Teach and Learn from Home

Multi-Classroom Leadership with Students & Teachers in Multiple Locations

What can Multi-Classroom Leadership look like if some students and teachers need to stay home, or if schools open, then shut, in waves in the coming school year? This model offers three detailed scheduling and staffing model options for Opportunity Culture schools faced with those conditions, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Multi-Classroom Leadership When All Students & Teachers Are at Home

This detailed model explains how to organize roles and schedules and other key elements when all students and teachers must work from home, with detailed schedule examples. The slide deck provides a brief overview of considerations and recommendations for Opportunity Culture schools to continue achieving high-growth student learning and developing students’ critical social-emotional skills, and to continue providing strong support to teaching teams.

District Policies for At-Home Learning

As students and teachers shift to working from home, many district policies need to shift as well. Our new publication, Recommended District Policies for At-Home Teaching and Learning, provides recommendations with a focus on: What policies are both feasible and most likely to produce strong learning outcomes for all students, especially disadvantaged learners?

Guiding a Crisis Move to At-Home Learning

Multi-classroom leaders can help smooth and lead the way for their teaching teams and students when a crisis requires a move to at-home teaching and learning. We suggest some ways MCLs can continue their job of guiding and supporting teaching teams to ensure that all students continue learning—and to provide the social-emotional support students need.

Quick Guide to Online Technology

In response to the COVID-19 school shutdowns, we have created a resource table to provide a quick comparison of several popular online platforms and tips for using these, safely and securely, in online classrooms. These resources will be helpful if MCLs need to evaluate and select platforms to use with their team’s students. When using any platform, educators should be sure it adheres to their district’s privacy rules.

Stories of Educators Teaching & Leading from Home

With little time to prepare for at-home teaching and learning, Opportunity Culture educators are bravely and innovatively doing what’s best for students. We’re collecting their stories and will be sharing them here:

• For This MCL, A Week of Team Planning and Parenting
• In Georgia, Leading a Team on Distance Teaching and Caring
• Keep Doing What Worked: Advice for At-Home Learning
• In Charlotte, Keeping Connected to 212 At-Home Students
• Consistency and Care: Confronting COVID-19 in a Rural School Community
• Spreading Support in Vance County During At-Home Learning
• From Start to Finish, A Focus on Relationships During At-Home Learning
• High-Touch At-Home Learning? That’s the Plan in Indianapolis School
• In Arizona, Turning Vulnerabilities Into Strengths as Teaching Goes Home

Database: NC Districts’ COVID-19 Response

Public Impact and EdNC have published a database showing how North Carolina’s 115 school districts are dealing with COVID-19 school closures. An accompanying opinion piece from Public Impact’s co-presidents looks at what state leaders must provide to help districts so they can: provide technology and support for it; set clear expectations for the frequency, duration, and nature of videoconference learning; and rapidly expand small-team leadership by high-growth teachers such as multi-classroom leaders.

More Resources

Many media and education organizations are compiling useful resources; here are some that we found helpful. Share your other favorites with us.

• The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, which has extensive experience in online teaching and did a pilot last year of Remotely Located Multi-Classroom Leadership, provides guidance on online teaching during emergencies, with many video tutorials for using tech platforms, advice on considerations for students with IEPs, and more.
• EdNC.org’s coverage includes links to resources for educators.
• Brooklyn LAB worked with Public Impact and other partners to produce the Brooklyn LAB Instructional Program Scheduling Map, responding to guidance on social distancing for reopening, to help schools think through how to use teaching teams and groups of students to ensure that those receiving in-person instruction can do so safely.
• Education Resource Strategies has produced helpful resources for districts to reopen their schools under differing circumstances in the fall; see them here.
• Teach Plus posted tips for online teaching here.