What’s Working?

What’s NOT Working?

• Consistency in schedules, routines
• Student engagement
• Small group breakouts allow for differentiation
• Live instruction supported by async work
• Wednesday planning time

Only CRLS has fully asynchronous day

• Departmentalizing, team teaching
• Use of Ed Collab resources to provide remote instruction

• Staffing inequities
• Higher student to teacher ratios; staff needed to provide breakout spaces & Tier 2 instruction
• Specials Model
• Students are not engaging effectively, asynchronous
• Workload is high
• Many district-provided resources still need to be adapted for remote instruction
• Ed Collab resources are running out. EC teachers need pay and release time to create more resources
• Remote students are not getting equal resources

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What’s Working?

What’s NOT Working?

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Remote

• Children are engaged and learning
• We have learned to use technology and have more resources than we did in Spring
• Consistency of remote feels valuable
• Staff and kids are in the safest possible environment with the lowest risk of COVID exposure

• Specialist teachers feel overlooked and lacking adequate tech to make classes meaningful
• Expectations for remote educators are unclear
• Digitizing resources is labor intensive & time consuming
• Isolation makes it difficult to collaborate, feel success
• Kids are missing social interactions
• Too much screen time for all

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What’s Working?

What’s NOT Working?

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Remote

• Established routines and students are showing progress.
• Children are showing up happy and mostly excited about school.
• Students seem more invested and are attending much more regularly.
• Learning how to take care of themselves and advocate for what they need

• Time to create materials and collaborate.
• Materials- promised supplies that have still not arrived and there has been no communication about it.
• Support - Remote teachers in grades 1-5 do not have additional support to manage groups
• Students being able to find quiet space in their home.
• Basic Internet connections also interfere.

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What’s Working?

What’s NOT Working?

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Remote

• It has been invaluable to have the resources created by the Ed Collabs. Even with these resources, planning time takes hours each day, but without these materials, I and other teachers would be drowning.
• Both students and staff are more proficient with the technology.
• Students are following routines with the more consistent schedule and do their work.

• Keeping students on task while on screen
• 1 teacher and no para with 21 students.
• I need extra help to keep them on task/do breakout rooms/differentiate and give extra help
• Students need community engagement*
• We are almost out of material created by the ed collabs, and the district is not supporting their continued work. This will lead to teacher burnout.
• There has been so much money/ time/ focus on in the in person teaching. There needs to be more resources for REMOTE LEARNERS. Students needed to wait for their science kits and we are still waiting for our MATH MANIPULATIVES.

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What’s Working?

What’s NOT Working?

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Remote

• Student engagement & attendance
• Grade-level models & instruction
• Team-teaching across grade levels; push-ins
• WIN blocks to maximize Tier 1 instruction
• Use of resources from Ed Collabs, math, & science depts
• Wednesday planning time
• Use of SeeSaw, Sites, Classroom

• Lack of interactive resources from the district & physical materials
• Cancelled and/or async specials
• Need more time for differentiated instruction for students; WIN block isn’t enough

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What’s Working?

What’s NOT Working?

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Remote

• Attendance, relationships, routines, engaged learning
• Small groups and live instruction
• Materials distribution bimonthly
• Technology (SeeSaw, Zoom)

• Too much screen time for younger learners (JK/K on all day)
• Workload to develop remote materials, adapt district materials; creating ELA curricula from scratch
• Pacing guides are unrealistic, given the amount of pre-teaching required

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What’s Working?

What’s NOT Working?

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Remote

• Schedule, structure, continuity
• Teacher-created and shared curricular materials
• Some students participating/learning well

• Engagement is really difficult
• Socialization concerns for young students
• Concern about Ed Collab resources running out, needing more help with student-facing materials
• Large classes full of high needs students (k-3)
• Scheduling is hard; Wednesdays packed
• Environmental factors (including at childcare centers)
• Lack of discussion around grading,, instructional strategies, etc.

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What’s Working?

What’s NOT Working?

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Remote

• Student engagement & attendance
• Strong community, trust with families
• 4th & 5th grade-level models
• Co-teaching, fully synchronous for the morning
• Interventionist & coach push-ins for small lessons
• Departmentalizing, intervention blocks in the afternoon
• Social hour with built-in SEL and community building
• Consistent schedules & routines
• Engaging projects that are anti-racist and SEL-informed, meeting students where they are at

• Asynchronous specials
• Workload is immense
• Mostly resources from ELA/HSS still need to be adapted into remote interface�
• Harder to target at-risk students
• Staff morale due to portrayal in public forums
• Challenging to prioritize all subjects synchronously

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What’s Working?

What’s NOT Working?

