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Masters of Curriculum in the Time of COVID

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The Summer of COVID is almost over and we return to teaching and learning in the Time of COVID.  We have exhausted the summer with well-intentioned but conclusionless arguments about whether children should be in-school or at-home learners.  Opinion and data have abounded and most schools will implement an in-school and at-home design that fits their local dynamics of economics, politics, and school capacity.  Now, it is time to get do rather than talk.  It is time to teach. 

Never has a teacher been required to know her curriculum more than in the Fall of COVID.   Depending upon local COVID data, schooling will shift from in-school to at-home and back again throughout the school year for some if not all children.  One day she will be teaching in her classroom and poof!  Children and teachers may be quarantined into remote teaching and learning.  Where and how she sees her children may be an ever changing landscape.  In-class one day and at-home the next.  Now more than ever before, quality teaching and learning must be a constant in times of disruption.

Take Away

A teacher’s singular responsibility for the 2020-21 school year will be to cause each child to learn her annual grade level or subject course curriculum regardless of the student’s learning location.  This will, of course, be paired with the necessity of every teacher addressing the socio-emotional needs of children in a pandemic world and of families adjusting their work styles and life styles to a return to school.  With so many things disrupted and in disarray, a teacher’s clear and sustained knowledge of her curriculum will be the rock upon which we will educate children in 2020-21.  The battle cry for teacher’s will be “Know and Teach Your Curriculum”. 

What Do We Know?

Disrupted teaching and learning are not new to teachers.  Fire drills disrupt classes and hurricanes and blizzards disrupt school weeks.  Personal and family illness regularly absent teachers and children from the classroom.  A family that takes a prolonged vacation unrelated to school holidays requires modification to the flow of instruction and learning.  Within usual disruption, teaching and learning bounces back and returns to its yearly string of school days.  These are normal occurrences in the life and times of school.

Pandemic disruption is different. 

Teachers with hybrid schedules will have in-person contact with children one or two days per week on a rotating or alternating basis.  The other days of the week, teaching and learning will be remote.  This is juggling 3 or 4 balls in the air to assure that the teacher equally distributes in person time with all children and, while children are online, they continue to learn independent of the teacher.

Teachers of at-home children will teach a lesson to children with high-speed broadband Internet and with no or inadequate Internet connectivity, with parent support during the school day and without any adult supervision, and to children relying solely on mailed or school delivered packets of lessons.  A child’s time on task will be unseen.  A child may engage in today’s lesson today, tonight, tomorrow or next week.  And, then there is tomorrow’s lesson.  This is juggling 20 balls with the understanding that the juggler frequently must pick up dropped balls.

Toss in classroom or school closing when a child or teacher or staff member is exposed to or infected with the virus.  Then, all children will become at-home learners.  And, teachers will be teaching from home.

Teachers of children in-class and at-home simultaneously need to be be master jugglers.  The criteria for master juggling is a mastering of curriculum.

Why Is This Thus?

Disruption and broken strings of school days are facts.  Focused teaching and learning are a constant.  When reassembling during and after a disruption, a clear knowledge of her curriculum keeps a teacher pointed at the essential knowledge, skills and dispositions that all children must learn.  Equal to the national and community concerns about COVID is the national and community worry that children will not be provided the education required for their future.  Again, knowledge of curriculum is a teacher’s pathway to educating all children.

To Do

Focus on essential learning.  Knowledge of curriculum creates certainty in teaching what must be learned.  Every curriculum, every series, and every text provides a broad pathway of learning within which is a critical set of knowledge, skills and dispositions.  Knowing your curriculum keeps a teacher focused on what must be learned and allows disruption to shuck off the “it is nice to know”.  A teacher without this sound foundational knowledge chases every learning point possible without efficiency or effectiveness.

Focus on exceptional learning needs.  Knowledge of curriculum ensures that each child regardless of learning challenges is engaged regardless of location.  These are two significant “regardless” issues.  Children with IEPs or adaptive learning plans or without English fluency or who are children of various giftedness require modifications of essential curriculum that cause them to achieve and exceed the same outcomes as all other children.  These are equity and equality issues that cannot be excused by disruption or child location.  A mastery knowledge of curriculum keeps children with exceptional learning needs learning.

