GOING THE DISTANCE DISTANCE LEARNING

DISTANCE LEARNING

TO BE OR NOT TO BE AT Shakespeare with Valerie RossHA

Going the Distance

On Wednesday, March 4th, Castilleja leadership sent out an email to families, letting them know that the students would be learning from home the next Monday, working on assignments their teachers had given them in advance. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Division Heads and the Academic Technology department kicked into high gear as they planned for an impromptu professional development day to prepare the faculty for a possible shift to distance learning in case of a campus closure due to COVID-19.

That Monday, the faculty became the students in the truest sense. Castilleja’s core Leadership Competencies—initiative, agility, and purpose—were not just skills we were reinforcing for students, they were strengths our teachers were calling upon to prevail Dr. Jamie SullivanHA , Castilleja’s Director of Academic Technology, remembered. “The entire faculty was in the dining room with laptops open, taking notes, asking questions, sharing ideas. They were completely committed. The work, energy, and love they brought to the task, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

We all look back at that day now with a different perspective, as we do for so many events from early 2020. At that point, the hope was that if campus needed to close, it would reopen a matter of weeks later, certainly before the end of the school year. Soon enough, we realized that timeline was not safe. Then through challenging times. “I was in awe that day,”

throughout the summer, we hoped infection rates would permit us to reopen with the start of the new academic year, which also didn’t come to pass. Since that Monday in March, we have had to adjust our mindsets and expectations again and again.

But one aspect that has remained steady throughout is our faculty’s commitment to delivering an outstanding

distance learning experience. If anything, the attention and care they give to the process has grown. Over the summer, while plans for the fall remained uncertain, generous giving to the Annual Fund allowed every faculty member to receive a professional development grant to explore new technologies, develop creative ways for students to collaborate, and research solutions to questions they had never faced before. Dr. Sullivan and Terry Young, Castilleja’s Director of Technology, trained teachers on everything from Padlet, to Jamboard to Zoom, to Microsoft Meet, to Thinglink and Pear Deck. At the same time, they gathered input from teachers to prepare for hybrid learning, trying to identify strategies for when some students are on campus while others are home. For everyone who worked in the Technology Department, it was a summer of nearly constant problem solving and preparing for every contingency.

As of the date that we are sending this report to press, we are making preparations to gradually reopen campus at the end of October, but in the meantime, there is nothing “virtual” about distance learning at Castilleja. It’s the real thing. Our students will stretch and grow in countless ways throughout this year, and our teachers are so excited about the possibilities. Learning and leading this year at Castilleja is both completely different and exactly the same.

The Upper School Play, She Kills Monsters, produced and presented live on Zoom.

Tannis Hanson, Visual and Performing Arts teacher, had been rehearsing She Kills Monsters for just over a month when school closed in March. During the closure, she saw the performance date inching closer and closer. “I began to wonder about an experiment, about whether we could push the bounds of creativity.” That is exactly what happened. Working from their own homes, the performers worked with virtual backgrounds, creative props, and switches in point of view to find a different, unexpected, and powerful way for their characters to tell the story.

This year, the guidelines around gathering may make it impossible to mount shows in the Chapel Theater. But the music, theater, and dance faculty are already turning this around. Ms. Hanson explains, “During this time, we need to reframe the way we think about creating theatre, and instead of thinking about what we can’t do, we are thinking about everything we can do. We need to think about where we can take this challenge. It’s a great exercise for all involved, students and faculty.”