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Remote

• Consistent routines & schedules
• Building community with kids on the screen
• Meeting in small groups and having discussions with kids
• Using some of the technology tools to help with our instruction

• Inequity with class sizes - some teachers have 9 students and some have 23.
• In 4th & 5th grade they have 40 students because of teaching by subject area but don’t have assistants
• Spending many hours past the school hours grading and giving feedback
• Teaching on Wednesdays - if we had that day to grade and give feedback like the HS that would be helpful
• Trying to meet the SEL needs of students is difficult and parents want more

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What’s Working?

What’s NOT Working?

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Remote

• Consistent routines & schedules
• Technology is being implemented effectively; new Google Meet tools

• At-risk students - access, attendance, and engagement
• Workload; mental health
• Staffing - large classes with no paraprofessionals

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What’s Working?

What’s NOT Working?

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Remote

• Incorporating visuals during Zoom sessions, multiple shorter live lessons during the day (like morning meeting, snack, read aloud)
• Doing staff and IEP meetings through zoom has worked out great - no need to allow for travel time, finding parking, staggered school days, etc.!

• It is a very long day on the screen with days that seem to never end! The work / home boundaries have become very blurred; and for staff - remote work requires significantly more prep due to the need to access various technology

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What’s Working?

What’s NOT Working?

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Remote

• Tracking work completion is easier
• Students are making progress in tech
• Developing relationships with students

• No time for individual interventions
• Online lesson planning is extremely time-consuming
• Some at-risk students are struggling
• Time should be spent (by CPS and educators) on designing rich lessons, meeting authentically with students, and planning high quality differentiation..

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Remote

• Cobra dens, small advisory and getting to know them and their families well, better than if we were in person.
• Establishing a routine, students interacting with each other
• The opportunity to give more support in small groups and individual attention to students. Switching up my curriculum and doing what is best for kids.
• I enjoy using technology in my teaching, and this has made me even more comfortable and allowed me to get creative with technology. I think for the independent students, they are really thriving actually.Students seem comfortable with using technology
• Scholar engagement, participation, progress. The motivated scholars are engaged
• I can use the bathroom when I need to.
• I like it that Specialists are no longer considered "enrichment". That made it tough in the spring.
• For some some students, the remote platform seems effective and they are making gains.
• Peardeck because we can easily see who hasn't responded and we are getting more consistent participation than we did when in school. I'm able to collect a larger amount of data on students and so I am able to adjust my lesson accordingly.
• Time is being used much more effectively as there is not the same transition time and as soon as the class starts, we are working from beginning to end.
• I'd say 90% of my scholars are highly engaged and producing impressive work under the circumstances.
• Some caregivers and students have told me they prefer remote learning. Many scholars who got in trouble at school are thriving remotely.
• I've been able to modify the curriculum, focusing on what is essential.
• Me and my scholars are safe, I have 100% daily attendance and participation, we have established routines that engage learners as part of a successful learning model.
• It's getting better now that everyone is getting used to the new normal.

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Remote

• Talking to blank screens- not knowing if scholars are actually present or not
• Expecting scholars to complete the amount of work that is being asked of them without getting overwhelmed
• The district not having standards based grading.
• It's time consuming to convert my lessons into fully 100% digital.
• Not enough planning time or time to complete OSS paperwork
• For some students remote learning does not require enough structure. Some students have not mastered the executive functioning necessary to independently initiate tasks, and stay focused on their work.
• Parents don’t understand how to use classroom and Aspen.
• The amount of ADDITIONAL paperwork that special educators are being asked to do on top of their regular tasks as special educators.
• We are not seeing student faces so we cannot get those non-verbal cues that tell us that a student needs assistance or may not be understanding something.
• Some students are not attending to the lessons and there are limited things we can do to reach these students in a remote environment.
• The fact that I am working 60hrs week. The 10% of scholars who are not succeeding (most on IEP).
• The actual learning that is happening is moving at a much slower rate and students who struggled before are struggling even more
• Having scholars actively participate on a regular basis.
• It is hard to assess and test students as well as hold student accountable.
• Kids are not logging on

