Tips & Strategies for Back to School During COVID

Okay, happy Wednesday! Just have to look at my phone and see what day it was. I haven't done a live on here in a really long time, probably because I had a baby recently. Um, he is upstairs napping, hopefully. With my husband, so hopefully it'll be nice and quiet during this live. But I am excited. I have a few lives scheduled for the next few weeks for you guys, kind of gearing up towards back-to-school. Now Facebook just switched their— what it looks like on the backend here, and I wanted to use this poll. Let me see if I can figure out how to do it. Let me see. Yeah, okay, so I think I just published a poll, um, and It should say, what's your school's plan for the fall? Let's see, does anyone see it? Oh, because I closed it before we had a chance. Hi there! Oh yeah, comment if you're on. I, you know, it doesn't show me how many people are on right now. Okay, there, some of you are responding. So is your school doing online? Is your school doing in-person or hybrid? Which I don't know what's the worst one of those three, right? Hybrid seems real tricky, and there's all kinds of hybrid options. Um, cool, so you guys can see the poll. Awesome. Okay, so pop in what your school is doing. Interesting. It's— we did the same poll in my professional development membership, and it was like split. It was split almost evenly between online and in-person, and like maybe a fourth of the people were hybrid. So it's really interesting to see where everyone is at. Um, yes, Lisa, this will be available to watch later. You can always rewatch all of my lives if you just click on videos on the Facebook page, so you'll be able to rewatch it later. Wow, this poll is like very evenly split, about 30% on each one. Um, hybrid or virtual, Lindsay said. Um, yes, um, so if you're— if your class gets a choice of online or in person, that I guess is a hybrid model as well. There's all kinds of different hybrid models. So I wanted to today talk about back to school because back to school is going to be very, very different than any other back to school. Am I right? Um, how are you guys feeling about going back to school? You feel nervous? Super, super nervous? Anxious? Excited? Um, drop in the comments how you are feeling because I'm sure everyone is a mixed bag of emotions, right? Like feeling all the things. Um, yeah, some of you don't have that. I should have put that on the poll, is that there's no plans yet. Some of you might not even know what you're doing. I know the school district where I live announced a plan a week ago and then 3 days later changed the plan. So that could be where you are at as well, where the plans are changing very quickly. Um, great. Uh, some of you say nervous, excited, anxious. Yes, all the feelings. However you are feeling It's normal. Hopefully not that you want other people to feel like anxious and overwhelmed, but to me it's always nice to see other people feeling the same as you. Catherine said nervous and hella stressed. Yep, there's a— there's so many unknowns. And to me, one of the hardest parts about this is really not knowing when it's gonna end, right? Or if we're starting out in person, are we gonna go back to virtual? So, you know, lots of things to, to think about. So I wanted to share today a free download. I put the link at the top. You could download that anytime or save that later. It's a 5-page download that has tips and strategies for going back to school during COVID whether you are virtual or in-person or hybrid. This kind of little handout has all kinds of strategies and ideas, and I wanted to share some of my favorite ones today and kind of share how I made this. So in my professional development membership. I know some of you on here are in there. I did a survey and asked for all of their suggestions because as we know, we're all in different situations, whether it's virtual or in-person or hybrid. And what you did in the spring, some things worked really well, some things didn't work really well. So there are so many amazing teachers and professionals in the membership, I was like, I'm gonna get all of their ideas to share with everyone. So we did a survey in there and I put together this download basically as a compilation of all of their ideas. I gave them all credit on the bottom. Some of these are my ideas, some of these are their ideas. So I thought, you know, now is a time more than ever that we need community. And yes, we have our school communities, or if you're a parent, you have your other in-home providers maybe that work with your kid, or you have your teachers that work with your child. But we need community from those of us that get it, that our rooms are different. Things are going to continue to look different, especially this year, with things that might not work well for our class. Like, how are we gonna do social distancing with our learners? How are we gonna have our kids wear masks? Or what does virtual look like when it's just so much more challenging with some of our kids? So I thought this would be a great opportunity to kind of get that community of special educators together and share some things that worked. So this download's really just a list of suggestions. You do not have to do all these. You should not do all these. It's a list of ideas because what works in classroom A is not gonna work in classroom B, right? So I wanted to share some of my favorites. Go download this, send it to any other teachers you think you could need it. It's totally free, 5 pages. There's a page for in-person class suggestions, there's a page for hybrid class suggestions, virtual, and then discussion of tips for paraprofessionals and tips for communicating with your parents. So overall, I think for this year, idea— the best practice, the best thing you can do is to be flexible. And I think as a special educator, we are naturally good at that, right? We naturally are used to thinking outside the box, on being creative and differentiating. Those are two of my tips. Two of my five tips are be flexible and differentiate, and special education teachers are good at that. So really lean in to that part of your brain because that is something you already know how to do really well. We already, already differentiate. We don't give the same