Distance Learning 2020

Distance Learning 2020: A look back

Team Benefield on August 19, 2019, versus April 1, 2020. Apart, but still together.

During the onset of the pandemic and throughout Trinity’s March–May 2020 distance learning program necessitated by the virus, our teacher-writers took to the internet, sharing their stories through social media and blogs.

The following curated posts from Fifth Grade Lead Teacher Thomas Benefield and Director of Teaching and Learning Jill Gough will take you back to this difficult, yet hopeful time.

COVID-19 Shutdown: Teacher’s Perspective

By Thomas Benefield, Fifth Grade Lead Teacher

Friday, March 13, 1:45 PM, Trinity School

Seventy-something Fifth Graders gather in the hall to have a dance party, but doggone it, the speaker won’t work. The speaker won’t work. You can’t have a dance party without a speaker! Try telling that to a group of Fifth-Grade boys so connected that they come up with almost identical writing topics when given a surprise free write assignment. “Play ‘Single Ladies’! Play ‘Single Ladies’!!!!” Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” plays, and the boys sing and dance, dance and sing.

The girls roll their eyes. “It is now time for two o’clock carpool. Teachers, please log onto School-Pass.”

And just like that everything we knew about school was over.

Flashback nine days to the faculty meeting where we hear the Head of School tell us that we might be looking at some days away from school. Nothing solid, nothing definite, but it’s a possibility.

Flash forward five days to Morning Meeting with our students. “It’s possible that we’re going to have to stay home for a few days. Maybe a little longer, two weeks tops.” We tell the kids, “This is something you’re going to always remember. This is the thing that when you’re an adult people will ask you where you were when the Corona Shutdown happened, and you’ll say that you were a Fifth Grader at Trinity School.”

Flashback two days. Eight teachers sit together putting together a week’s worth of assignments. Laughing, but taking it seriously. We are putting together assignments for our students that they can do at home that will be similar to what we’d be doing at school. “A week, two weeks tops” floats through our minds, but there are some quiet, sinister voices that say different.

Monday, March 16

Distance Learning begins. Our Google Drives are in use as they never have been before. Students use this to turn in the work they’re doing that we assigned. Checking over each assignment, making comments, checking off on Google Spreadsheets which students have completed what.

I meet with Jill Gough and Bridget Billups on Google Meet, a new-to-us platform. Isn’t it fun! Look! There they are! It’s the future the Jetsons promised us, minus the flying cars. This is what we will be using to see our students because we are staying home two weeks, and the second week we will start seeing our students in our virtual classrooms.

We Meet and make plans. We Meet more and plan more. We fill in schedules on Google Docs. We make hyperlinks to Google Docs and Loom video presentations (another new platform!). We Meet more. Nervous laughter. Frustrated grumbles over internet blips; frozen screens, echoey voices, connections that don’t connect.

Week 2, we see our students for the first time on screen. We laugh, we talk, we tell them they’re doing great and assure them that we’ll be back together soon. Little do we know.

Weeks 3, 4, 5, 6. Meeting, planning, emailing, texting, FaceTiming, holding onto the thinning thread of hope that we will go back and be with our students and EACH OTHER again. We spend hours and hours with each other five days a week. We are a support system for each other.

We hear we will not be coming back.

We will not be coming back.

Not coming back. Weeks 7 and 8 continue as the others have, and here’s the thing. Here’s the thing! Our students are doing awesome work, and they have been this whole time! All the foundations laid before the Corona Shutdown are fully evident. We are proud. We are amazed. These digital natives have taken this new format and said, “Okay, yeah. We got this.” And they do! Don’t get me wrong. They want to come back. Videos shared with us showing a Fifth Grader wailing, “I WANT TO GO BACK TO SCHOOOOOOL!” But they are doing great work. Not busy work. Not just reviewing what they’ve learned already this year. New material. New skills and strategies. These teachers I work with. Holy cow, these teachers! These co-workers. These friends of mine. I can’t sing their praises enough. Mothers of young children also in school and too young for school. Single adults at home by themselves with just their sweet pup for company. Wives of husbands whose jobs are as uncertain as the time we’re living in. Wives and moms away from home to be with family while other family members are away from them. Wives and moms with high schoolers in their homes who are surly and bored and snarky and even sweet at times. These teachers I work with! Day after day, week after week, we bring our all to this task: Teach our students. At various times we crack. Tears of frustration, fear, disappointment, exhaustion, anger. But we laugh and we make each other laugh. These teachers I work with!

Week 9, it’s our last week with our students. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. We’ve missed so much. They’ve missed so much. Thirty-minute video meetings in the morning where the seams are starting to show a little. A little less interest. A little less participation. Can we blame them for this? No! We are as exhausted by this as they are. They’re still doing great work. They’re still trying their best. They’re asking questions, they’re sharing thoughts and insights, but they’re done, and nobody blames them. We’re close ourselves, but then it hits me.

