Creativity and play in distance learning: Alternative schools help Austin kids thrive during COVID-19

Bet your bottom dollar we work best under pressure.
(Yo teachers, I wanna like THANK YOU!)
Get your yoga pants set.
Gotta earn that paycheck!
On your mark, get set, let me go, let me Zoom!

—Emily Glankler and Akina Adderley
Zoom! A "Shoop" Parody for Teachers, Griffin School

 
We’re back again with more survey results from 35 Austin-area alternative schools. The first article looked at the broad topic of education in emergencies, and the second tackled social emotional education in this period of social distancing. This week we’re diving into the importance of creativity and play in many forms.

The educators who contributed to our survey suggest that making space for creativity in the curriculum—and unstructured play with other students—is an essential component in their child-centered learning strategies. As a recent article by illustrator Louis Netter noted, we are all necessarily turning inward at this moment, “to the vast inner space of our thoughts and imagination,” and we feel more keenly than ever how important the arts and creativity are to our well-being.

We’ve probably all seen some of the outpouring of creativity and humor from students and teachers on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook—with music, creative writing, theater, and art taking center stage. Locally, Griffin School’s Emily Glankler and Akina Adderley jumped into the fray, offering students a funny, timely comment on Zoom school life in a musical parody of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shoop.” 

For isolated theater kids, unable to mount their productions in person, Skybridge Academy’s Brian Oglesby is donning a new costume each day to turn the ordinary into something a little more special, explaining that there’s a lot of joy in this innovation-by-necessity:

It’s like we’ve landed on this desert island. It sucks on this desert island. When we discover that by rubbing a couple of sticks together, you can make fire, there is triumph and a certain joy. Sure, it would be better not to be stranded, . . . but in the meantime, look at this cool thing we did.

Oglesby adds that his students are developing flexibility and even more creative thinking in a school that prides itself on always pushing boundaries. “Other schools are having to cancel their productions, and my heart breaks for them. We’re trying to figure out how to perform through video conferencing. It’s going to be its own weird thing, fit to the form.”

Play and child-led discovery—from giant bunnies to a virtual Earth Day

Lulu Bautista of Corazón Neighborhood Preschool offered us some valuable insight into her deeply held beliefs about the value of play, creativity, and discovery. Lulu calls what she does “Respite Care,” and it helps relieve children’s anxieties. It’s clear that lessening anxiety is one of the most important aspects of creative engagement in all the schools we surveyed.

How do schools do it? At Corazón, they use both tactile and virtual learning:

We've taken a trip to the moon . . . the children "hand" me items through the screen to pack in our group bag, and then we all buckle in our seatbelts and blast off, calling out the things that we see along the way and floating around our screens in slow motion! We've used our magic wands to turn each other into everything from sleeping robots to gigantic bunnies.

Tactile, “real world” play that moves kids away from screens for part of the day is a priority at many schools. For Bloom Preschool kids, dancing together and reading together are as necessary to the curriculum now as ever, even though it’s done at a distance.  At Acton Academy, educators are creating care packages of project supplies and other items that help with inspiration. Skybridge is putting together weekly “grab bags” of science and art supplies. And Ashley Reinhardt says WonderWell’s teachers have designed experiences around easy-to-get household items as well as curated learning kits they provide. For example, they give little ones who need some fine-motor-skill development an ear of corn covered with coffee grounds and a toothbrush!

WonderWell distance learning supply kits ready for “contactless” pickup by preschool families

The contents of an art supply kit made available for Skybridge teens to pick up at specified times

Anne Remme of Speech-Language-Play is creating an entire set of short videos for Facebook that allow kids to be involved in a virtual playgroup with reading, “table time” art activities, cooking, outside play, and even pet care.

Back at Corazón Neighborhood Preschool, children are encouraged to choose their favorite items at home and make up games with them spontaneously, which can lead to a lot of new learning opportunities on the fly. “One child created a pretend marshmallow store and roasted marshmallows to sell to us. But she only had enough for a few of us!” says Lulu. “We walked through our problem solving skills, and together the children came up with an idea so that others could partake. We did this all from behind screens, all through the magical world of pretending that children live and thrive in.”

