Sharing What We Know

Milkbreak 2.0

The traditional Milkbreak meeting for staff has also transformed into a Google Meet, though technology and time constraints have clearly altered the feel of this daily Landmark tradition. Where many staff would once take a breather together over coffee and snacks, and much professional business and decompressing would get done in a convivial atmosphere, now the allotted 15 minutes necessitates a briskly paced agenda, limiting the ability to do mini-inservices and presentations. Before Milkbreak is called to order, the buzz is missing as a mixture of remote and on-campus teachers have their cameras on but spontaneous conversation is limited by the technology.

Lean and Mean

The campus itself is quieter, partly because it is less populated but also because travel is designed purposely to minimize contact. Events happen outdoors—if at all, and parents and visitors are not present. Fall Parents’ Days in November were a strange cyber-version of the usual over-crowded agenda, with conferences happening virtually, and the social feel replaced by an ability to access a link.

At a top level, many things remain the same. A Google Earth drone’s view of Landmark would still bring up the familiar buildings and grounds. But closer inspection would show many adaptations, both physical and cultural, brought about by the health-and-safety response to a global pandemic.

Sharing What We Know

Landmark Outreach Provides Content to Help Teachers Navigate New Classroom Environments By Kaia Cunningham and Lauren Murphy

During this challenging time in education, Landmark Outreach has made changes in response to the needs of educators while staying true to our mission to empower students with language-based learning disabilities (LBLD) by offering educators meaningful and effective professional development grounded in theory and practice. Though the needs of educators have changed drastically as a result of the pandemic, what has remained the same is the importance of supporting students with language-based learning disabilities in new school environments.

Adapting to New Educational Demands

Landmark Outreach, like many other educators and professional development providers, quickly adapted to this unfamiliar territory. As classroom teachers, we are learning alongside everyone else, and we quickly recognized the need for relevant and practical content to help educators (and ourselves) pivot to teaching online in the spring of 2020. For the current school year, our goal shifted to help teachers (and ourselves) navigate the new world of hybrid, in-person, and remote learning. To support all educators in making sense of our new classroom environments, we adapted the focus of the Blog for Busy Teachers and our series of Free Teaching Strategies to feature remote learning tips and resources taken from research and in-classroom experience that highlight what it means to teach students with learning disabilities in remote settings, as well as how to make the digital landscape more accessible for all students.

A New Spin on Summer Programs for Educators

Last summer, Landmark School Outreach replaced our annual three-week Summer Institute with one virtual week full of webinars, one-day workshops, two-day seminars, and five-hour online courses that served over 700 educators across the United States and beyond. Our online courses continue to attract educators in search of professional development and have been adapted to include more information and resources about remote learning. Many of our partnerships with local schools continue to flourish, though meetings now take place in virtual formats. We recently launched our newest venture, a series of monthly webinars, providing quick and accessible content for busy educators on timely topics relevant to teaching students with LBLDs in a variety of settings. As we plan for summer 2021 programming, we will continue to offer educators hybrid and remote options to earn professional development credits.

Always Mission Driven

Landmark Outreach is continually keeping the profiles of students with LBLDs at the forefront of our planning: What are their unique needs? What are their limitations and advantages as they navigate this new and challenging school setting? Keeping these questions in mind helps us to stay mission-driven and focus our instructional efforts to best support students.