Learning How to Distance Learn

By Courtney Ulmer, Assistant Head of School for Academics

What we know about Miss Charlotte and the School she founded is that she wanted her girls to rise and meet any challenge and that opportunities for learning and teaching would continue no matter the circumstances. While she might not have predicted Google Docs and Zoom meetings (or maybe she could have), what she could have anticipated is how well current Foxcroft students and teachers would adapt to distance learning and to “keeping up with the times.”

It’s remarkable how much we have adjusted our program over the past several months due to the coronavirus pandemic, and we have done so with our students and our Foxcroft community at the center of each decision.

We extended Spring Break for students to give faculty time to prepare to teach distance learning classes. Matt Norko, our Director of Technology, and Alex Northrup, our Director of The Innovation Lab, used that time to run workshops for online tools and virtual learning resources. Faculty also consulted with peers as they learned to navigate this new paradigm. And just as we have for our students, we have emphasized the importance of balancing work, self-care, and family for our teachers, too.

We created an asynchronous distance learning schedule, which allows for weekly student and teacher contact time, synchronous community time, and time for faculty to meet and discuss what's working. Our teachers have adapted their curriculum to the new schedule, always keeping in mind the external stressors that students and families are experiencing. Our Learning Center team has completely reorganized how they work with students, creating time for one-onone student meetings and scheduled periods for students to check into the Learning Center to work and get help during the school day as they would if they were on campus.

As always, we are guided by our understanding hearts while we work with our students and make decisions about how best to support them during this period of distance learning.