When this is over, I have summer ahead of me. Usually that fills me with excitement. Summer! I’ve said before that any teacher who claims the time off in summer has nothing to do with why they teach, even just a little, is a liar. This summer is full of uncertainty and lack of structure for me. Summer means I don’t see my students’ smiling little faces on my screen every morning. Summer means I don’t see my co-workers in our now weekly Meet. We did get it down to once a week after a couple of weeks. I was going to coach swim team again this summer, and I love that, but it’s been snatched away like so many other things. I’ve told my students that I will see them again. I wish it would be in room 2261 getting ready for a regular day of Fifth Grade, but that’s not possible. That regularity seems to be out of reach. That doesn’t matter though. I have poured seven-anda-half months into them. I have learned about them. I have learned from them. I hope they have learned from me. They are part of Team Benefield, and that’s a lifetime membership. I will see them again. Whether individually, a partial group, or the whole 18 of them together in one place, I will see their smiles face-to-face. If we get to a place where we can high-five or give hugs, I will do that. If we aren’t at that place yet I will do like I’ve been doing with friends I’ve seen from six feet away; smile, give ourselves a hug and acknowledge that it’s not the same, but it’s better than nothing.

This school year is nothing at all like anyone thought it would be. It is one that I hope no one ever, ever has to go through again because it has been hard. Hard, but not impossible. Hard, but not without hope and joy and expectation. If we have to do this again, we can. We’ve learned new skills. We pivoted. We took this situation and did the best we could, and we can do it again if we have to. We don’t want to. At all. Ever again. But we can because this is what we do; we teach our students.

Read more of Thomas’s writings at

yerlifeguard.wordpress.com

Together and apart, we are Trinity School: Distance Learning March 16–May 22, 2020

Jill’s Blog: A 50-Day Journey

By Jill Gough, Director of Teaching and Learning

Together and apart, we work to serve our students and their families, staying true to who we are, fulfilling our mission, and enacting our philosophy of multi-sensory tasks and activities to build deep foundational understanding.

I really thought we would be out for two weeks. Two-and-ahalf months or 50 school days later, we celebrated our school year, using Google Meet, Zoom, and an in-person caravan. On the first day, I wrote a blog post chronicling my day, including what was similar and different from being at school and what I needed to make tomorrow better. I didn’t know then that I would write 50 posts, one for each school day that we were apart. Over and over again, I wrote, “We are learning, and we are together, even though we are apart. It is not the way we want to have school, but we are making the best of our situation. We know that it is important to #FlattenTheCurve and keep ourselves and our communities safe.”

The following are excerpts from my blog during the 50-day journey.

Day 1 | March 16, 2020

Day one of week one of working, schooling, and learning from home is in the books. Our teams prepared, planned, and practiced. We are learning to adapt to our new virtual meeting rooms. While there were a few kinks, the day seemed long but smooth. My office door was open and busy. Just as on a regular day, there’s not enough time, and yet, the work is so rewarding.

Day 5 | March 20, 2020

We commit to a whole-child approach to learning at Trinity. We are taking a whole-family approach to distance learning. To that end, we used and are using the tools and resources (Google, Seesaw, Dreambox, Keyboarding, and IXL) that we already use in learning and teaching.

We know that Trinity students are best served when with Trinity Teachers. We did not prevent students from coming to school so that we could have a PD day to “get prepared.” We are prepared as far as communication tools go. Our students were with their teachers every day last week. We chose to focus on student learning, and we know that we made the right decision.

Day 8 | March 25, 2020

I was never a fan of the “flipped classroom” idea. You know, the teacher records the lesson, the students watch it at home, and then they can “do” homework in class the next day just in case they have a question. Well, today is a different story. Today, I cannot be in the room with the learners in my care to facilitate their learning. I will confess that I dabbled with the “flipped classroom” idea as both a middle and high school math teacher back in the day. Joking (halfway) with me, my students would comment that it was easier to pause me on video than in person.

So, here we are in this universal situation. How might we leverage video to offer students the time they need, the ability to press pause, and the luxury of replay and rewind? What might be gained if everyone watches the mini lesson once, twice, or as many times as they need before they meet with their peers and teachers? How might we learn and grow together while apart?

We love our students and our colleagues. We could not have imagined teaching and learning in this way, but it does now offer learners the time they need to think, to draw, to write, and to discover.

While we want to be together sitting side-by-side, we are harnessing the power of technology to afford learners the time they need.

Important time.

Deep foundation building time.

Learning is the constant. Time is a variable.

Day 14 | April 2, 2020

How do we learn and grow when we are apart? Well, this is day 14, and we know we are doing it through distance learning with our students. It is hard. It is rewarding. It is building strong teams and relationships.

