We asked parents, students, and educators to share what their home learning environments look like as nearly all schools are shut down for extended periods because of the coronavirus pandemic.
We asked parents, students, and educators to share what their home learning environments look like as nearly all schools are shut down for extended periods because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Photos by various photographers/Ritzau Scanpix via AP
Last week, Denmark became the first European country to allow daycare and primary schools to reopen since the start of the coronavirus lockdown. The classroom setups included desks spaced six feet apart. (In Denmark, which uses the metric system, it’s actually 1.829 meters.) One teacher at the Korshoejskolen school in Randers, Denmark, held a music lesson outdoors to maintain social distancing.
As teachers across the country grapple with the challenges that come with remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic, an elementary school teacher on Maryland’s Eastern Shore faces the added challenge of a lack of internet access at home.
The majority of school buildings in the United States will remain closed for the rest of the school year as the coronavirus continues to spread. But school leaders have already begun to imagine and plan for the fall when students will return for the new school year in a world still struggling with the pandemic. Here’s a look at how other countries have addressed the challenges of reopening schools in this new reality.
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CHINA
FRANCE
GERMANY
MADAGASCAR
NORWAY
VIETNAM
DENMARK was one of the first countries to reopen schools. For an in-depth look at their process, visit this post.
One of the exceptions to school closures in the U.S. is MONTANA, where schools’ opening status varies by district. Willow Creek School, located 40 miles outside Bozeman, reopened this week to finish out the final two and a half weeks of the school year. School principal Bonnie Lower, also the district’s superintendent, greeted students at the door, where she checked their temperatures.
Education Week has always relied on strong visuals to accompany the stories we report. But with most of the country under stay-at-home orders, and students and teachers learning from home, the visuals team has had to get more creative in how we conceptualize those stories. That’s led to Zoom videos, submitted photos from the subjects themselves, and, most strikingly, illustrations from a talented team of artists. Taylor Callery illustrated our most recent cover, showing the implications of the pandemic on school finances in a visually compelling way. Here he explains his process and how he came to the illustration that ultimately landed on our front page.
In Taylor’s Words – The Process
This particular project started out with the general idea of a recession and its impact on schools. The team at Education Week decided to dig deeper into this story. And as the story changed, so did our conceptual thinking around the subject itself.
I first read the story to gather a complete understanding of the topic. I boiled down the information so I could begin to wrap my thoughts around concepts that spoke to the core of the story itself. I’ve found that writing helps me organize my ideas around a certain topic, so I began by compiling a list of keywords, phrases, examples of mood, and the general tone of the article. Organizing the information in this way allowed me to start breaking down certain imagery that I could link to the visual narrative.
In this case, I started to think about the idea of subtraction, and how it would impact those who are described in the story. This created a path for me to follow. I asked myself, how can I apply these elements in a meaningful way to best describe the message of this piece? With my list of keywords and phrases, I began to gather visual information that connected directly to the most important elements of the story.
At this point I began to sketch out ideas around these elements. I usually do a number of sketches that take a few different approaches. Sometimes the idea in my mind doesn’t translate as well as I would like as a visual, so it’s important to experiment and self-curate the concept along the way. We had a couple of rounds of sketches in this process as the story morphed into what it is today.
The sketch phase really helps me understand visually what elements are most important. For this story, those elements included – minority students (those who would be most affected by budget cuts), money, environment (urban public schools), and the overall tone.
With the idea of subtraction in mind, I immediately thought of a young student disappearing or dissolving away from their current environment. The idea of subtraction also made me think of isolation or emptiness. These are the two main elements I was chasing in representing the students and the environment for this piece. Creating a barren landscape helped isolate the main figure and enhance the mood or overall tone.
The last element to bring this image together was incorporating a more literal sense of funding, hence the $100 bill the student finds himself on. The $100 bill alone didn’t hold much weight with this topic, but by applying cracks to this element, I added a sense of fragility or instability.
With all of these elements, it was essential to organize them in a composition that was visually pleasing, but that also created a hierarchy of information. In this case, I tried to design a composition that worked well with the story, while also creating available space for the text and headlines found in the final design.
It’s always a team effort, especially for assignments like this one. It’s what I enjoy most about my “job” – collaborating and problem-solving with a community of talented writers, art directors, designers, and editors.
I’m very proud to have contributed to such a meaningful topic that will help shed light on those who most need the attention, now more than ever in these uncertain times.
Across the United States, graduation for the class of 2020 looks different this year. Gone are the days of families gathering together to watch their graduates walk across the stage and receive their diploma alongside their peers. In its place, schools have gotten creative in celebrating this year’s seniors. From car parades to quarantine diplomas made of toilet paper, signs on lawns and across entire streets, here’s a look at some of the approaches schools have taken to celebrating this class’s culmination.
