Around the world, schools are all over the place in terms of their modality for learning.  Back in Santa Ana Unified in Southern California, my previous employer and home, schools are largely still in virtual learning mode, with selected campuses open for “learning labs” to serve some of the most impacted students, whether due to lack of connectivity at home or due to the need for in-person special services.  In Arizona, where much of my family lives and my mom and sister work as teachers, most schools are fully back in motion.  100% of students can be on campus.  Each week I attend a regional coordination call with Heads of School from around Central and South America.  The vast majority of the international schools operating in these countries are still in 100% virtual mode.  Here in Costa Rica, we are about a month in to a hybrid plan.  At Lincoln, students are organized into cohorts that rotate one week on, one week off campus, with about 20% of our students remaining virtual full time.  Questions of school openings and the structure for return are certainly a hot topic for political debate around the world.  In places where schools are open, there is pressure to close in the face of fresh waves of COVID.  In places where schools are closed, there is tremendous pressure to get kids back into classrooms.

Perhaps the most intense aspect of our return to campus, in addition to the tremendous amount of planning, preparation, and communication that is required, has been the ongoing attention to managing student health and safety.  Specifically, attending to potential cases, weighing prevention and protocol, and communicating with families, have all been daily, if not hourly, tasks.  We’re a month in to our hybrid return, and our detailed attention to protocol has been paying off.  We haven’t had any known cases of transmission on campus, and for those few situations where we’ve become aware of a potential case due to proximity in the home, or even a child having flu-like symptoms, we’ve been lucky with all negative test results.   Of course the low and trending lower rates of COVID in Costa Rica in general have been a huge help.  

Whenever there is a report of a potential case, either of a student on campus or at home, we convene the  COVID leadership team that brings together members of the administrative team, occupational health, and our school doctor.  I hadn’t completely anticipated how much work this COVID team would be called upon to handle while we navigate hybrid learning.  Every teacher absence or student in the nurse’s office requires a heightened amount of attention.  Every potential case requires an in-depth analysis, interviews to determine anyone who may have been exposed, and plans for communication so staff and families are informed whenever a positive case has been reported.  It’s a detail driven process.  

One of the most challenging aspects of analyzing any given situation is the weighing of prevention versus our written protocols.  In other words, the absolutely safest option is to be 100% virtual.  When you open the school, even with convincing data and research around the world that K-12 schools generally pose lower risks of COVID spread than many other operations, you introduce risk.  When a family decides to send their child to school – and we do provide our families the option to stay at home completely – they are likewise assuming some risk.  When we have a student with symptoms, obviously we send the student home (or have them stay home if not at school).   Students with symptoms either quarantine or can return with a negative test and no symptoms.  But, and here is where it is challenging, we do not quarantine everyone in the child’s class until we have a confirmed case, and even then if students never broke mask and distancing protocols, families can choose to keep their children in school.  We could, for prevention sake, send everyone home to quarantine every time a student has any symptoms.  Yet that is not what the protocol dictates nor does it take into consideration the critical fact that our students are also wearing masks, social distancing, etc.  So we work through each situation and scenario carefully, making sure to do the detailed work of contact tracing while not overreacting.  Our greatest safety has been in a highly disciplined commitment to safety protocols by wearing masks and enforcing social distancing.  