Focus on curricular outcomes.  Knowledge of curriculum creates deftness in the management of all learners.  Children range in their time and place within a unit of study and a knowledgeable teacher, like a shepherd, keeps them all moving in the same direction toward a known and necessary closure of the unit.  A teacher without deft management loses children along the way.  Deftness and a vigilant moving toward curricular outcomes keeps all children on the pathway to annual success.

Focus on formative assessments.  Knowledge of curriculum assures that checking for understanding and assessments of learning are included in every unit regardless of where children are learning.  Without this knowledge, it is easy for a teacher to become driven to deliver a quantity of instruction and lose sight of the quality of learning. 

Focus on learning modalities.  Knowledge of curriculum allows a teacher to shift from high tech to no tech teaching and learning while keeping all children learning.  An in-person child and an at-home/on-screen child and an at-home paper and pencil child can all be engaged in the same curricular standards and reaching the same learner outcomes.  A knowledgeable teacher works backward from the learning outcomes and builds instruction so that each child regardless of location reaches the same, high quality outcomes. 

The Big Duh!

COVID too shall pass.  When it does, we will not repeat the 2020-21 school year because some children did not learn their grade level or subject course curriculum.  Children will be promoted and graduated with what they learned this year.  We are called upon to deliver high quality teaching and learning in unbelievably difficult times.  A mastery knowledge of our curriculum is our best resource for succeeding in this responsibility.

And, there is no one else in our nation, state or community who can replace a master teacher.

Home Bound Teaching in the Time of COVID; Ichabod Crane Rides Again

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The Time of COVID exposes a new category of educational challenge.  It is not that school has lacked for challenges these days, but we have found a new dilemma for educating children when school houses are closed.  These are no option households characterized by any of the following:

  • No Internet or totally inadequate Internet
  • No daytime supervision
  • No daycare
  • No daycare that supports schooling
  • Children too young to be left alone

We give nominal lip service to the fact that public education is our nation’s #1 day care provider.  Millions of children are cared for and educated every day of a school year.  In many communities, school-based wrap around services go far beyond the 3 Rs to include feeding, clothing, medical care, mental health care, family services, recreational activities, and the list goes on.  Even during vacation periods, children and families continue to receive school-based services.  In the lives of many children and families, school is a major player.

COVID closed most schools in March.  Closed meant human-contact services stopped.  When education shifted to online, households quickly were categorized in their capacity to support continuing 4K-12 education.  Households with

  • adequate Internet and
  • an adult at home

were able to engage in online learning and complete the 2019-20 school year.  Completion did not look like completion in prior years, but these households were able to engage with teachers and receive grade level and course specific instruction.

Opposite these engaged households, we found many, too many, no option households.  The term no option refers to the fact that children in these households have no option for education other than daily in-school attendance.  When school house doors are closed, they have no option for a continuing education.

An at-home adult.  In the 1900s, seems like a long time ago, it was more common for a mother to be a homemaker.  Many mothers worked, but even more were at home.  During school vacation periods or when a child was ill, a parent at home provided supervision and care.  An at-home parent is rare in the 2000s when each adult in the household typically works away from home.  During school vacation periods or when a child is ill, parents need back-up systems to provide supervision and care.  The Time of COVID clearly separated households into those with adequate back-up systems and those with no options for back-ups.

Adults need to work.  No option conditions are not necessarily related household employment or income level, but they can be.  The Time of COVID forced many adults in high to low income positions into unemployment.  The need to find work, to create income to pay bills, and to support the family financially left many at-home children without adult supervision or care in their homes.  This is not a fault; it is another type of no option.

Day care centers also closed.  A back-up for many families when the school house is closed are local day care operators.  In one sentence – when COVID closed school houses it also closed day cares.  No option there anymore.