At International School of Texas, older kids had the chance to do similar experiments in adapting their ideas to the world of screens. They held an art contest in a virtual art gallery and they also created a whole-school Earth Day project online.

Art with Ms. Bo: The International School of Texas art teacher shows kids how to make and use stamps from recycled objects found around their homes.

With so much time spent in virtual classrooms and chat rooms, it’s inevitable that students of all ages will get creative with colorful and crazy virtual backgrounds and morphing faces. Pam Nicholas of Huntington-Surrey says they are using an app that turns people on Zoom into hilarious creatures. They use it sparingly, but it works to bring the community together through laughter. Chris Ready, assistant head of school at Austin’s Academy of Thought and Industry, said:

Our student government is coming up with weird contests to keep the student body engaged. We are going to launch a ‘guess that student's workspace contest.’ David, our student body president, has sent out a survey asking everyone to vote on what should be done with his facial hair . . . 

Kids at Huntington-Surrey are revising their school yearbook to include the new world of distance learning they’re exploring together.

What’s also happening, says Kori McLain of Lake Travis STEM Academy, is that educators and students are becoming closer as a result of sharing and getting a peek at each other’s spaces, including all the “learning forts” kids are building. And students always come up with new ways to add some pizzazz to ordinary meetups. “We celebrated a teacher’s B-day by surprising her with virtual B-day backgrounds, and we all wore funny hats and sang ‘Happy Birthday,’” says McLain.

We’ll let Lulu Bautista have the last word on this topic. She says:

Our version of creativity comes from the same place it has always dwelled, the children. . . . [it] centers on finding ways to ground ourselves in the familiar and hold onto something consistent to help children retain a sense of joy and relief from uncertainty when we gather together, even if that means virtually.

Shelley Sperry  |  Sperry Editorial

Social-emotional learning during the COVID crisis: Lessons from Austin’s alternative schools

We have made the emotional health of our students the top priority in decision-making.

—Chris Ready, Assistant Head of School
Academy of Thought and Industry

Learning to manage emotions and maintain empathetic, healthy relationships in ordinary times is as important for young people as other kinds of learning—and it’s doubly important in times of stress and crisis. Education researchers call this aspect of education social-emotional learning, or SEL. It’s strongly tied to all kinds of supportive relationships schools build among students, educators, and parents. Most alternative schools make SEL a pivotal aspect of their curricula, offering programs like Austin Rising School’s “Kids of Kindness.” 

Social-emotional learning is the foundation all other learning rests upon for students experiencing tragedy or trauma. Even in families who are in the very best situation—without loss of life or income—most kids are currently experiencing some significant anxiety and disruption. In response, family members and educators are stepping up to act as role models for emotional support. As the National Association of School Psychologists suggests, “This is a tremendous opportunity for adults to model for children problem-solving, flexibility, and compassion.”

In an effort to help Austin families dealing with the sudden transition to distance learning and to highlight what our community of alternative schools is doing right now, Alt Ed Austin conducted a survey that returned detailed responses from 35 schools. In this second installment of our series looking at changes in education as a result of COVID-19, we’re doing a deep dive into the answers to our survey, with social-emotional learning as our first topic.

Lunchtime hangouts, like this one at Griffin School, bring everyone together in a relaxed way.

Faster transitions to distance learning ease anxiety

For some schools, moving out of a physical space and into distance learning has happened quickly. We discovered in our survey that because they are smaller and more nimble, most of the 35 schools have been able to adapt easily to the new circumstances. 

Parents and students at Austin’s Academy of Thought and Industry and 4Points Academy reportedly have been surprised and pleased at the ease of the transition. The speed of the transition in small alternative schools has been a big part of limiting anxiety for students—an anxiety kids in larger school systems are still dealing with, as the machinery of transitioning to online learning for thousands of students grinds slowly and fitfully forward.

