Social, Emotional, and Cultural Tips for Teachers Returning to School Post-COVID
The emergence of COVID-19 has thrown the entire world off course from the way we are typically used to operating on a day to day basis, and perhaps one of the most acutely impacted areas of our society has been school. Meeting the needs of students and families from a distance is an unprecedented task for many teachers and schools, and the uncertainty that still remains in regards to how the pandemic may continue to limit our resources within society makes the discussion of returning to school extremely complex. While some schools are going back in person, some have decided to remain completely online for the beginning of the school year. Others have chosen to adopt a hybrid model, while still others aren’t yet sure what the plan will be come August/September. Regardless of where you fall within this wide range of differing education models, you’re likely still concerned about what school will look like when you return, and how to meet your students’ needs when you do. Whether you are a teacher or administrator, going back in person or virtually, here are a few tips for implementing equitable social and emotional support in your schools and classrooms come Fall.
For Teachers Going Back in Person
Scaffold Behavioral Expectations
For so many of us, we’re typically used to starting the school year with some general knowledge about what kinds of behaviors, skills, and needs we are likely to see from the kiddos in the age group that we work with at the beginning of the school year. As a general rule, the developmental needs of the particular age group that we specialize in tend to stay relatively steady, of course with some variations from year to year. Remember that this year things are very likely to be different. Many of our children have been out of school, isolated from peers, family members, and the external world in general, for many, many months. As such, there is going to be a fair amount of relearning that will need to happen upon returning to the classroom. Behavioral expectations that we typically expect our kiddos to have a firm grasp of when they walk through our doors in the Fall will very likely need some fine-tuning. Throw any expectations you have about what your students “should” be able to do at their age out the window, and meet the kids in your classroom where they are. Note: this doesn’t mean you suspend your expectations! It simply means that you prepare yourself to have to teach some of the behavioral expectations that you’ve come to accept as a “given” when students walk through your doors in the Fall. Repeat rules and expectations early and often, and prepare for this to take some time - likely at least the first month of school. Remember - just like us, our students have had little to no control over the isolation and collective unease they’ve experienced over the past few months, so they’re going to need plenty of concrete, direct, explicit instruction and lots of grace. Patience is the name of the game here!
Focus on Relationships and Community
After months of being out of school in person, many of our students may have begun to show signs of an academic slide in one way or another. Our first instinct upon getting kids back in person is naturally going to be to get them caught up on the academic content that we fear they’ve lost. I cannot emphasize this enough - resist this urge. I know you want your kids to get back to learning - so do I! So do they! So do their families! But, once again, we have to remember that kids have been isolated from their communities for months, and have been feeling the same emotions of disconnection, loneliness, and aimlessness that many of us as adults have been feeling during the pandemic. The bottom line is, kids don’t engage in environments that they don’t feel safe in and connected to. Focusing on building your classroom community and establishing strong relationships with each one of your students is an essential first step in getting them back to learning. Do not skip this part! Similarly to the tip above regarding behavioral expectations, much of your first month of school should be focused on reestablishing a positive classroom climate for your students. While you will of course still be teaching academic content during this first month, academic mastery should not be your primary goal for the first few weeks of school and should not take precedence over building your classroom culture. Trust me - this time spent on the front end will pay off over the course of the rest of your year.
Provide Extra “Brain Breaks”
While certainly not everyone has been working from home during the pandemic by any means (thank you, essential workers! We love you!), anyone who has been cooped up at home to do their work all day can likely relate to the feeling of general listlessness that has come with such monotonous days. The days are long, many of us are out of our consistent routines, and we often find ourselves needing more stress release and decompression than usual. This is how our kids are feeling! Getting back into the structured routine of school is going to be a shock to the nervous system for many of our students after so many months away. Be sure to build extra “brain breaks,” or chances for decompression, into your students’ day. Kiddos should be getting at least three breaks a day, regardless of age group. This might look like a 15-minute break between academic subjects in the morning, a mid-day recess, and a 15-minute break between subjects in the afternoon. Ideally we want to provide a healthy balance of quiet time, social interaction, and physical exertion within our breaks throughout the day. My advice would be to build in at least one brain break during which kids privately unwind in the classroom - coloring, journaling, meditating, resting, helping with a classroom task; at least one brain break during which kids are able to socialize with each other - board games, snack time, group activities; and at least one brain break during which kids are able to run, play, and expend energy. Giving our kids this space and time to decompress is going to be essential to supporting their parasympathetic nervous systems (think: “rest and recovery”) as they transition back into the demanding schedule of school. Our kiddos will always struggle to learn, reason, and emotionally regulate when in a stressed body state - remember that this “rest and recovery” nervous system is where learning happens!