In terms of the design of our hybrid system, there are a few features that have really helped us.  First, the week-on/week-off schedule has built an automatic quarantine into our program.  When students leave us on Thursday afternoon, they don’t return until Monday 10 days later.  We’ve had a couple of potential cases where this has helped us tremendously, as students were essentially put into quarantine before we could confirm a positive case.  Second, we have been doing virtual Fridays.  Originally, our rationale was to separate the cohorts and have a space for extra cleaning.  In practice, virtual Fridays has been even more helpful as a strategy for supporting teachers with a day where they are not simulcasting instruction, and have a planning block to be able to prepare for the coming week of both in-person and virtual learning.  Our board of directors has been very concerned about how we are supporting our staff during hybrid learning, and virtual Fridays I think go a long way to help classroom teachers manage the demands of daily teaching.  Third and finally, we adopted a shortened day schedule.  Students are on campus until 12:15 and then head home for virtual closing meetings and afternoon tutoring sessions.  This is partially a reflection of the nationwide protocol in public schools in Costa Rica to limit hybrid instruction to 4 hours daily.  Private schools have more flexibility, and indeed, our school day is slightly longer.  But it has helped to break up the day.  We allow our teachers to go home if they desire for the pm virtual sessions, that way if they have kids of their own at home they can be there too.  We also made the strategic decision to hire additional full-time substitutes who we have trained in both virtual and in-person settings.  Of course we had to weigh potential costs against the projected need for substitutes, but having a handful of trained staff to step in as needed has been a huge help when we have faced last-minute absences.  We also benefit greatly from having full time assistants in all of our Pre-K through 2^nd grade classrooms.  Schools have rightly pointed out that operating schools in hybrid fashion can cost even more than under typical circumstances, and building some flexibility into the number of staff on hand for in-person learning certainly has required additional investments.   

Of course we are still learning and making adjustments.  Hybrid learning has challenged us to find balance between the learning needs of students, the operational challenges of the school, the sustainability of staff, and the expectations of our parents and community.  It’s an ongoing process that requires tremendous commitment from staff and a lot of communication and dialogue with families and other key stakeholders.  

One of the things that I have missed the most during our shift to virtual learning has been getting into classrooms on a daily basis.  Of course I’ve had lots of opportunities to jump into virtual classroom sessions, but it’s not quite the same.  One of the things that I love most about working in education is that the human interaction with students is always energizing.  Even when you have a slow morning, as soon as the kids come in it boosts the energy level immediately.  On my first day with students in hybrid mode, I had a chance to visit each classroom on campus.  In some ways I felt like I learned more about our students and the school in those few hours than I had in an entire semester of online learning.  

Admittedly, I am still a big fan of how we’ve added virtual spaces and interactions into our regular work routines.  We have much higher participation in parent meetings and other special meetings when they are offered virtually.  Even on a personal level, it is nice to be able to eat dinner with my family at home before jumping on an evening call with senior parents or a hybrid learning Q&A session with our school community.  I am confident that virtual evening meetings will continue to be an important feature of our parent and community engagement.  I also think there is an important place for hybrid learning on a regular basis.  Perhaps not exactly the hybrid learning that we have had to put into place to meet health regulations and protocols, but rather the idea of students continuing to learn in the virtual space while they also attend in-person instruction.  It’s still too early to tell how the structures of schools will change in the long term due to the pandemic, but I’m always eager to take the best of distance learning and integrate it into our school schedule and design.  

Yet, for all of the positives of distance learning, I have been reminded over the past couple weeks of why I love the classroom so much.  Strong classroom teachers know that meaningful, personalized learning starts with a foundation of strong personal relationships.  Yes, those relationships can be developed through an internet connection, but it simply cannot compare to the in-person experience.  As humans, we crave the in-person experience.   

It’s amazing how being in a classroom for just a few minutes can provide you with so much insight and information about how our staff engage students.  Many of our teachers have a visibilly warm and affectionate energy with students, while some others interact in more structured ways.  While high expectations and respectful regard for students are universal requirements, I believe that instruction of the highest quality often draws on a variety of strategies. I am a firm believer that part of the socialization and growth benefit of schools is that our young people are exposed to teachers with a variety of management and instructional styles and practices.  It is much easier for me to see those expectations and strategies in practice across the school when I can visit classrooms.  Perhaps it’s also a result of my years observing in-person classroom instruction.  Frankly, I’m not as good at seeing the underlying structures and expectation levels in a fully virtual classroom.  Getting a read of the class is especially tough, when students screen aren’t on, as any teacher can attest.  Of course being on screen all day long can be exhausting, and I’ve read plenty of student self-care checklists begging teachers not to be overly strict about cameras, but checking for understanding and surveying the room for understanding can be particularly hard when you can’t see the students.  There are good strategies for quickly checking for understanding in a virtual environment, but they are not usually as intuitive as when you are in a classroom.  