Many of the schools in our survey had some component of online learning available before the pandemic arrived. As Amanda Garret of Fusion Academy notes, her school already offered virtual classes for students who had to travel or were sick. “Most teachers had already experienced teaching this way and also many students, so it was a super easy transition for us!” 

In our community younger students seem to have embraced technology just as readily as older kids. Certified reading specialist Alexandra Eliot, founder of Bridges Academy Austin, which will be opening in Austin in the fall, says elementary students often adapt well to the Zoom platform. “In fact, some students pay attention better to tutoring when it is done virtually. [To help them,] I can increase the font size in their reading and point with my mouse.” 

It’s important to note one key issue in terms of implementing distance learning: It’s clear from the evidence in the surveys that the relative lack of economic inequality among the students at Austin’s alternative schools has made a big difference. Most of the students already have the technology they need; they and their parents are able to use the technology; and in most cases, they have at least one parent working from home who is able to support their learning and emotional health. For kids of essential workers, those experiencing financial and food insecurity, or without the essential technology, this transition looks very different and is inherently more difficult emotionally and socially.

“We met in our gardens”

Finding time for nature and for quiet mindfulness are two aspects of emotional and social wellness that are often linked, and both came up in the survey. 

Integrating time outside in nature is something parents and kids can easily forget now that we spend so much time in front of our screens. In keeping with their core mission, Earth Native Wilderness School encourages all kids to get outside and do some exploration and play. “Our Wild Life Forest Preschool has been producing some really amazing content for kids to do at home,” says Earth Native’s executive director, Dave Scott. “Seeing how excited the kids are to get on with their teachers and tackle their at-home nature challenges has been very inspiring.”

Mary Belton of Bloom Preschool said that her students “have been excited to share their gardens, so we met in our gardens one day to share what we are all growing. We also had lots of fun painting rocks together!” And Woodland Schoolhouse’s Nicole Haladyna uses Facebook as a gathering point for sharing songs, stories, updates on class pets, and nature lessons based on the trails near the school—including identifying poison ivy!

Students from Earth Native Wilderness School put their own spin on sheltering in place.

In the pursuit of good mental and emotional health for everyone, Ascent: An Acton Academy offers yoga for parents and “morning mindfulness” calls to all the learners. At WonderWell, Ashley Reinhardt says that “each day includes a “social-emotional check-in and an experience to promote self-regulation, self-awareness, and empathy.” 

In a recent newsletter, Carolina Peredo of La Tribu explained her preschool’s longstanding approach for little ones: “Our Mindfulness Program has been evolving throughout the years and now includes mindfulness practices like “La Vela de la Paz” and Yoga classes. They are now available as recorded sessions led by our guides on our YouTube Channel.”

Human connections at the core of SEL

Ultimately, it’s through fostering human relationships every day that these schools support social-emotional learning. At the majority of schools surveyed, teachers are still able to connect with students one-on-one weekly, and sometimes daily. Students connect with each other in myriad ways, and educators are also connecting one-on-one with parents and offering them emotional and social support. 

At the Fusion Academy Homework Cafe, teachers are available to help kids both socially and emotionally in addition to helping with normal schoolwork. Fusion’s Amanda Garrett explains, “Teachers can do breakout rooms with one or two students if needed.” For kids at Growing Curiosity Community School, connection comes in the form of fun music and Spanish mornings.

A form of one-on-one “office hours” is common at many schools, including Lake Travis Stem Academy and Parkside Community School; at the Academy of Thought and Industry, each student has a guide who acts as a coach and checks in to see where they are emotionally.

Acton Academy hosts read-alouds and hangouts at lunchtime so kids can just meet up with friends casually. They do offline challenges, which they later share online. For example, says Laura Sandefer of Acton, “We had a virtual talent show that included voting for the best of three categories. . . . We had a day for the whole community to eat popcorn and enjoy the show.” At the Westlake Campus of Acton, students do virtual PE together and are encouraged to organize virtual play dates outside of school to stay in touch. Huntington-Surrey gathers kids for Friday Night Social Hours to play games and chat in addition to their check-ins during class.