Implement Emotional Check-Ins
One of my favorite practices adopted by a school I worked for was the use of daily morning “feelings” check-ins. Immediately upon entering, while the students were eating breakfast, they were asked to fill out a very simple slip of paper to let their teachers know how they were feeling that day. The slip had a number of feelings and correlating visuals like “happy,” “sad,” “angry,” “confused,” and “worried,” as well as a space at the bottom that said “other/something else I want you to know today.” While this is certainly appropriate for elementary aged students, I want to also assure you - this was used in a school with students between the ages of 12 and 16, and they loved and appreciated it all the same. Big kids need check-ins too! Many of our students are going to return to school after an extremely emotionally, mentally, and financially stressful time for families. Some of our kids are likely going to come to school while their families are still experiencing an emotionally and financially stressful time. We’re likely to have a lot of kids who will need added emotional support upon reentering school, and one of the best practices we can adopt for our students is addressing those needs early and swiftly. Morning check-ins give you the opportunity to troubleshoot issues of stress, overwhelm, anxiety, or frustration before kids are asked to start their day, allowing you to help them recalibrate before these feelings fester for too long and ultimately access their educational experience.
For Teachers Going Back Virtually
Focus on Relationships and Community
This is important for all of the same reasons listed above for teachers who are going back to school in person, but may be even more crucial for kids who are going back to school remotely. While all of our kiddos have experienced levels of isolation from their various communities, for kids who are attending school remotely in the Fall, there remains the extra hurdle of reestablishing community through a screen. While teachers will need to focus heavily on building relationships with students in person, teachers who are going back to school remotely in the Fall will need to do the same, and likely in a more creative fashion. Engaging through a screen is already more difficult for kids, but establishing a sense of community within your classroom is an important component to students’ drive to show up day after day. Be sure to continue to build in virtual supports that are already part of your day, like morning meeting, homeroom, or closing circle, but also consider offering extra opportunities within the first month of school for students to connect. This might look like virtual group lunch dates with you, interactive whole-class games, and continuing to assign students “classroom jobs.”
Record and Post Lessons
One of the common obstacles that you are likely to run into with virtual learning is students and families having the flexibility and support to actually log in at designated times. While many families can probably swing this in one way or another and ensure that their children are always logged in at the times that you need them to be, many families just simply do not have this bandwidth. Work schedules, other siblings or family members in the household in need of assistance, and lack of accessibility to a co-parent are all factors that can prevent families from being able to log their kids on for lessons and meetings while they’re occurring live. Recording and posting your lessons, morning meetings, read-alouds, etc. to an online archive allows students and families who may have missed the live lesson to still access the information they need, and it also allows students and families who did attend the live lesson to revisit the information so that parents and guardians can adequately support their children in the completion of schoolwork. Ultimately this practice will increase accessibility to learning for students whose families may have limitations on their level of flexibility, in addition to serving as an added instructional support for all parents and guardians.
Use Existing Resources
Juggling the many added tasks of implementing quality virtual learning is exceptionally time consuming in and of itself. There is a steep learning curve here for us when it comes to the planning, technological needs and full implementation of online learning, as so many teachers and schools have never had to deliver instruction through this modality before. In order for you to be able to focus on individual student and family support, whether that is academic, social, emotional, or behavioral, you’ll realistically need to find ways to make parts of your day easier and less time-consuming for yourself. You cannot do it all! In order to focus on the parts of virtual instruction that are most crucial, you’ll need to have “life hacks” for things that are lower on the priority list. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to outsource some of what you need to get done. Whenever possible, utilize a resource that already exists rather than reinventing the wheel. This could mean sharing resources with colleagues and grade team members, it could mean utilizing YouTube videos on the subjects you’re teaching, or it could mean repurposing activities or lessons that you’ve already created and have in your back pocket. Ultimately, if you can cut down on how much time and energy is required for you to produce the “what” of your instruction, it allows you more time to focus on the “how.” Outsourcing some of the lower-priority items in your day gives you back some of the time that you need to ensure that your students are actually engaged in and internalizing the material.