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Remote

• We are able to safely provide educational and social experiences to our middle grade students. We are able to highly individualize the work to meet students' needs, because of our reliance on ed tech. I think we have a better understanding than ever in some areas of our students' work habits, academic strengths, and challenges. We are building in lots of visual, aural and oral options for how to participate which is always a good practice.Ability to get student data, flexibility with schedule, STEM blocks
• We've found a rhythm and are able to assign and assess work, give students timely feedback, work with them individually, and give them opportunities to have fun as well
• The technology is very good. Students have multiple ways to respond at any moment.
• Connecting with students in advisory, using online platforms to implement curriculum and collect data, we are safe
• Students know what to expect and show up to their classroom video calls. Using different apps and media I can plan fun interactive lessons for students. There are clear expectations and students seem to be engaging in a lot of the work.
• Co-teaching happening in most core classes so we can meet with almost/all kids in each class.
• Some students are more focused w/o social aspect. Teachers are finding ways to keep students engaged
• By and large, kids show up and stay engaged! Especially when we're able to have smaller groups or classes with choice (advisory, VPA mini-courses, LitBlock or STEM Block electives on Wed.) students are invested and learning.
• Students get more individual attention in some ways than they do in person, and it can be more private. For some, remote is less distracting without classmates around. The pace of the day is slower, with more breaks.
• Work production is up for the majority of students because there is less of a stressor on turning something in at that moment.
• Students can work together in break out rooms in a way that they couldn't currently do in person.
• Students are learning, still joining clubs, and still talking to each other.
• As a special educator I can work privately with a student during the full class without others noticing.
• I have diversified so much the tools I use to teach. I have learned so many new things to help students become independent learners. We are learning more now with less hours than we did when in-person.
• Teachers feel safe

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Remote

• Remote school increases inequities in the educational experience. Not all families have the money/time/space to create a "home office" for their children. Also, our community relies on schools for services far behind simple academics - for many, school may be the primary provider of counseling needs, nutrition needs, social needs, and so on. I do not think schools were resourced enough to adequately cater to all of our students physical, social, mental and emotional needs even before pandemic, but the pandemic has certain highlighted the essential services that our schools do provide.
• It's a lot of screen time. A lot of screen time can be taxing on the body and eyes. More flexibility for assigning asynch non-screen work would be great.
• It has been hard to try and navigate how to teach in new online ways.
• Students have few to no opportunities to meet new friends.
• Students miss socializing. For a variety of reasons, they don't want to turn on their cameras, so it's extra hard to read emotions and attention. All the video and screen time really wears on everyone.
• Not being able to see and truly interact with the students to build strong relationships. Often times it is difficult to get a response from a student when communicating with them. Only teaching the kids for 2 days is not working. Achievement gaps are increasing. I have to also be the teacher for my own children when trying to teach my students.
• It is difficult to reach students who are disengaged.
• Cameras off, hard to really gauge where students are academically, and overall relationship building which tends to be a great way to encourage students to participate and complete work.
• Hard to assess learning of all students, don't interact with kids unless they are "on" and even then it's mostly black boxes on a screen, not feeling as connected to kids as we would be if in person, attendance to groups is scattered
• A few kids are struggling to engage. There are systems in place to follow up with those kids.
• There are kids who we are not reaching, who are not attending. (This happens in in-person school, too.)
• Totally stressed out by the district steamrolling over us. It is so stressful. It makes no sense. I am so stressed out by the district.

Remote

• Safer for staff and students and especially staff with underlying health conditions
• Tracking work /students progress is feasible
• Convenient for staff with young children
• Both educators and students are improving in using tech for educational purposes
• Availability of most of the staff regardless any family or health conditions
• Time is being used much more effectively
• Creating more room for creativity and reform our teaching and interacting strategies
• Most things. No flagrant behavior issues!. Starting to work on small groups now that Google classroom is working with breakout rooms.
• Attendance - above 85% all the time
• Students mostly seem engaged. We have gotten into a rhythm and are using technology well. Most students are completing their assignments and have reported that they enjoy the class. Workblock period has been helpful to keep kids from falling through the cracks.
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• Not seeing students in person is difficult
• Home assignment submission - about 50% most of the time
• It is hard to gauge engagement at times, easy for kids to tune out. Workload is intense for teachers, particularly all the correspondence.
• There isn't enough time to really cover much content.
• The isolation
• It has been frustrating to teach a world language in this method.

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Remote

• Attendance is better than typical and students are more engaged than expected
• Tech tools like: Peardeck, Kami, EdPuzzle, Jamboard, Desmos
• Students have a variety of ways to engage in class (verbal, written, etc.)
• Consistency of schedule and in organization of assignments
• 1:1 check-ins with students, study sessions for individual student help
• Break-out rooms for group work
• Effort put into planning during summer has paid off
• Advising program - Building relationships and more time for Special Ed. teachers to connect with kids on caseload
• Collaboration within departments - Asynchronous Wednesdays are very needed
• Students are engaging and doing quality work
• Teachers are learning new tools and a variety of ways to engage students

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Remote

• Harder to build relationships with students virtually
• It is very difficult and time-consuming to develop lessons and teach in this environment
• It is difficult to judge the level of engagement for some students, especially without video. Some students are falling through the cracks
• Already existing inequities are amplified - students don’t all have access to the same level of technology and/or space to work and learn
• Too much screen time for teachers and students
• Schedule does not reflect research in best practices for virtual learning
• The isolation and monotony is really wearing on students and teachers
• Mixed messages to students about attendance at study sessions
• Everything takes longer virtually - planning, grading, and actually running class