At Clearview Sudbury School, they not only help kids connect with their regular school friends, but they also facilitate connections with other self-directed learners around the world in order to share learning experiences and make new friends.

Parents and kids learn together with Lake Travis STEM Academy.

Family Gatherings and “Heroic Parenting”

Both parents and students are able to meet with teachers one-on-one at International School of Texas and have access to a Licensed Clinical Social Worker once a week. ACE Academy has enlisted its full-time counselor and is regularly sharing resources for student and parent motivation via social media. 

In addition to meeting with learners in groups daily, and one-on-one each week, Abrome gathers families on Wednesdays to make it easier for them to find community. Abrome also created a mutual aid network for all its families. Griffin School calls its weekly family gatherings Town Halls.

The world of support for parents is as varied as for kids. At AHB Community School there is a big demand for adult interaction, so the school is adding coffees and social hours. Jeffrey Couvillon explains that Acton Academy Southwest Austin is focusing on parents in a new way: “We are going through a set of challenges with families called ‘Heroic Parenting,’ focused on closer family bonds and stronger family mission.”

In the end, whether it’s Griffin School’s Quarantine Quad, where each student leader checks in on three classmates, or Growing Curiosity Community School’s private Facebook group that lets families share ideas and time together,  the common denominator in social-emotional learning in this period of transition is the variety and depth of human connection.

Join us in the next installment of this series for more of our community’s creativity in the time of COVID.

Shelley Sperry | Sperry Editorial

Educating our kids and ourselves in times of emergency

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

Learning is a social phenomenon, and human interaction is a catalyst. Especially in emergency situations, learning is a social and emotional experience, so human relationships have to be a priority.

—Nishi Andra, technology for education consultant,
ICARE co-founder, and currently working with UNICEF

It’s hard not to gasp when you read the stunning statistic that nine out of every ten children in the world who are normally enrolled in school are not in class at this moment because of the coronavirus pandemic. An event of this magnitude remains difficult for most Americans to comprehend, but there are precedents on a smaller scale that can help us understand COVID-19’s impact on education. Disasters—from hurricanes and fires to wars and terrorism—affect large numbers of students in specific locations every year. Think of Syrian refugees or the victims of ebola in Liberia or earthquakes in Puerto Rico and Haiti. 

Prompted by a recent talk with Nishi Andra, a friend and collaborator with Alt Ed Austin who is currently working on an education project for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, I decided to look into the topic of educating students in crisis situations more deeply. In this article, I’ll examine some of the big takeaways and how they might help inform educators, parents, and students in the United States today. In the next three posts on this blog, we’ll zoom in to look at exactly how Austin’s own community of alternative schools is adapting and helping kids learn and thrive, despite the challenges. 

In a story for NPR, education reporter Anya Kamenetz introduced me to a field of research that’s about 20 years old, called education in emergencies (EIE). According to EIE studies, the learning time kids lose during a semester of extreme disruption like we’re all experiencing now can take up to two years to make up. As many of us can see in Austin and across the country, the struggle is especially hard for lower income and more vulnerable kids. As demonstrated not only in international crisis zones, but also closer to home in places like post-Katrina New Orleans, education disruption can have lasting effects on kids’ mental health and educational achievements.

First, let’s recognize just how unprecedented in scale our current situation is. Rebecca Winthrop, of the Center for Universal Education, says that in 2013, five million children were out of school as a result of the Ebola virus. In 2010, millions more in Pakistan saw their schools closed as a result of severe flooding. And in 1918, the global flu pandemic to which COVID-19 is often compared closed schools in 40 U.S. cities. Each of those crises affected only a small fraction of the 1.5 billion kids who are out of school in 180+ countries right now.