Limit Direct Instruction
While we always want to be mindful of how much time within a lesson is spent in direct instruction that asks our students to sit and focus on an adult voice for an extended period of time, this is especially imperative when students are being asked to engage through a screen, rather than in person. By nature we tend to be less engaged in material delivered remotely than we are when we can sit in the same room as someone, so it’s important to prepare for shorter attention spans from your kiddos when they’re participating in remote learning. Kids of all ages are going to need shorter bursts of direct instruction and lots of interactive, hands-on, experiential learning in order to maintain genuine engagement. Many online education platforms have built-in supports for engagement through technology that can be a useful asset to your classroom.
Provide Space for Feedback
Consider implementing a weekly format for students and families to give you feedback on things that they are enjoying about their remote learning experience, and challenges that they are facing as they support their children’s education from a distance. If one thing has become abundantly clear throughout our time navigating this pandemic, it’s that the needs of students, families, schools, and society at large are certain to change from day to day, week to week, month to month. This can be a really hard pill for many of us to swallow! We like having some semblance of structure and being able to have a general plan for what comes next, and frequent changes typically mean more time spent on planning and preparation for us. The reality is that right now we are living through a collective traumatic experience as a society, and as such we really have very limited control over what comes next. “Going with the flow” is the new normal, as uncomfortable as it is for so many of us. While this can be an overwhelming concept, one thing that you can do to help with this transition is to begin to prepare yourself for this reality now. Things are going to change, probably frequently. If we enter into our school year with this as our baseline expectation, it becomes much easier to mentally and emotionally navigate this “new normal” we’re living in. Providing a formal space for feedback from families each week allows you to collect this information and make changes accordingly in a way that works for you, gives you some sense of control, and allows you to troubleshoot issues that arise for families like access to technology, time constraints, and ability to provide academic support in enough time to prepare for the week ahead. This might look like a weekly survey you send to parents on a day of your choice that allows you enough time to prepare for the week ahead while still accommodating the needs of your students and parents.
Maintain a Predictable Structure
Routine and structure within your school day is always a must, even under the most ideal of circumstances! This still holds true for remote learning. As much as possible, try to keep the structure of online lessons the same so that students enter your space knowing what to expect each day. While of course the activities and content of lessons will and should vary, keeping the overall routine and structure of the lesson relatively similar provides predictability, stability, and a sense of control for students - all things that they are craving during a time of so much uncertainty.
Stay You!
Remember that you are your most powerful tool with your students. It’s true when they’re physically in your classroom, and it’s true over a Zoom meeting! When in doubt, opt for genuine connection. This is the number one predictor in student engagement - genuine connection with you as an adult who loves and cares for them. This is an immensely stressful time to be an educator, but who you are hasn’t changed! You are still the passionate, loving, safe space that you have always been for your students. Bring your authentic self to your instruction, acknowledge and appreciate your students’ authentic selves, and that genuine sense of community that you create will keep both you and your students feeling more grounded in your distance learning experience.
For Schools as a Whole
Conduct Comprehensive Needs Assessments
While teachers are spending their first few weeks focusing on relationship and community building, your support staff should be spending their first few weeks assessing the needs of families. After months of living through a pandemic, we are bound to have more families than usual in need of some form of social or logistical assistance in order to make sure their children can access their education. During the first few weeks of school, have your student support personnel conduct comprehensive assessments for (ideally) every family in your building. Once you have a better sense of what it is families need, your student support team can equip themselves to be adequately supporting the families they need to as the school year progresses.
