The huge question that weighs on my mind is what our school needs to do to support them through a school year that is possibly even more challenging than the 2020-21 pandemic year.

Of the many buzzwords that memorialized this past school year, one of them would be engagement.  It was a constant search for our teaching staff to strategize what learning experiences would keep our students focused and engaged amid overwhelming home distractions and mental health issues were overwhelming them.  In time, we concluded that crucial to student buy-in were greeting every student when they logged into class, validating and praising class participation and making one-on-one connections in breakout rooms.

At my small charter school in northeast Los Angeles, teacher and staff turnover is low, and school culture is praiseworthy, due to the high-caliber teamwork instilled by our principal and administrative team. Following the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, our teachers and staff started the difficult conversations about race and cultural identity and made a commitment to teaching culturally relevant content. We also began all-important training in trauma-informed, responsive strategies to prepare ourselves for the mental health issues our students and their families faced due to Covid-19; we learned quickly that many students were feeling stressed, isolated and unmotivated.

Teachers put new tools in place around social-emotional learning, starting every class with daily pulse meters, polls, surveys and Jamboard to check their students’ current emotional well-being.  Our office staff made daily attendance calls to parents to see why students weren’t logging in to their classes, addressing Wi-Fi issues and distributing hot spots when necessary, even texting students to remind them to log in. Student engagement, learning environment and Covid-19 concerns were tracked daily. Grade-level student progress trackers encouraged teachers at weekly meetings to reach out to students who logged in but left class, weren’t turning in assignments and were just missing in action.

Read the full article about student engagement by Marion Siwek at EdSource.