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.