Responsive Return Strategies: Crafting Fresh Approaches to Schedules, Grouping of Students and Teachers and Shaping Both Physical and Virtual Learning Spaces
What COVID19 Has Illuminated about the Power of Self-Evaluation to Make Assessment Meaningful
What Does Virtual Learning Look Like with Our Youngest Students?
Building the Future Now: Deciding What to Cut, What to Keep and What to Create
How Will We Return to School? Curriculum Choices in the Face of COVID19
Are You Up for a Design Challenge? Wicked Problems for Post-Pandemic School Redesign
We Did Not Sign Up for This! 9 Lessons Learned from a Hong Kong Principal on Facing a Crisis
Remote Learning Experiences Map (AKA Be a filter, not a dump truck)
Curriculum Triage: How Do We Manage the Instructional Challenge Right Now?
Responsive Return Strategies: Crafting Fresh Approaches to Schedules, Grouping of Students and Teachers and Shaping Both Physical and Virtual Learning Spaces
July 4, 2020Part 4 of a 4-Part Series By Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zmuda The summer of 2020 is not a vacation for many educators who continue to work tirelessly to engage with their community on how to open school for the upcoming year. Each school and district continues to receive guidance from state, ministry, and national governments which may change suddenly given the unpredictability of the pandemic. In addition, the reality of implementing governmental guidelines…
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What COVID19 Has Illuminated about the Power of Self-Evaluation to Make Assessment Meaningful
June 10, 2020By Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Bena Kallick, and Allison Zmuda Part Three in a Four-Part Series Assessment needs to change as we know it. COVID19 has illuminated the necessity for this change so that our students become increasingly more self-directed and self-evaluating. A significant shift is required so that we squarely focus on giving students a seat at the evaluation table and include them in task design and development of scoring tools that will provide meaningful…
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What Does Virtual Learning Look Like with Our Youngest Students?
June 8, 2020A Conversation with Lower School Principal Geoff Heney of Hong Kong International School Geoff is a teacher who has taught primary students in Ottawa, Canada in between international experiences in Seoul, Korea and Shanghai, China. In the past 13 years, he has been a counselor and principal in Doha, Qatar, and is currently the lower primary principal at his present home at Hong Kong International School. By Allison Zmuda, Bena Kallick, and Lorena Kelly.…
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Building the Future Now: Deciding What to Cut, What to Keep and What to Create
May 9, 2020By Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison ZmudaPart Two in a Four-Part Series As the school year is winding to a close and everyone is desperate for a break, looking toward the opening of school next year is already causing unease. Throughout the world, educators face a critical challenge: how to design aspirational and future forward (post-pandemic) learning experiences rather than a temporary fix (triage). In our first blogpost in this four part series, we proposed…
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How Will We Return to School? Curriculum Choices in the Face of COVID19
April 27, 2020By Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zmuda First in a Four-Part Series on Transition* In the midst of wide-ranging, remote learning efforts during this initial triage phase of the COVID19 crisis, there is a clarion call emerging: What do we do next? The impact of a summer vacation may seem to provide some relief but will likely prove problematic. What we don’t know. When the return to on-site school will commence. Geographically where and…
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Are You Up for a Design Challenge? Wicked Problems for Post-Pandemic School Redesign
April 25, 2020By Eric Chagala, Aaron Roberts, and Allison Zmuda The new liberal art of design thinking is turning to the modality of impossibility… what many people call "impossible" may actually only be a limitation of imagination that can be overcome by better design thinking. This is not thinking directed toward a technological "quick fix" in hardware but toward new integrations of signs, things, actions, and environments that address the concrete needs and values of human…
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We Did Not Sign Up for This! 9 Lessons Learned from a Hong Kong Principal on Facing a Crisis
April 10, 2020By Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zmuda NOTE: This post has also been curated on a new website that we launched the week of April 20 devoted to facing the challenge of COVID19 in your school community. Visit transform.curriculum21.com to explore. The massive disruption to schools around the world is heartbreaking on multiple levels: connections amongst peers, safe spaces to learn, showcasing work, creating work and receiving feedback in real time, troubleshooting learning on demand.…
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Remote Learning Experiences Map (AKA Be a filter, not a dump truck)
March 29, 2020By Michael Fisher and Allison Zmuda Now that remote learning has been underway for a couple of weeks, we thought it would be a good time to turn down the volume a little and begin the process of focusing on quality over quantity. In our work with educators these last couple of weeks, we’ve observed a few things: Schedules and organization are still important. We want to continue to work on maintaining what we’ve built…
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Curriculum Triage: How Do We Manage the Instructional Challenge Right Now?
March 26, 2020By Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zmuda NOTE: This post has also been curated on a new website that we launched the week of April 20 devoted to facing the challenge of COVID19 in your school community. Visit transform.curriculum21.com to explore. Right now as we write, there is a ten year old in Seattle who has been at home for two weeks and the charm is wearing off. There is a 15 year old in…
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