Still, EIE researchers believe we can use lessons from past emergency events to cope in the present. Here are the most pertinent lessons I think we can draw upon:

• Health Education: Parents and educators need to integrate education about the coronavirus and how to stay as safe and healthy as possible into daily learning time for kids from preschool on up to high school and college. Safety lessons about handwashing and social distancing and factual information about the science of virus spread can be turned into fun songs and games, but these messages are just as critical now (and for future waves of the virus) as are math and social studies.
  
  Health education is something that’s easy to forget with our own kids running around in home lockdown. We’re sealed up inside our homes or in our own backyards, so reminding kids to wash themselves or disinfect surfaces seems less urgent. Winthrop notes that many schools teaching remotely actually skip health information altogether in a rush to get other subjects in. But the fact that students are learning at home actually makes it more likely that health messages will turn into dinner-table conversation and stick with them for life—keeping them and the community healthier in the future.
  
  Austin early childhood educator Marie Catrett uses a cute story with a felt board and a comic from NPR to help kids understand the basics of the virus and how important good health practices, like handwashing, are. She shared her thoughts on communicating with kids about COVID-19 in a recent guest post on this blog. Some schools in the Austin area provide regular opportunities for students to ask questions. For example, the school nurse at the International School of Texas hosts “wellness chats” each Tuesday and Thursday.

• The Power of Routine and Ritual: Another lesson from research on education in emergencies is that routines—especially morning routines—matter. Jamie Weiss-Yagoda, of the International Rescue Committee, says that any routine educational activities parents put in place each day can “give young people a sense of stability amid rapid change.” A routine, no matter how simple, can counteract feelings of dislocation and chaos that children feel during an emergency disruption. Knowing what to expect each morning can soothe anxiety for kids—and parents, too!
  
  In some refugee camps in Greece, UNICEF is providing daily podcast lessons with students’ regular teachers, maintaining the social distancing requirements, but giving kids a sense of continuity and contact as well as a regular routine to look forward to.
  
  Early childhood educator Beth O’Brien suggests that especially for young children, short daily points of connection with teachers is important. That can come via email, texts, videos, picking up packets at drop-off points, or letters in the mail. “Our goal,” says O’Brien, “is not to replicate a typical school-day schedule or intended curriculum online or at home. The goal is to help students continue to feel connected (to the teacher, to each other, to the school), known, and nurtured even though a significant part of their routine has been disrupted.” AHB Community School in Austin reports that classes are still holding versions of “community circles” and sharing time through Google Hangouts. Both students and parents can attend teachers’ virtual office hours to get help or just a little companionship.
  
  In a recent report, educators Armand Doucet, Deborah Netolicky, Koen Timmers, and Francis Tuscano found that older kids may be experiencing a period of mourning because they’ve lost events and traditions they look forward to all year—a special field trip, prom, a science fair, and of course, graduation. In Austin, Griffin School will be holding graduation at the Blue Starlite Drive-In, allowing seniors to decorate their cars and drive by to receive diplomas—with the full ceremony playing over car speakers! That’s some serious innovative thinking.

• Social-Emotional Learning and the Healing Classroom: The International Rescue Committee emphasizes the importance of creating a “healing classroom” that provides for the social and emotional needs of kids in emergencies. In keeping with the approach of many alternative schools, our schools-at-home should be supportive, comfortable environments where kids feel safe enough to follow their natural inclination to learn. Often, that means de-emphasizing academic expectations and emphasizing anything that promotes mental and emotional health.
  
  As Doucet and his colleagues put it, school can be a place where kids “are empowered to lead their authentic lives.” Distance from friends and beloved teachers creates anxiety and stress that needs to be acknowledged. Like most of the schools we’ve heard from at Alt Ed Austin, Roving Learners is committed to providing an outlet for anxiety. They bring kids together in restorative circles twice a day and work one-on-one with students to relieve the stresses inherent in this new situation.
  
  We’ll talk more about Austin’s alternative school community and its approaches to social-emotional learning in the next article in this series.