ALABAMA
FLORIDA
IOWA
MISSISSIPPI
NORTH CAROLINA
OKLAHOMA
PENNSYLVANIA
TEXAS
WASHINGTON
The Taipei American School’s middle school performance of The Little Mermaid went on, despite coronavirus restrictions, with some modifications. Dressed in full costume, students wore masks and performed to an empty room, as the play was streamed so parents could watch from home. Another section of the school’s arts programs, the choir, has continued to practice as well, wearing masks and spaced out over three levels to adhere to this new world.
(Photos Courtesy of Dustin Rhoades/Taipei American School)
(Video courtesy of Reel Affair Productions)
June 4, 2020. That day will go down as one of the most special for Samantha Navarro, principal of the New Millennium Secondary School in Gardena, Calif.
A traditional graduation ceremony upended by the coronavirus pandemic. Three alternative ideas shot down. And then a plan that gelled.
She would visit each student individually, in a parade of sorts, with a line of cars, a DJ, countless decorations, and give them a personal commencement ceremony.
Navarro opened it up to teachers, to staff, to anyone who wanted to join. They ended up with eight cars, their supporters as varied as the school’s security guard and Navarro’s own mother, who helps out on campus.
The 200-student charter school had 44 graduates in the class of 2020. “Small but mighty,” is how Navarro describes both the school community and its seniors.
As part of Los Angeles Unified, New Millennium followed the district into distance learning in mid-March. As Navarro watched the events that would typically celebrate the senior class – beach week, prom, movie night – get cancelled, she started worrying about graduation and working with New Millennium’s counselor, Breyshere Sampson, on plan B.
After their first three ideas were scrapped by outside forces, they pivoted, taking advantage of their school’s small size to plan personal ceremonies.
They decided to visit each student individually at their homes, spread across the greater Los Angeles area.
From Long Beach to Compton, Torrance to Inglewood, they mapped out a route that would hit 43 houses over the course of an afternoon (their 44thsenior was working on graduation day, so they paid her a visited later on).
Their original vision had them starting at 11:30 a.m. on June 4 – their original graduation day – and wrapping up by 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m. at the latest.
Using Instagram Live, they communicated with students and families in the days leading up to the event to prepare them for what was to come.
“Our seniors weren’t quite sure,” said Navarro, when she told them they needed to be outside, in their cap, gown and a mask, ready to go for their 10-minute window.
The day started with the eight cars meeting to be decorated, a quick detour to Home Depot when the car decorations showed early signs of wobbling on the breezy day, and then they were on the road, at their first house in Torrance by noon.
“We rolled up and the first kid, you just see your student in cap and gown, I lost it, I started to cry,” Navarro said, realizing “we’re doing this, we’re really doing this.”
As Sampson broadcast each student’s name over a bullhorn – just as she normally would across the graduation stage – Navarro made sure to go through the full ceremony with each graduate, flipping their tassel and handing them their diploma.
They used blue smoke, in celebration of the school’s colors, and presented a lei to each student. Neighbors came out to celebrate when they heard the honking horns as the parade rolled up. And the DJ had the music “bumping,” playing Pomp and Circumstance when they arrived and departing to Post Malone’s Celebration.
The key to executing their plan was communication. The school’s administrative assistant, Alexandra Carrethers, played the role of control center, working from home to track their route and contact students along the way. The graduation team soon realized that the journey was going to take far longer than originally anticipated. By 5pm, they’d hit about half of the houses.
But they carried on, calling and texting parents, apologizing for the delays, promising they would be there.
As they made it to their final house just after 9 p.m., the staff, teachers, and counselors were still just as excited as they had been at noon, Navarro said.
The full weight of the day didn’t fully hit until Navarro got home and was flooded with texts from happy students and appreciative parents, sending her their photos. She says she’d do it again in a heartbeat, “it was just so personal.”
As the pandemic’s uncertainty and its impact on school hangs over the fall, Navarro is considering taking a poll at the beginning of the year to see what students and parents want for their graduation. “It was so amazing that I would consider doing it again, only if the parents were like ‘yes, this is what we want.’”
To her, it was “proof that our whole staff would do anything for our kids.”
The video that captured the day was an unexpected surprise. The school had hired Reel Affair Productions to take photos of the graduates. Navarro didn’t realize they were capturing video as well.
“Those are our kids doing big things,” she said. “They make those caps and gowns look amazing.”
Following the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, protests against police violence have taken place across the country and around the world. Students of every age have joined their communities to speak out for racial justice.
From student-organized demonstrations, to graduating seniors wearing their regalia, and younger children attending with their families, these students are protesting and taking a stance against racism. Many students have turned the conversation to the implications of racism on their own education, including the presence of police in schools.
For kids attending summer camp, this year will look different as camps work to determine whether and how to reopen safely amidst the continuing concerns of the coronavirus pandemic. Some camps have decided to reopen with additional safety precautions, including social-distancing measures and health screenings, while others have moved programming online or remained closed.
As protests against police brutality continue, parents, students and teachers from across the country are speaking out against the presence of police in schools. This week, educators in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles rallied to demand that funding be put toward additional services – including counselors, nurses, and classroom supplies for their students.
CHICAGO
PITTSBURGH
LOS ANGELES