Returning in person

At one point I mentioned that my school was returning in our full “hybrid” schedule and someone asked me what that looks like for us. I thought I’d take a post to describe what in person learning looks like at my district and at my kids’ district.

{Semantic note: When the pandemic thrust us all into distance learning, we needed new words to talk about our new teaching and learning experiences. Like any vocabulary that is introduced quickly and haphazardly, words that describe different kinds of learning are used incongruously across the country. I will be using words to mean what they do here, and I apologize if I’m using a word for one kind of learning when that refers to something else in another area.}

In my district the K-3 elementary schools went back in person with a “hybrid” schedule about a month ago. At that district, families that assumed they would want to stay in distance learning applied for an online “Connections” program that they knew would continue throughout the school year. Once it was clear that the district would be returning, in some capacity, to the classroom, families were given another chance to join the Connections program, which would mean a change in teacher and classmates if they didn’t want to return in person.

My understanding is that all families that applied to the Connections program were accommodated, so there are no students remaining at home in the classes that returned in person. This means that the K-3 elementary teachers in our district are either teaching entirely online (through the Connections program) or in a hybrid schedule. For us, “hybrid” means that students receive a portion of their school day in person and a portion online via zoom and/or asynchronous work (but not that students in the classroom are being taught at the same time as students at home, which we refer to as “simultaneous” teaching or learning).

Right now the elementary students come to school four mornings or afternoons (M/T/T/F) a week and have asynchronous work to complete when they are not in school. So if students see their teacher in the morning, they have asynchronous work in the afternoon and vice versa. Wednesday is entirely online for everyone. So teachers are teaching half their class in the morning and half in the aftenroon and assigning asynchronous work four days a week. This will be their schedule for the rest of the year, despite the new CDC (and locally adopted) guidelines suggesting 3 feet between students in the classroom, and despite our very low numbers in San Mateo County and the Bay Area as a whole.

I’m pretty sure the 4th and 5th grade “upper elementary schools” are doing something similar (K-3 and 4-5 are separated in our district because of space issues at the elementary schools).

At the middle school level, where kids have 4-6 teachers depending on whether they are enrolled in an elective and/or PE, it’s a lot more complicated. In anticipation of a return to the classroom, our school did group students in one “class” that stays together for core instruction. So one set of 32 kids stays together for English Language Arts, History/Social Studies, Math and Science. This is not usually the case at my school – kids usually meet with different groups all throughout the day, but this year they grouped them for the core classes so that if we returned to the school we could more easily split them into stable cohorts for their core instruction.

We did not, however, create and populate a “Connections” program because that was a lot harder to manage at the middle school level due to staffing and credentialing issues. The absence of a Connections program at the middle school level made distance learning a lot easier, but is making it much harder to come back now.

The hybrid schedule that the two middle school in my district are using is… nuts. I will attempt to outline it here, but for how confusing it seems, know I am omitting the most confusing parts.

The students coming to school were split into A and B groups (in their core class). The A kids have 1st and 2nd period in person on Monday mornings and 3rd and 4th in person on Tuesday mornings. They go home before lunch, to eat and finish their asynchronous assignments for the core classes they didn’t see those days (so they do asynchronous work for 3rd and 4th period on Monday afternoon and for 1st and 2nd period on Tuesday afternoon. They also might have an elective or PE in the afternoon.

Everyone meets entirely online on Wednesday.

On Thursday and Friday the A group students have electives or PE via zoom (or time to complete asynchronous work) in the mornings, then they meet with their 1st and 2nd period teachers on zoom on Monday afternoon or their 3rd and 4th period teachers on Friday afternoon.

So the core teachers are teaching half of the students in two periods in person in the mornings and the other half of the students in those same two periods on zoom in the afternoon on M/Tu then do the opposite on Th/F. They see all their students together in every class on Wednesday. This means that a teacher meets with a student three times during the week, and assigns two asynchronous assignments.

The C (Connections) group always meets online in the afternoon with the students who are not on campus that day. So that means teachers cannot really refer back to what was done in class when they are online because there are always students in a class who never come in person.

I was super lucky and they scheduled all the students from any class in a specific group, so I don’t have to teach the same thing to half my class and then again to the other half of it. This means all of my 1st period goes to school in person on Monday and Tuesday so I can meet with them on zoom in the morning on Thursday and Friday (we also meet on Wednesday). (I have to meet my classes in the mornings so the Connections kids can meet with me, because they ALWAYS meet with their core classes in the afternoons).

To make it all more complicated, the 6th grade has their own stand alone Connections class that meets in the mornings, so they can have their elective classes in the afternoons. And to make it even more complicated, some teachers teach core class for some periods and elective classes for other periods, and some teachers teach at different schools (either the 4-5 elementary and the 6-8 school or both 6-8 schools (like I do). One teacher has an ELA/Social Studies core AND teaches an art class at the 4-5 school and another 6-8 art class that students from both 6-8 schools attend). It’s a logistical nightmare.

But somehow, they made it work, and 6th-8th grade students can come back two mornings a week, while remaining in their elective classes. It’s a classic example of a compromise that makes nobody very happy, but we are “returning in person” and that is all that matters now!

(Not to say I don’t think we should be doing this – at the very least it’s good practice for a full(er?) return to the classroom next year. And students are VERY EXCITED for the opportunity to return to classrooms so it’s not, in my eyes, for nothing.}

I’m curious to hear what other districts that are just coming back (and have been back) are doing. This ended up being a long post, so I will attempt to tackle what is happening at my kids’ school separately and soon. The reality is I’m not really sure what their plan is yet, because, to my limited understanding, what they are doing and what the district said would be done are VERY different.

What in person return plans are happening in your part of the world?