• Instead of “Getting Back to Normal,” Getting Better: Educators and policymakers across the world are viewing the current moment as an opportunity to make schools better when kids return and to be better prepared for the next crisis. Some of the ways folks are rethinking the future of education to serve all students’ needs include things that we can work on right now with our kids at home:

• Finding better avenues for peer-to-peer connections for both kids and educators. Most students today are experts at staying in contact via social media of all kinds, but transitioning the tools they use regularly for fun into tools that can deepen and enhance learning is a challenge for educators. One piece of advice from education expert Erika E. Smith that applies to both educators and parents is to allow students to build connections on their own. They may want to use online forums or just exchange contact information without involving adults, and that will often allow for more comfortable sharing of ideas and information. Educators and parents have the same need to share ideas and help each other. Nishi Andra shared a touching story with me about teachers in other countries creating video lessons in the Rohingya language to help and support teachers in refugee camps. 

• Bending and breaking old rules that clearly don’t work or don’t serve kids’ needs. Some schools are saying it’s okay for academic lessons and specific content expectations to lapse right now and planning to develop summer school courses for catching up later. Many states, including Texas, are canceling standardized tests, and colleges are waiving admissions requirements for SAT and ACT scores—and using the moment to reconsider whether they will be needed in the future.

• Building stronger, deeper relationships between families and schools. In a national survey last year, only half of parents reported communicating with their child’s teacher outside of formal parent-teacher conferences and less than 75 percent were helping kids with homework. Those statistics may change as a result of the changes happening in almost every family right now.

• Making sure that free, high-quality technology and Internet connectivity is available to everyone, or if that’s not possible, investing in alternatives. Technology is a pivotal aspect of almost every discussion of the learning that’s taking place at home right now. At the same time, we know that many students don’t have access to the hardware they need or reliable Internet connections. Providing those essentials is a challenge for public policy in the coming years. At the moment, though, a lot of communities are finding that some older, tried-and-true technologies, including public radio and TV, can bring content to almost every student. 

In an op-ed about the impact of the Korean conflict of the 1950s on education in South Korea, Woody Paik emphasized crises as opportunities for growth and improvement, and schools as tools for recovery. The world can become a classroom and a laboratory for kids, parents, schools, and communities to experiment and explore new paths for learning. In the next three articles in this series, we’ll see how more than 30 of Austin’s alternative schools are doing just that.

To Learn More:

Armand Doucet, et al., “Thinking About Pedagogy in an Unfolding Pandemic,” March 19, 2020

Anya Kamenetz, “What Do Students Need to Recover When School Closes for Months?" NPR Morning Edition, April 1, 2020 

Woody Paik, “What the U.S. Can Learn About Education during Crisis from South Korea’s Wartime Example,” Hechinger Report, April 9, 2020

Reishan Richards and Stephen J. Valentine, “How to Keep School Rhythm and Routines for Young Children at Home,” EdSurge, March 17, 2020

Valerie Strauss, “If Online Learning Isn’t Working for Your Kids, Try Public Television,” Washington Post, April 14, 2020

Jamie Weiss-Yagoda, “Education Tips for Parents During the Coronavirus Crisis,” RESCUE April 3, 2020

Rebecca Winthrop, “COVID-19 and School Closures: What can countries learn from past emergencies?” Brookings Institution, March 31, 2020

Rebecca Winthrop, “COVID-19 is a Health Crisis. So Why is Health Education Missing from Schoolwork?” EdSurge April 3, 2020

Websites:

PBS Learning Resources

Learning Keeps Going 

Videos:

“How Learning Changes When School Happens at Home and Online,” PBS News Hour, March 31, 2020.

“‘You’re Not Alone’: How Teenagers Are Dealing with Social Distancing,” PBS News Hour, April 15, 2020.

“Teaching Special Education Online During COVID-19,” eLuma Online Therapy, March 19, 2020.

“Sesame and the IRC join forces to help Syrian refugee children,” CBS 60 Minutes, November 17, 2019.

by Shelley Sperry | Sperry Editorial