Future of Learning: Tapping teachers with tech expertise

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By Javeria Salman

Not long after schools closed because of the coronavirus last spring, a Rhode Island nonprofit launched a hotline for teachers who were struggling to launch new technology for remote leaning and trying to figure out how to teach with it. Within a few weeks, hundreds of teachers — and eventually parents, too — were flooding the line with calls for help.

The “dream team” of experts answering calls all had stellar credentials: They were teachers themselves, with training in how to deploy technology for learning and years of classroom experience.

This team of educators was part of the Fuse RI initiative, a fellowship program that teaches educators, administrators and local education agencies in the state how to integrate blended and personalized learning and technology practices into classrooms. The program was launched by the Highlander Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to creating “more equitable, relevant, and effective schools,” and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (The Gates Foundation is one of Hechinger’s many funders.)

Five-years into the fellowship, the group’s leaders had hoped to launch a restructured model of the program that would train school leaders and teacher teams to design and implement blended and personalized learning initiatives in their in-person classrooms. They never imagined a crisis scenario in which millions of teachers would be plunged into ed tech all at once. Nevertheless, said Highlander’s chief education officer Shawn Rubin, the group “felt like there was a moment and an opportunity” to activate the 104 Fuse RI fellows spread out across the state to help make the transition to remote learning easier for other teachers.

Rubin said the resulting School Support Helpline “would allow any teacher that wasn't getting the support they needed from their home district or school an opportunity to phone in and talk directly with a fellow who is explicitly trained to be very confident in both the technology and the pedagogy, but also very competent in coaching and supporting teachers who are brand new to this work.”

The hotline launched on March 23 in partnership with the Rhode Island Department of Education. Forty of the 104 Fuse fellows volunteered to field questions. Teachers could call the phone number or visit a website to be matched with a fellow, based on the problem and the fellow’s expertise. By April, the helpline took off.

“People who didn't know anything about technology and had kind of avoided in their own classrooms were really seeing this as a lifeline,” said Maeve Murray, the Highlander Institute’s services manager. “Many of them were repeat users of the helpline.”

Fuse fellow Debbie Ramm, the instructional technology coordinator for Johnston Public Schools, was one of the first to begin fielding calls from teachers. Ramm, who was part of the first cohort of Fuse fellows in 2014, was already providing support sessions for teachers and administrators in her district. Up to 300 educators attended the workshops, which ran every day and sometimes on weekends. When Highlander called, Ramm signed up because she knew teachers outside of her district must be struggling, too.

“I can't imagine not having that support system,” Ramm said. During her Fuse fellowship, she became part of a tribe of teachers, she said. “Before I met people from Highlander, I was an island, I was in a silo.”

Another Fuse fellow, Lisa Leaheey, an English teacher at North Providence High School, was part of the third cohort of the fellowship, which ran from 2016-18. Leaheey began informally offering help to teachers in her school when the pandemic hit. She also helped create a tech integration support website for the high school, providing teachers with resources on blended learning and flipped classrooms, technology integration and student support.

Since she was already fielding Zoom calls and emails from her peers, Leaheey said volunteering for the helpline was an easy transition.

“It was the same kind of thing just on a larger, more formal scale,” said Leaheey.

Sometimes a call was as simple as showing a second grade teacher how to organize her Google classroom in a way parents and students could easily navigate. At other times, Leaheey said, her role was to encourage teachers “to think about their goals for student learning, before they worried about what tech they want to use.”

In some cases, she challenged teachers to consider “if technology is even needed.”

Ramm, the other fellow, said sometimes listening to teachers was just as important, to help them understand when to slow down so they did not become overwhelmed. “I really think that is the approach that was needed during this craziness,” she said.

Ramm said her approach was to ask teachers what was already working really well in their classrooms and suggest they capitalize on that, first. Technology is not always the “top answer,” she said.

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The Shortlist

1. Schools change approach to SEL. A new global survey, “Remotely Ready: Global Insights Into Effective Teaching and Learning in a Pandemic,” found that schools were unprepared for the sudden transition to remote learning last spring, and most had to adjust their approach to social emotional learning. In the July 2020 survey, conducted by the educational technology company SMART Technologies, a majority of the approximately 250 teachers and administrators responding indicated their school was either “not at all” or “somewhat” ready in four of 10 areas, such as parent involvement, student involvement, and teacher training, and a majority — 58 percent — stated their school had to "mostly” or “completely” change its approach to SEL in response to the additional stress caused by the pandemic. Read the full report.

2. Pandemic’s impact dominates Latinx educators’ summit. Continuing the trend of online seminars for educators, the upcoming national education summit of the Association of Latino Administrators & Superintendents, to be held virtually Oct. 9-10, will offer Latino educators and parents the opportunity to hear from school district leaders across the country on issues facing Latinx students and communities during the pandemic. The summit, focused on equity during the pandemic, will feature sessions in both English and Spanish on topics such as increasing student outcomes for middle and high school students in a virtual environment, the role of family in students’ social emotional learning and reducing chronic absenteeism by nudging students and parents to engage. View the full schedule.

3. Key factors for effective remote learning. The Learning Accelerator, a national nonprofit, launched a research-informed framework for implementing and improving remote learning for K-12 students based on findings from its review of academic and professional research on effective remote learning and instruction design. The report highlights two key factors that teachers should consider to improve the remote learning experience: a foundation for self-directed learning that fosters students’ engagement outside of school and effective instruction that facilitates “learning interactions and engagement between student, teacher, and content.”

4. Students may not be ready for grade-level work. A new analysis from Curriculum Associates, a developer of curriculum and diagnostic assessments used by K-8 students in the U.S., shows how school shutdowns impacted student achievement at the start of the 2020-21 school year. The analysis, based on data from over 900 schools nationwide, suggests that fewer students were ready for grade-level work when they returned to school this year and raises concern about at-home testing. The report also explores performance differences between the students who have returned to in-person classes and to those still receiving all instruction remotely. Read the report.

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