Older children as home school support for younger children.  Older siblings are a natural and historic go-to when school houses are closed, adults need to work, and day cares are closed.  Older children take care of younger children.  COVID, however, has stressed even this arrangement.  The role of baby-sitter/care provider for younger siblings is different than the role of in-home tutor and school work supervisor.  As many parents find they are not cut out to be home school teachers, so do older brothers and sisters.  And, if older children also are students, all children compete for time online and with family digital devices. 

Digital devices.  No option conditions are not due to a lack of digital devices, but they can be.  In the era of online education, any screen will do.  A student with a cell phone to desktop computer array can engage with a teacher for online teaching and learning.  Cell phones, however, are too small for school work assignments.  To fill the gap when a child does not have an adequate digital device to do online lessons, especially written and calculated assignments, many schools gave their students a take home IPad, Chromebook or laptop.  And, due to worry that COVID can be spread on hard surfaces, many schools want their students to keep these devices.

No or inadequate Internet.  Online teaching and learning lives and dies on the Internet.  No option households are clearly defined by their having no Internet connection or an inadequate Internet connection.  As ubiquitous as the Internet seems, there are many households in every community without.  Households having subscriptions to cable providers and high speed are on one end of the Internet continuum and households, often rural, that lie in the dead zones of tower and satellite provision are on the other end.  A dead zone without Internet provider coverage is an online education desert.  In between these two extremes are the majority of households with low megabits per second for downloading and slower still for uploading.  Online teaching and learning requires access to enough connection to stream instruction into the home and to upload assignments back to school.  Connectivity is further stressed if two children or more are competing or online time at home.  Internet inaccessibility contributes to online dropouts.

As testimony, my home is connected via on copper wire telephone connections that averages 3.5 megabits for downloading and .5 megabits for uploading.  I  drive to the local school where I park outside and mooch on their Internet.  Zooming in my home is a stop and go session with more stops than goes.  This is a common problem in my rural area.

Yet, schools are mandated to provide a continuing education for all children in the Time of COVID.  But wait, there is an option.  It is an older concept with a renewed capacity to provide an option for no option households.

The school fall back is a teacher of homebound children.  In many schools, a homebound teacher serves children too sick with lengthy illness or injury to attend school, home schooled children needing IEP or 504 Plan service, or children out-of school for disciplinary reasons.  In Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow, an itinerant teacher was hired by Dutch farmers to teach their children at home.  He was Ichabod Crane.  Our home bound teacher is a modern day Ichabod Crane who schedules time at no option households to transport assignments from in-school or at-home teachers to at-home students, provide linking instruction and tutoring for school assignments, conduct assessments and tests, and return completed school work to the teacher.  She drives a circuit of homes every day and provides continuing education where COVID prevents daily school attendance, lack of Internet prevents online connection, and children need a non-home body for their homeschooling.  Ichabod Crane rides again!

In the Time of COVID, schools do not spend as much every day for substitute teaching.  Funding for daily subs can be diverted to hiring home bound teachers.  Home bound teachers complying with CDC guidance of hand washing, masking, social distancing and sanitizing common surface and without own underlying health conditions can reasonably visit and teach children at home.  Teacher-certified substitute teachers who are unemployed by schools due to school house closure can supply a pool of potential home bound teachers.

Homebound teachers link an at-home child with the child’s regularly assigned teachers.  Homebound teachers keep a child on track to meet the school’s annual curricular goals for all students.  In combination with homes where Internet, digital devices, adults supervision, and adequate home schooling exist, a home bound teacher rescues the continuing instruction for no option children and keeps all children engaged in continuing education.

Just when we think there are no options, another option emerges.  Such is the work of public education.

Remote Education and Communicating with a Teacher

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A story from years past has new relevance today.  “A primary grade child saw her school teacher in the aisles of a local grocery store and exclaimed, ‘What are you doing here?  I thought you lived at school.’”.  Today’s updating of this story is a child learning at-home in the Time of COVID saying, “With cell phones, texting, e-mailing and social media, I thought you were available to my communications 24/7”.  “Nope” is the correct answer to each naïve comment.  We need to understand some boundaries.

