Highland Middle School: Forever Changed

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HMS: Forever Changed

BY MATT BRADLEY

What a ride! The 2019-2020 school year was unlike any we’ve ever experienced before. Our teachers and staff at Highland Middle School are true heroes. Literally over the span of a weekend, teachers created online learning for students, kitchen staff planned and created a system to provide sack lunches to students, the transportation department and paraprofessionals created a system of lunch delivery, and custodians began a deep clean and disinfecting of the entire school building. It was heroic and amazing!

Because of the uncertainty of what school will look like in the fall, we are focusing on three ideas for next year at Highland Middle School: premortem, we-do, and lessons learned.

Premortem

The idea of a premortem comes from Daniel H. Pink’s book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, and is an excellent way to begin thinking “upstream.” Naturally, postmortem is a term that we typically hear when coroners examine a dead body to determine the cause of death. A “premortem” shifts the focus from after the fact to before. Pink writes: “Suppose you and your team are about to embark on a project. Before the project begins, convene for a premortem. ‘Assume (at its completion) …our project is a complete disaster,’ you say to your team. ‘What went wrong?’ The team, using the power of prospective hindsight, offers some answers…by imagining failure in advance…you can anticipate some of the potential problems and avoid them once the actual project begins.” Our team at Highland Middle School did an amazing job providing remote instruction. But, there are certainly areas where we can do better in the event of another school closure. By focusing our energy on a premortem, we can anticipate problems and try to solve them before they occur.

We Do

Quality instruction is broken down into the steps of: I do, we do, you do with support and feedback, and you do. One of the biggest challenges faced with remote instruction was replicating the “we do” aspect of instruction. This naturally occurs during in-person lessons, with back-and-forth dialogue between teachers and students. “We do” will also be a focus of our premortem. Staff members focused on this idea and how they will approach it this school year: “Use a video format, much like we used Zoom this year. For example, I can show them how I find information in a non-fiction resource and how I would put that in an outline note format. I could have them try the same skill with another resource or objective. Then, I can check their notes when requesting assessments to see how they are working with the skill.” –7th grade social studies teacher

“The structure of a lesson should be teacher-led by a video lesson then transition into a zoom with guided practice, followed up by independent work.” –8th grade math teacher

“I will continue to video myself working through a lesson with them

so they all have access.” –6th grade science teacher

Lessons Learned

Throughout each school year, but especially during our time of remote instruction, teachers are challenged to reflect on what is working and what aspects of online learning need to continue even in the regular school setting. We cannot emerge from the pandemic unchanged! I am excited about what our teachers will continue to use and develop. Staff members have said that they will continue to use the following practices after remote learning ends:

“Continuing scheduling and expectations in weekly email.” –7th language arts teacher

“Use videos when possible to give instruction to students if I am not there, or even if I am. So many students respond better to oral directions than to written. That may be something I try to pull into class projects more often.” –8th grade language arts teacher

“I will continue to make screencast videos and post them in a Google Classroom. I think they are a great tool for absent students as well as students who might need multiple exposures to a concept in order to solidify it.” –6th grade social studies teacher

Truly, these past three months have been unforgettable. Both in a good way and a not-so-good way! Regardless, I believe that we will emerge stronger than ever before as a professionals, and specifically, as a school. Highland Middle School rocks!

Matt Bradley is the principal of Highland Middle School in Morrow County. He has previously served as the assistant principal of Highland Elementary, as well as spending nine years in the classroom as a middle-level language arts teacher. You can contact him via Twitter at @MrBradleyHMS.