Formally Collect Feedback from Teachers
Whenever an issue would arise at one of my schools in which a child’s best interest conflicted with what was preferred by school staff, I would always come back to the same motto - we are here for children. We make the decisions that are best for children, even if it requires more work from us as adults. Here’s the thing about that, though - these situations are fairly rare. As a general rule, and I can’t stress this enough - what is good for teachers is good for children. While there are of course exceptions to this, by and large when teachers feel supported, heard, and empowered, so do the students they reach every day. With so many different factors at play, so many moving pieces, and so many guidelines that change regularly during this chaotic time, teachers have an exceptional amount of work on their plate and are constantly navigating new territory. Listen to them! They are doing this work with their kiddos every day, and we need to trust that they have a solid pulse on what’s working and what’s not working when it comes to instruction in their classrooms. Implement some form of formal weekly feedback collection from your teachers so that you can maintain a pulse on what’s working for your school and for your students. Now, will you be able to accommodate every request? Of course not! Returning to school in such a non-traditional way is going to be hard, there is no way around that. But, giving your teachers a place to provide honest feedback will help you notice patterns and trends across the board that might need some attention, while simultaneously empowering teachers to feel like they have a place to voice their concerns.
Implement Advisory Groups
Whether your school serves elementary, middle, or high school students, you likely have some form of “homeroom,” “morning meeting,” or other time during the day during which you can get a pulse on how kids are feeling and processing the world around them. Advisory groups takes this concept one step further, and involves every adult in your school, regardless of their job title. Now, how and when these groups would meet will likely depend on your school’s structure for next year (in-person, virtual, or hybrid), as well as your staff schedules, but the idea is that each staff member in the building would meet with a smaller group of 6-10 students each week to check in. This can be as formal or as informal as your school staff are comfortable with, as long as there are a few key components. First, this should not be academic time. It should be time for kids to chat about their weeks, what’s going on in their lives, and generally relationship-build with their peers and with a trusted adult. Second, this time should happen consistently every week so that students can depend on this space. And, finally, all staff members should be trained on mandated reporting requirements for your state and what kinds of topics or disclosures they would be required to alert a formally trained staff member of, like a social worker or counselor. Students are often more comfortable disclosing personal information to adults that they feel comfortable with, which is likely to be an advisor or a teacher, and for the safety of students, families, and staff, you’ll want to prepare staff members with the information they need to make sure their advisees are being appropriately supported should something unsafe like self-harm, abuse, or extreme risk-taking come up.
Suspend Tardy and Attendance Policies
Many, if not all, schools have policies regarding absence from school throughout the year, and oftentimes these policies are presented to families as an important factor in their child being eligible to progress on to the following school year. While many schools find that these policies are typically ineffective and overly punitive to begin with, now more than ever is the time to suspend these practices if your school is still using them. Depending on child care availability, employment status, financial stability, and social support, many families are likely going to struggle to get their children to school on time consistently, particularly if your school is embarking on a hybrid model that asks parents to juggle multiple schedules and modes of instruction at once. The children most likely to be able to attend school consistently and on time are going to be students with access to the most resources, making the policy of attaching grades or promotion to a child’s attendance a deeply inequitable practice. This is true on the most mundane of school years, but is particularly true as we navigate a pandemic, as more parents than ever are likely going to need flexibility in their schedules. Ultimately, we know that children who are frequently truant are likely to fall behind their peers academically, socially, and emotionally. These policies are not necessarily off-base in their intent! However, attendance-dependent promotion is unlikely to clear away the obstacles standing in front of these parents to begin with. Students who are frequently struggling to attend either in-person or online classes likely need to be referred to your school’s social worker or student support team to better resource both them and their families so that they can access their education.
Do Away With Formal Grading and Homework Requirements
Teachers and administrators - stay with me here! I know the idea of abolishing grades and homework sounds extreme when this is the structure of schooling that we are used to. However, similarly to attendance, formal grading and homework during a time of deep social, financial, and emotional stress for families and students alike is deeply rooted in inequity, and further widens the gap between kids who are “succeeding” and kids who are not. Children who are able to complete homework or classwork consistently and thoroughly are more often than not children who have substantial social support at home. Particularly in a time of a global health crisis, we need to remain acutely aware that not all children likely have this, and a child’s grades suffering due to lack of comprehensive support does little to actually show us what a child is learning and a lot to set them up on a trajectory to continue to struggle academically in the future because of circumstances that were beyond their control. We know that this pandemic has hit our most vulnerable students and families particularly hard financially, medically, and mentally, and if we are truly committed to equitable education we will need to adopt a new lens towards “academic success” that avoids further marginalizing our students who may need the most support.