In the Time of COVID, we have children attending school and children learning at-home and communication protocols need to be clearly established for each.  Communicating about teaching and learning with in-school children resembles pre-COVID communication with in-person questions and answers, group and individual conversations, and before and after school exchanges.  Most communication is successfully made during and just after the school day.

Children learning at-home are in the foggy zone of life on-line.  Some lessons are synchronous with a teacher and classmates in real time.  Some are asynchronous and children work independently of the teacher and classmates.  In order to balance screen time, many at-home children are advised to break up their school work with other at-home activities.  Add to this the need for at-home children to wait for parental assistance with lessons until working parents return home after a working day.  The result is a thinking that communication with teachers can and should take place at any time day or night. The norms for at-home children contacting teachers are new and not-yet defined.

Reasonable, respectful and responsible need to be our norms.

School leaders ask teachers to provide a single curriculum to all children regardless of a child being in-school or at-home. In addition, principals and teachers work to create a teaching and learning environment in which children can shift from one location to the other given parental choice and trends of  health data.  These provisions create a real expectation of a child’s accessibility to a teacher in order to answer learning questions about instruction.

For children in-school and at-home alike, a school day should begin with a teacher opening the in-person and at-home instructional day at the time a regular day at school begins.  Children in-school will continue with a school day that ends at the usual time for dismissal from school. In-school children have in-person communications with a teacher throughout their school day. Children at-home will continue with a school day including real time with a teacher and off-line time without a teacher. At-home children have on-line communication with a teacher at varied times during the day with the real expectation that a teacher will respond quickly.

After school hour communications present their own dilemma. In pre-COVID Time, students and parents called or electronically communicated with teachers after school hours.  Perceived necessity, being what it is, spurred such communication.  In pre-COVID Time, after the end of the school day, a teacher could answer or not answer a phone, let phone communications go to voice mail, check or not check texts, e-mails and social media addressed to them.  Many communications could reasonably wait until the next school day. Real emergencies were appropriately responded to, but most communications were not real emergencies.  A teacher had control of the nature and timing of a response. 

The ubiquitous nature of on-line schooling can easily cause children and parents to assume a 24/7 access to teachers.  If a child can do asynchronous, remote lessons at any time of the day, evening or night, a child can think that their teacher is accessible in parallel time. 

Not necessarily so. Teachers do have out-of-school lives that need to be respected.

A first appropriate guideline is that a school day is its usual hours, usually 8:00 am to 4:00 pm.  Given time for lunch and usual health-related breaks, a teacher should be accessible during these clock hours.  Unless teaching at the moment or engaged with another child, a teacher who is not synchronous with at-home children should be accessible by an at-home child via phone or text or e-mail with the expectation of an immediate or very quick response.  The repeated caveat is unless teaching or engaged with another child.  To facilitate understanding, a teacher can readily post their usual lunch time or necessary time out of the remote classroom.

A second appropriate guideline is that non-emergency out-of-school day communication by any child or parent will receive a response the next day.  Real emergencies aside, next day response is a real and best practice. 

The Time of COVID has disrupted so many things we used to take for granted, including home and school communications. We need to establish new guidelines that help not hinder good teaching and learning. Everyone wants all children to be in-school learners as soon as possible and good communication guidelines will help us get there. If we cannot make these two appropriate guidelines work during the Time of COVID, what will post-COVID be like?  Will 24/7 teacher access be the new norm when all children are in-school?  I don’t think so. 

Remote teaching and learning is not the Wild West with no rules or norms.  Responsible communication is essential for in-school and at-home learning and it is easier than we think when we treat each other respectfully.

Lesson Design in the Time of COVID

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Every now and then what we learned decades ago and think of as old becomes valuable again.  The Time of COVID has made teaching to students at-home a schooling reality for many educators.  Thrown into remote education by school closures this past March, most educators used emergency teaching practices.  No one was prepared for daily synchronous teaching of all children.  We learned a lot about the inequity and inequality of Internet access in many homes, web-based teaching and learning platforms, and the reality of screen time fatigue.  On a very positive side, we relearned the importance of lesson design.  Teaching remotely requires a more precise lesson plan and this reintroduced us to Madeline Hunter’s eight step lesson plan.