In any case, educators and administrators around the world are making the adjustments as best they can in terms of providing meaningful observations and feedback of distance learning.  I’m very eager to continue learning and improving my own skill set in this regard as an administrator.  But I am also grateful that I have the chance again to be in classrooms and see the magic of learning happening right there in the room.  

Costa Rica is back to school today.  I could feel the energy immediately after leaving the house early this morning.  The traffic in my usually quiet residential neighborhood was certainly at a new level.  My own kids returned to school today, and they were up before 6 a.m. bouncing off the walls excited to go.  It’s been almost a year since my older kids were on campus, and for my 6-year old twins, today was their first day of in-person learning.  Everybody was nervous smiles.  

While our preschool and high school had already been back for a week and a half, today we added elementary and middle school.  I stood out at the drop-off for our smallest learners.  They seemed like old pros already, knowing exactly what they needed to do as they moved quickly from the car to the hand washing stations nearby.  The elementary students, on the other hand, were arriving for the first time in nearly a year.  I couldn’t see all of their facial expressions behind the masks, but eyes seemed plenty big.  Our support staff and admin team were out in full force to open car doors and personally welcome students while simultaneously pointing them in the right direction.  Drop off went smooth, and soon enough, everyone had arrived.

As I walked from classroom to classroom, I was amazed at how well everyone seemed to be settling into the new school experience.  Some teachers admitted to me they were still feeling pretty nervous, especially about how the simulcasting with in-person and at-home students was going to work out.  But after the first hour or two of classes, everyone seemed to be making the necessary adjustments.  I noticed that there was some variation in how the teachers were handling the simulcasting challenge.  Our preschool and early education classrooms that are staffed with assistants seemed to be avoiding a lot of the simulcasting altogether, using dedicated staff and a rotation schedule to allow the teacher to focus either on in-person learners or the students meeting virtually.  It also helps that our preschool and kindergarden, unlike other grades, are here every week and there are not as many students who have opted for distance learning at those grade levels.  

Quite a few of the teachers had figured out quickly how to project the screen of at-home learners to the front of the classroom.  I think this could prove a good strategy for creating a stronger sense of community amongst in-person and at-home learners.  In some cases, however, the teacher laptop is still the primary camera for looking into the classroom, which means that students at home can’t necessarily see students sitting in the classroom.  For this, I think my favorite strategy were those classrooms where the teacher had set up a tripod with an ipad, to function as an additional student in the gallery view, but one that reflected the students sitting in the classroom.  That way, students at home can see students in class and vice versa.  With both an iPad and a computer, those teachers can still share their computer screen. The ultimate would be perhaps to have two projectors in the room, so the teacher could project both their screen and at-home students to the class.  Since that is not a technical possibility in most of our classrooms, having the iPad on a tripod with the students at home looking back at the class seems like the next-best possibility.  

In any case, it was wonderful to be in classrooms to say hello to students and teachers alike, and it was good for me to be able to see the different technical solutions and set-ups that our teachers seemed to be favoring.  Our principals have already been creating collaborative spaces and conversations for our teachers to share their strategies and build the collective capacity of the team to design their new systems.  I loved hearing people say things like “we’re figuring it out,” and “it seems to be working well, and I’ll be making some adjustments.”  For many of our staff, we’re still in the midst of day one, and their will undoubtedly be adjustments – which I consider to be a good thing as we get better each day at providing a strong hybrid learning experience for our students.  

