We recently came across a really interesting article that examined both the academic and emotional aspects of teaching mathematics and we were excited when the lead author agreed to answer some of our questions about the study. Read below for our conversation with Rebekah Berlin, Program Director for the Learning by Scientific Design Network at Deans for Impact.
Calvary City Academy & Preschool closed on March 13, along with most programs in Florida. While closed, we had much to prepare for reopening. While children were home, we prepared packets to send home, met with children virtually, and even hosted things like field day, spirit week, and graduation virtually! Even with those successes, we were so happy to be able to return to being in-person when we reopened in June. Since June, we’ve learned a lot. Here’s what’s working for us:
Jess Pablo is an early childhood coach and grade level chair at The Primary School, a non-profit school in East Palo Alto, California, that serves children aged pre-K through grade 3, bringing together education, health, and family support services to support children’s holistic growth. Below are some of the ideas, concerns, and suggestions she shared as her program resumes this year in a mostly virtual learning environment.
The United States is grappling with three major emergencies that are compounded by systemic racism: COVID-19, the bleak economic outlook, and police violence. The poor outcomes for people of color, particularly African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans (CDC, June 2020, retrieved 6/1/2020), infected with COVID-19 reflect racism against individuals, disinvestment in communities, and discriminatory policies and laws.
On Wednesday, September 23, the Office of Head Start (OHS) announced that it will be suspending CLASS reviews for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021. We sincerely hope this news relieves some of the stress our Head Start partners have felt as they grapple with new challenges related to pandemic conditions.
It is also our hope that programs will use this time to provide specific CLASS support to staff in order to strengthen interactions, regardless of the delivery model in which they are serving children.
With the increased presence of virtual schooling, parents and educators of young children, including myself, are finding themselves stressed. Are children getting the content they need? How do I engage children in learning virtually? How do we help children develop essential skills such as curiosity, attention, and emotion regulation in a virtual setting? In a recent New York Times op-ed, entitled “Kids Can Learn to Love Learning, Even Over Zoom”, psychologist Adam Grant shared ways that teachers can promote curiosity in a virtual classroom. He discussed the importance of including “mystery, exploration, and meaning.”
Due to the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools and programs are limiting the number of people who can enter classrooms during the 2020–2021 school year. In many cases, only essential workers are allowed in classrooms, which may prevent in-person CLASS® observations from taking place. For this reason, some programs may choose to conduct CLASS observations through a video conferencing platform.
At Teachstone our mission is to help every child reach their full potential by measuring and improving the interactions that matter most. For the last decade our measurement tool, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) has been used in the Office of Head Start’s (OHS) Designation Renewal System (DRS). The use of CLASS in the DRS has helped to drive important improvements in children’s classroom experiences—but we are incredibly excited by recent changes to the DRS rules that will enhance the use of CLASS not just as a measure, but as a tool to support teachers and leaders as they work to improve quality—ensuring that every child in their program has access to the powerful teacher-child interactions that drive development and learning.
One of the initial directives from the COVID-19 pandemic was shelter-in-place. To fuel this approach, life as we knew it changed immediately. Many of the venues that were a part of our normal lives were no longer available to us. We could not eat out in restaurants, go to movies, enjoy fellowship in churches, attend plays or concerts, and the list continued to grow. Suddenly, we found ourselves confined to our homes simply because there was nowhere else to go. Shelter-in-place limited the opportunities to spend time together. For educators, our relationships with our students and colleagues were snatched from us without any warning. They were just gone.
Back-to-school season looks very different this year, as districts adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic by adopting new policies and procedures. Many localities have turned to virtual or hybrid models of teaching, requiring teachers to learn new ways of engaging with children and, perhaps just as importantly, children’s families. Effective interactions, such as those described by the CLASS® tool, are at the core of teaching, and these same interactions can be a model for productive relationships with children’s families.