Day 20 | April 10, 2020

Today is a planned school break. Teachers, students, and families are tired, homebound, worried, and thankful. So thankful.

We are thankful for our Trinity community, our Trinity family.

Day 28 | April 22, 2020

Teachers miss their students, their hugs, smiles, laughter, and the tiny, powerful moments. Google Meet connects us in yin-and-yang ways. We can see, hear, talk with, and laugh with each other, yet we miss the physical presence of our community. We applaud our teachers’ creativity, intentional planning, the volumes of feedback, and the care and concern they offer our students and their families as you attend to your family’s needs too.

Parents are working, worried, and weary. They are tackling our learning plans as they can for their children. Parents know

how to read, compute, investigate, and write. It is incredibly complex to teach these skills, and yet they press on. Teachers and administrators applaud parents’ engagement, effort, and willingness to lead learning. It’s really difficult to teach those you love the most.

Teachers and parents are on the same team focused on the care of our students and children. We have the same goals, hopes, and dreams. We wish the venue was Trinity School. There is so much to miss, yet we are gaining so much. We know each other so much better differently now. This critical work—schooling—feels opposite or contrary to the norm, and yet it is actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent. We thank you for your growth mindset as well as your trust and faith in each other.

Day 32 | April 28, 2020

With both hands, teachers have been planning, providing resources and learning plans, and offering feedback to help our young learners grow. We are teaching, and they are learning.

Day 36 | May 4, 2020

At Trinity, our pillars call for deep learning experiences to build a strong academic and character foundation. Some of our practices are not “how it was done when I was in school” and seem complex. I want you to know that we study to hone and enhance our skills yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily. Now that learning is facilitated at home, we have the opportunity to make our practices more visible. We communicate why we do what we do.

Day 40 | May 8, 2020

Our teachers and students are determined to finish strong even though we are not together inside our beautiful gate. While it is not the same, our teachers are working tirelessly together to continue our Trinity family experiences.

Today, the first-ever Virtual Olympics of the Body was held. It was joyous, fun, and athletic. Congratulations to all teachers, students, and parents. We are so proud of all of you. Thank you!

Day 46 | May 18, 2020

I want to recognize all that we are learning, teaching, and doing. Deep academic foundation is our focus as is the depth of character.

We have learned academic content, social skills, emotional coping strategies, lifelong habits, and more.

We have explored and practiced new academic content, new ways to develop and maintain friendships and connections, time-management skills, new ways to harness the power of technology, and some things to not do again.

We learned that the building brings us to the same place at the same time but does not define our community. We define our community, belonging, and comfort.

●• We learned that we want to go to school, emotionally and physically.

Day 50 | May 22, 2020

Trinity School is a community of learners. I keep saying writing: we are teaching, and they are learning. We are learning, too.”

Multisensory, active, deep learning experiences are a cornerstone of our learning and teaching. Intentional, purpose-driven, and playful are cornerstones of our learning, too. On this last day of the 2019–20 school year, I want to again say thank you to our teachers. You are celebrated!

I did not set out to write 50 blog posts in 50 school days but worry and concern enveloped our culture. Are we doing the right things? Are we good enough? Are the children learning? We learn what we are thinking when we write. We reflect on what we think—and we learn—when we read. So, every day for 50 school days, I wrote and published. I know that I began and continued ending each post with “I love you, and I miss you.” It was the hardest and the most important part of each post. I needed to say it, and I hope that both teachers and families connected with it. Connected with me.

Here are the top five important ideas that capture what I learned.

5. Facts are important; relationships are everything!

4. While learning and teaching through a screen is hard—really hard—we do hard things. We are bold, curious, confident learners.

3. Don’t assume they cannot, just because they are little. Never underestimate a motivated learner.

2. Our teachers stay true to who we are. The learning plans are dense, rich with multi-sensory learning experiences.

1. While the building was closed, Trinity School was open: caring for, loving, and teaching our students.

Together and apart, we are Trinity School. We are dedicated to our students, our children. We continue to care for, love, and teach so that they continue learning deeply. We are making the days count. We are teaching, and they are learning. Know that we are with you; we love you, and we miss you.

I love you, and I miss you.

Read more of Jill’s writings at jplgough.blog

Together and apart, we are Trinity School: Distance Learning March 16–May 22, 2020

2019–2020 End-of-Year Caravan

On May 22, all Trinity parents, students, and employees had the opportunity to come together and celebrate the end of the school year during an all-school caravan. Most of Trinity’s faculty and staff lined the perimeter of the carpool lane as hundreds of students and their parents drove through campus! In addition to thanking our families for a wonderful 2019–20 school year, even with its unusual final few months, the caravan allowed us to celebrate the Class of 2020, whose members finished their Trinity journey with incredible strength and positivity amidst the turmoil of the time.