Madeline Hunter’s Instructional Theory into Practice gained national attention in the 1970s and 80s.  She was named one of the 100 most influential women in education.  Her work at UCLA focused on the importance of students “getting it right the first time”.  Carefully planned, taught, modeled, checked and practiced learning better assures that children are successful in daily and unit lessons and do not require extensive reteaching.  She emphasized that all reteaching requires unlearning what is wrong before learning what is right.   Our reality is that reteaching is not always accomplished due to its significant time and effort requirement.  The need to “move on” and “we will correct that later” can leave children with incorrect understanding and skills that clearly influences future learning.  Especially with remote education.

Additionally, reteaching in remote education is just awkward.  It means arranging screen time with or deliverable materials to a child, manipulating the steps of unlearning and reteaching on screen or via the continued exchange of materials, and assessing that correct learning has been achieved.  This must be done while maintaining ongoing remote education with all children.  Or, reteaching is assigned to an interventionist who remotely works with a child.  Ugh!

It is better to “get it right the first time”.  Hence, a return to the Hunter Lesson Design.

  1. Anticipatory Set
  2. Objective: Purpose
  3. Teaching: Input
  4. Teaching: Modeling
  5. Checking for Understanding
  6. Guided Practice
  7. Independent Practice
  8. Closure
Madeline Hunter Lesson Plan Model

The Lesson Design fits on-screen time very well.  A remote lesson that mirrors an in-class lesson may last 50 to 60 minutes can be chunked into segments of screen time with the insertion of a brief “checking for understanding” at the end of a chunk.

Input and Modeling constitute a a chunk that can be recorded so that a child can view and hear “correctness” over and over again.

Checking for Understanding queries can be repeated at any time.  Synchronous teaching and learning allows all children in the remote class to see and hear the queries.  And, synchronous teaching allows a teacher to “call” on any and every child.

Remote Guided Practice may be its own chunk of screen time.  Guided Practice requires “show me, explain to me, and do it again” time.  This can be done with all children on screen or with an individual child on screen. 

Independent Practice can be off screen.  Children can work independently off screen or in small groups on screen.  The teacher does not need to be on screen.

Closure brings the teacher back together with all children and is a reciprocal process.  Children explain, show and demonstrate what they learned and how their learning connects back to the purpose and objectives of the lesson and how their learning builds an anticipation of future learning. 

The Hunter template provides a remote teacher with a guide to ensure that a remote lesson is a complete lesson from start to finish.  It is “chunkable” and does not require continuous on screen time for the teacher or children.  Most importantly, the Hunter template points to the importance of “getting it right the first time.” 

In the Time of COVID, If We Value an Equitable and Equal Education for All Children, No Option is No Option

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Almost every question regarding how schools should operate in the Time of COVID leads to this problem – no matter how well intended and accommodating, plans for re-opening schools do not allow all children to receive an equitable and equal education.  A second outcome of almost every plan is that a segment of teachers, staff, children, parents and community are unhappy with its outcomes.  Our educational systems have worked hard to create accommodating options in every area where the education of children is not equitable and equal.  And, educators have worked to create parent, family and community partnerships in school programming and services to assure equity and equality.  COVID is leaving educators without options to provide the kind of options that make education equitable and equal for children and amiable with parents.  No options is not an option.

I posit this as a given. There is a real difference between in-school and at-home learning for students, regardless of how diligent schools are in providing remote instruction.  At-home just is not the same as being in-school and this this builds conditions of inequity and inequality.

The first divisor of COVID is the reality of health conditions.  Children and their families and teachers and their families who have health conditions that are imperiled by COVID have no option.  Their baseline consideration is “I cannot participate in any schooling that presents my exposure to any person who is infected or contagious or has been exposed to such.”  Because the infected and contagious may be present in any social situation, this immediately eliminates in-person teaching and learning for these students and teachers.  Their parameter must be safety first.  Students and teachers with health conditions have no options for in-school attendance.

