Remote Learning in Action is a new series of articles from attendees and speakers of Tech & Learning's events. Click here to learn more about these events and to apply to attend.
Where: Churchill Community School District, Nevada
We are doing amazing things with distance learning in Churchill CSD as we serve about 3,400 students. We are a 1:1 district that provides Chromebooks for students in grades 2-12. Our Kindergarten and 1st grade students have 2:1 chromebooks, and some classrooms have ipads as well.
In a short amount of time our teachers have been able to transform face-to-face learning environments into new virtual spaces with many opportunities that we had never before imagined. What a powerful learning experience for students, teachers, parents, administrators--everyone!
We have been working hard to provide students with services they need including food, internet and more. Many of the resources we've been using are on our website.
Here are district updates we provide.
Here is the remote learning website we built in a day.
Here is our Facebook page.
The driving force behind why our schools and people were able to work together so quickly is our superintendent, Summer Stephens. She has the ability to see the broad picture and communicates well with every internal department and outside entity to ensure we are doing the best we can for our students and the community. Each school and department has a weekly virtual staff meeting to share updates and expectations for the week.
Our schools operate with the expectation that all staff is available from 8 am to 3 pm each day. This includes teachers, counselors, administrators, and instructional coaches. We all participate in regular meetings and webinars. Our teachers have been using Zoom and creating YouTube videos to connect with students.
Behind the scenes, our technology committee has been researching privacy issues and concerns with students surrounding video and decided that we are going to begin using GoToMeeting.
We decided as a team that we wanted to strengthen our communication with families by building a website that would inform and also provide resources to help our students and families. We wanted the transition to this new experience to be as natural as possible for our people.
One of the resources we've encouraged our teachers to use is a webinar series from Modern Teacher. In the series, they explain how to set up weekly playlists with assignments for students. Many of our teachers have created playlists that they post on Google Classroom along with daily materials and announcements. Students share their work with teachers and email them as needed.
We have three food locations setup from 7:30-12:30 around our community where people can go and have one member of their family pick up grab-and-go meals for each person in the family. This can happen because we have so many amazing volunteers who help hand out meals. We also have some of our people making masks for those in the community and surrounding areas.
Michelle Richardson is Innovation & Professional Learning Facilitator for Churchill County School District.
