We Have the Opportunity & I Hope We Don’t Waste It.

Jennifer Robbins, principal of Ladd Acres Elementary School in Hillsboro, Oregon, has been collecting and studying data about which of her school’s students are showing up to distance learning classes and what they are learning. She wants to know, “What types of lessons are really working?” One sixth grade teacher, for example, says he is getting better results in math than he was when teaching in the classroom.

“We have the opportunity, and I hope we don’t waste it, to learn so much about how kids learn and what our education systems need,” she says.

In this episode of ExtraOrdinary Districts in Extraordinary Times, Robbins, shares what she has learned since schools closed in March and how she is thinking about re-opening school in some fashion in the fall. “Who are we going to take care of and how are we going to take care of them?” is the question that is at the top of her mind as she considers whether the school will be able to fully open, stay fully closed, or some kind of hybrid system. An equity plan never gets more tested than in a crisis, she says.

To read about Jennifer’s work at McKinney School in Hillsboro, see Schools that Succeed (Harvard Education Press, 2017).

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