I believe that the single most challenging aspect of most hybrid plans is the need for classroom teachers to simultaneously instruct students in the classroom and students online.  In other words, you are teaching two separate audiences at the same time – one group of students in the room with you, while other students join from home.  Obviously simulcasting of instruction presents some challenging.  The first is a technical one, related to the availability of the hardware, software, and adequate internet bandwidth to pull everything off.  When you walk into one of our classrooms, you tend to see the teacher’s laptop open in Microsoft Teams, broadcasting the lesson to online students.  Many of our teachers are using the projector to project the students at home onto the front screen, so that the students sitting in the room can see those who are at home.  This is also done in classrooms with a video screen available, so that students in the room are aware and can interact with students who are at home.  Our teachers are also equipped with an iPad, which allows for further flexibility.  Some teachers are using the iPad as their lesson plan and notes, something they can hold close to guide them through the lesson.  Other teachers are using it as an additional camera, so that the students at home get an up-close view of the teacher – instead of just the far away take provided through the laptop.  In the most sophisticated practices, the teacher can use the iPad like a tablet, sharing his or her iPad screen to both the students online and through the projector to the students sitting in the room.  There are a lot of different configurations, and it has been really incredible to see the creativity and ownership of our teachers in solving the problem of simulcasting their classroom instruction.  

Admittedly, attending to students both at home and in person can be physically demanding and draining.  Teaching all day, under regular circumstances, is both intense mental and physical work.  Broadening the scope of the teacher’s attention across virtual and in-person modalities at the same time only intensifies that work.  Of course, with time, our teachers will develop routines that allow their brains and senses to back off from the initial intensity of all new systems for engagement and interaction, but it is still a heavy lift.  

To address this transition to simulcasting, we strategically made two structural shifts to our daily schedule.  First, we decided to move to a 4-day week for in-person hybrid instruction.  This leaves us Fridays for virtual only learning.  Having one day during the week in 100% virtual mode not only allows us additional time for a deep clean of the campus, but it provides teachers with a sensory break and time for additional instructional planning.  The other shift, perhaps even more significant, was to shorten our instructional day.  In essence, our in-person instructional is a half-day in length, with students being released a lunchtime each day.  We offer additional support, tutoring, and coursework in the afternoon.  Our teachers have the option to leave the physical campus (which we encourage to limit physical interaction to the extent possible) to work the remainder of the day from home.  We have given this first 9 weeks of hybrid learning the title of “transitional period” as a way to communicate that we are indeed making ongoing transitions and structural shifts back to in-person instruction and services.  But of all the adjustments, the biggest is the teacher shift to simultaneous instruction.  

There are some schools and systems that have founds ways to avoid simultaneous instruction altogether.  To do so, schools have basically had to adopt one of two strategies.  The first strategy is to restructure the teaching staff into completely different groups, so that students learning virtually are attended to exclusively by teachers working virtually, and in-person students work with in-person teachers.  On the surface, this strategy may seem ideal.  Of course at the high school and intermediate levels, this may not be possible at all due to the complexities of the master schedule.  Simply stated, it may not be possible to group students in all of their electives and unique schedules into entirely in-person or virtual classes.  Those teachers certainly would have to teach both in-person and virtually anyway, although they might avoid the need for simulcasting.  The other, perhaps unintended consequence of approaching the division of the school in this way, is that it also divides the staff into in-person and virtual camps.  I’ve heard not so pleasant stories of staff lobbying to stay virtual, while colleagues are forced to teach in-person, with correspondingly higher levels of health risk.  Contract negotiations and collective bargaining are usually not far behind.  

The other strategy to avoid simulcasting, much less popular it seems to me, is to platoon schedule the entire school, with all in-person learning happening in the morning, and then all virtual learning happening in the afternoon, using basically the same teachers to do both.   We also explored this possibility, but even if we moved to an exclusively 4-day work week, the four days would be incredibly long and still tight for our high school courses in terms of instructional time.  In other words, it’s hard (although not impossible) to fit two schools days into a single day.  

In the end, like most schools, we opted for simulcasting.  It is a trade-off we discussed at length as a leadership team.  We mocked-up different scenarios to see what the other possibilities might look like, and decided in the end that a shortened day initially will allow our staff to build their capacity as simulcasting, and then grow from there without having to significantly interrupt the typical school day or week calendar.  We’re just a week into it now, but I’ve been really impressed by the degree to which our teachers have worked collaboratively to support each other in designing and implementing their systems for simulcasting instruction.  It’s perhaps the biggest variable in hybrid learning, and our teachers have already been attacking the design challenge head-on.