able to provide it – for example, if parents are first responders.
Ideas: (a) encourage “family learning victory gardens” – for example, a father who is a Vietnam War buff studying that topic with a teenager during a U.S. history course;
(b) support micro-schools – clusters of families that have created a safe bubble and can go to school together; and (c) allow students who thrive with online learning to remain at home.
• Build in reflection time. “Continuous learning and improvement is likely to be critical for success,” say Reich and Mehta. Some teacher teams quickly figured out virtual collaboration in the spring, but others did not. School leaders need to orchestrate the time, space, and support for grade-level and departmental teams to continuously reflect, learn, and adapt; get teams networking laterally across classrooms, teams, and schools to share emerging ideas and learn from each other; and make organizational changes to translate new insights into regular practice.
Ideas: (a) trading student contact time for teacher collaboration time, following the practice of high-performing Asian schools that have a higher ratio of staff-to-staff time versus staff-to-student time; and (b) empowering teachers to work with students to figure out the best learning configuration – for example, flipping lectures and hands-on time and using high achievers as student tutors.
“Imagining September: Principles and Design Elements for Ambitious Schools During Covid-19” by Justin Reich and Jal Mehta, MIT Teaching Systems Lab, July 2020; the authors can be reached at jreich@mit.edu and jal_mehta@gse.harvard.edu.
(Please Note: The summary above is reprinted with permission from issue #847 of
The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.)
