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For the first week, our teachers carried on with the status quo, i.e. continuing to upload daily assignments into Google Classroom.  It quickly became apparent, however, that this was overwhelming from the students' perspectives (to be getting 6 or 7 new assignments every day without a structure in place to help them carve out time to do the work).

Our ILT met and decided to move our teachers into grade level teams and do team planning for project-based learning units.  We were able to roll this out by week 3, and it has been successful for many, many reasons, not the least being the team building, co-planning, and project-based learning experiences our staff is getting "on the fly."  Although our student engagement has remained low (30%), the silver lining is that our staff has been able to achieve a mind-shift and is now going to be ready to open the year with team-wide, project-based learning units that are co-planned.

Three other things to note about our remote learning plan:
1) We followed state guidelines to limit assignments/activities to 3 hours of remote learning per day.
2) We create a daily schedule that we assign to students every morning.  It is set up like a checklist for them to check off the activities as they complete them.  It includes all the links to anything not being posted on Google Classroom (like art or PE activities, as those classes didn't have GCRs).  It also includes any special events happening that day (like a virtual call with a famous poet, a virtual science experiment with UMass scientists, or a Q&A session with local food truck owners).  This schedule also includes a daily reflection question at the end.
3) To moderate the number of contacts families were getting, we also divided up our students evenly across our staff.  Each staff got a group of 10-15 students as their "primary contacts."  Staff make 1 contact each week with families.  This reduced the frustration families were feeling from contact overload, and it reduced the stress the teachers were feeling when they first were trying to keep track of 80-120 students in their classes. Our VILS tech lead then made an easy to use Points-of-Contact spreadsheet for teachers to update weekly with #of contacts and #of assignments completed.

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We have a three prong approach to celebrating successes:
1) Teams choose two "online students of the week" every week.  Then our principal posts a "Congratulations" video on ClassDojo and the ELA teachers on each grade level team post the video in their GCRs (Google Classrooms).  This ensures that parents and students all have a chance to see who is being celebrated so they can comment.
2) As our school's instructional coach, I have a balcony view of what is happening.  This allows me to create a list of shout-outs for staff each week.  My shout-outs have taken the form of video-recorded and "live" cheers, video-recorded rap beats, and most recently, multi-media presentations of collected screenshots and lesson exemplars over the course of a week.  These shout-outs are shared at our Friday afternoon Zoom staff meetings.
3) As the instructional coach, I also sent out emails each week of remote learning exemplars - we are all "learning how to fly the plane as we build it" and although I couldn't have told people how to design their lessons for remote learning, I certainly recognized excellence when I saw it. I started to collect these lessons and posted links to them for other staff to see. Each time I did this I made sure to bullet what the teacher did AND why it was impactful. This was another way to shout-out staff for trying something new while also providing other teachers with great ideas and examples.

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VILS/Digital Promise offered just the right amount of PD at just the right times.  For example, I was quickly invited to PD on topics such as "The Art of the Screencast" and "Deep Dive into Zoom."  These webinars allowed me (the VILS coach) to explore the platforms a bit, think about what my staff most needed based on my observations across the teams, and then tailor the PD decks for my staff.  75% of my staff have voluntarily joined me for these "extra" PD sessions, and the results are immediately evident in both the remote learning assignments and the increased quality of lessons/learning activities offered during "office hours."

Secondly, VILS tech support was helpful when we were first trying to understand the qualities and limitations of Zoom and Google Meet. We were provided with enough information for our tech dept to pursue Zoom as an option. We still use both, but most of our teachers love Zoom for its better interactive qualities.

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We wish we had known how little our students really understood about using Google classroom and using their iPads.  Even though they had submitted an assignment 100 times in school, for some reason we had SO many students who struggled to remember how to do basic tech things.  We wish we had made all the "how to" screencasts long before, so that we could just send out the quick tutorial as needed.  It would have saved days and weeks of students and teachers feeling frustrated.

We also wish we had known more about how to use Zoom and some of the other apps, like EduPuzzle, that make for great interactive remote learning experiences. We wish we had known more about what makes a quality screencast, or how best to scaffold an assignment for a variety of learners when in a remote environment. We also wish we had known more about Nearpod and Jamboard, as they would have enhanced the interactive possibilities during remote virtual classrooms.

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As part of our shift to grade level teams, we moved to team-planned project-based learning.  Teaching teams met twice a week (Mon & Tues) to plan out the following week's lessons.  They would start with an end product idea (like masks) or an essential question (like How are masks a part of our identity?).  They they would brainstorm the ways that topic could be explored through the lens of math, science, social studies, reading, writing, arts, music, etc.  Then they would assign who was lead for each day's lesson, etc.

As a result of this, we began to see highly engaging and authentic learning experiences being designed and offered to students, like our 7th grade Food Truck project. This project included the science of heat transfer as part of the recipe writing, finding area and volume, as part of setting up a food truck, advertising and marketing lessons, AND a live interview with two food truck owners. Students also designed their own food truck models with recipe boards, etc. It was terrific!

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Two additional items:

1) We struggled to get students engaged.  Even with 90% family contact, we only have 30% of students engaged in any given week.

2) Our 8th grade team came up with three wonderful ways to celebrate our 8th graders. First, they asked each staff member to choose 6 8th graders to write letters to (with topics such as, tell the child his/her strengths, a favorite memory, something you miss about them). Second, they created a digital yearbook for students to create their own page (and we are getting hard copies made for our kiddos). Finally, they set up a week of virtual interviews/panel discussions with a variety of high school sports coaches, arts/music/theater teachers, academic teachers, and current high school students, so that our 8th graders would get a chance to ask questions and hear more about the high school experience to help prepare them for next year.

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We are taking a three-pronged approach to planning for next year:

Plan A:  Plan as if school will be open as usual.  This plan, however, is already being enhanced by our new team-wide project-based learning.

Plan B: Plan for a blend of school and remote learning.  We think we might get a few weeks in school and then all be sent home again.  Therefore, we're planning for how we can review online learning systems and routines right away so that our students are MUCH MORE independent with technology if they are sent home again.

Plan C: We don't want to think about this one, but we are also planning for 100% remote learning.    The most difficult part of Plan C is how to get our incoming 6th graders onboard with the iPads and the Google Classroom platform if we can't be in the room with them.

The district is also creating content-based teams who will work over the summer to determine how to 1) assess student skills

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We are going to allow current 6th and 7th graders keep their devices for the summer. We are asking 8th graders to turn in their devices (either when they are given their yearbook, or at graduation on August 17th).

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Our VILS Tech coach created a parent/student friendly Tech Help form to fill out. If a teacher is on a call or receives a communication from a parent or student, they can also fill out the form for the student. Then the tech coach works on the problem and lets the family/student/teacher know the outcome.

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No, our student tech team is not meeting.