The second divisor is perception – perceived danger or perceived safety.  Whether a person perceives danger or perceives safety, their perception is right.  Prevalent COVID data yields this “glass half full or glass half empty” proposition.  Our county is rated by our Department of Health Services as being “high in COVID activity” – community spread.  Our county has a suffered few COVID-related deaths and a low number of hospitalizations.  The “high” rating of community spread builds the perception of present danger.  The “low” number of deaths builds the perception of relative safety.  No argument can convince either perceiver that their perception is erroneous.  Perception is reality and the reality is that some children and teachers believe they should be in-school and some children and teachers believe they must be at-home.  Students and teachers who perceive the dangers of in-school attendance are separated into at-home students and teachers. No options to be in-person.

The third and fourth divisors are real time factors.  Some schools have the physical capacity for all children and teachers to be socially distanced in-school.  A combination of lower enrollment and available in-school classrooms spaces allow for a socially distanced instruction of all children.  At the same time, some schools do not have this capacity.  At best, these schools can offer a combination of either in-school and at-home instructional days for all children or in-school all week instruction for some children and at-home all week instruction for other children.    Social distancing requirements are dividing children into full-time or part-time in-school and/or at-home students.

Internet access is the fourth and highly significant real time divisor. Synchronous  screen time between teachers and students has become a strong tool for delivering in-school teaching to at-home students.  Some homes have high speed connectivity and some have little to no connectivity at all.  And, of those homes with connectivity, some Internet is not strong enough to support streaming and Zooming.  Additionally, the amount of school time required for at-home learning can be very expensive given a family’s Internet plan.  Internet connectivity has divided students at home in the “haves” and “have nots”.  Access to the Internet is a very real creator of inequality and inequity.

A fifth divisor is the presence or lack of parental supervision and support for at-home learning.  This is a true have and have not division.  The economics of some homes require that adults work full time.  Their need is inarguable.  Children in these homes do not have adult supervision and daily support of their at-home learning.  The economics of other homes allows an adult to be at home.  Children in these homes have adult supervision and support.  However, not all adults are suited for supervising and supporting at-home education.  The lack of an adult at home or an adult who is suited for at-home education leaves at-home students without needed options for their learning supervision and support.

The final divisor lies in the community. Local economies work best in the school year when children are in school and adults are available for work. When COVID forced schools to shift to at-home student learning last fall, local economies suffered. Reopening the economy pushes schools to provide in-school teaching and in-school learning. When educational leaders attend to health data’s indicating the need for at-home student learning, an immediate adversarial relationship erupts between economic and educational interests with small to no options for compromise.

To reclaim needed options for educators, students and parents, we need:

  • Community commitment to following medical guidance that drives the local infection rate to one (1) case per one hundred thousand citizens (100,000) and hold that rate over time.  In our count of less than 100,000 in population, the rate is no more than one (1) new, positive COVID test per day. This requires enforced masking and social distancing mandates.
  • Suspension of school until the above local infection rate is achieved.  The 180 days of school year for all schools, teachers and students will slide back in the chronological calendar until this rate is achieved.  Education will be achieved, just not now and not with the current examples of inequity and inequality.
  • Governmental financing of ubiquitous high speed Internet for every community regardless of population density and commercial subscription. Every aspect of life in a community needs this.
  • State and local financing to employ enough essential school employees to achieve social distancing in all school operations – classroom, transportation, food service. If essential personnel are not available, schools cannot provide in-school teaching and learning.
  • State and local financing to ensure that all areas of a school can be sanitized quickly and effectively is machine and not hand labor. Cleaning builds both the reality and perception of safe school environments.
  • PPP coverage for an adult to be an at-home supervisor and learning supporter for 4K through grade 6 age children.

It is absurd that a nation of such resources should not ensure an equitable and equal education for all children, even in the Time of COVID.  Or, to restate this, it is absurd that a nation of such resources is willing to squander the educated future of a generation of children.