homework to our whole class. We don't have the the exact same test for everyone. We're used to modifying for what each child needs, and that's what we really have to do this year, whether that's for virtual or in-person. And the big thing is to not compare this year to previous years. This September is not gonna be like next September. This October, it's not gonna be like any other year. And I think we get stuck when we keep thinking about like, well, uh, we could have— if we could just get rid of COVID then this could be so much better last year when we did this way. This is what Johnny did. This is a whole new situation and we just have to take it for what it is. There's a lot of things obviously that are outside of our control. Um, my tip number 4 is to utilize preference assessments for everyone. So we— I talked about this suggestion a lot in the spring, and Gina actually on my blogging team did a whole post on it, on sending a survey to parents regularly to see how distance learning is going, to see what platforms they prefer. Gina had so many great questions on there, things like, do you have a printer? Do you have reliable internet? Does your student use an iPad or laptop? Did anyone do that? Did anyone send— drop a comment in here if you sent home a survey to parents and what that was like. Did you get good responses? And by good responses, I even mean one response. If one parent responds, that's awesome. That's what you want to see. You want to start to kind of get parent preferences and see what you can be doing differently. So we want to be doing these surveys regularly. If you're full virtual right now or some type of hybrid model, I would be sending out those surveys on a pretty regular basis, um, to see how parents are doing and kind of what things you can be tweaking. My last tip, number 5, is to make data-based decisions for everyone. And I know now you're looking at me like I'm crazy and you're like, Sasha, data, like, we're treading water. I can't possibly take data. What I mean here is look at how things are going. When I say data, I mean, you know, look at kind of the facts. How many kids are logging on every day? How many parents are returning your phone calls? How many parents are answering your surveys? Things like that. You want to utilize that information to make those new decisions. If you use Boom Cards last year and no one ever used them, or they used them once and didn't use them again, that's your data that maybe Boom Cards weren't a good fit for your group. If on the other hand you did Boom Cards and that was— seemed like the one thing your kids kept doing, use that data to do more Boom Cards. So you want to kind of use the information that your students' behavior, your parents' behavior is giving you to make decisions on what do next. Don't get stuck in like, well, this is how I set it up. We want to make decisions and constantly be changing, which is hard, but that leads back to number 1. So I'm going to go through real quick some of my favorite ideas and tips. So as I showed you on here on this download, there's really just lists of different strategies and little action items, different pieces of advice and things you can do in your classroom that I thought were so helpful. So first, let's talk about in-person. Who are my, who are my in-person people on here? You guys are buying all the face masks, all the face shields, all the hand sanitizer that no one can buy anywhere, right? So let's talk wearing masks for your students. I have a social story. I've actually made a few new social stories, but I shared a free mask wearing social story a few days, a few weeks ago on tips for wearing a mask. I'm going to be sharing a whole set of COVID-related social stories. Some I've shared already. I did also make some new ones because I had some suggestions. Someone asked for one about getting your temperature taken, and someone also asked for a social story on hybrid schedules because that's a little bit confusing. So I'll be sharing all of these in the next, in the next few days too. So if your kids have to wear masks, I would read that social story really often. Reinforce, you know, longer and longer times wearing the mask. On a personal note, my daughter is back in daycare and she just had to start wearing a mask the other day. So I, you know, got her every Elsa princess, Minnie, Trolls one that she likes. She thinks they're accessories that go with her hair bows, whatever. I was really upset the first day she had to wear one all day because I thought it was gonna be really hard for her. And man, kids are so surprisingly resilient. She came home and was like, oh yeah, I wear a mask. She had the whole list memorized of when she could take it off. She's like, I take it off for snack, for lunch, for rest, for outside, and I just wear it. And she was really casual about it. And I think because I didn't have the chance to like freak her out about it, because I might have, that she just went with it. So I think, you know, our kids are going to feed off of our, um, our vibes and how, you know, the atmosphere that we're setting. And if we act like it's not a big deal, then it's not gonna be a big deal. If we complain about it all the time, you know, it's gonna just send a different message. That's not saying that's like a quick cure-all, but I think we do want to set the tone that right now masks are just part of our lives. So some tips for transitions and distancing, because you might have some rules right now about how far kids can be from each other. The big suggestion here is to limit transitions. So normally your classroom might look like students transitioning between centers. Instead, have your teachers transition around centers and students stay in one spot. That will just eliminate some of the movement in a classroom and hopefully keep kids a little bit farther apart. I love the idea of putting tape on the ground for boundaries, having specific spots where kids step. This is gonna— again, we really want to lean into our nature as a special ed teacher on using all of those visual tools, that's going to be super, super helpful for you. So lean into having visual cues for how we do distancing. Um, focus on using technology-based resources and spending your time in the classroom teaching kids how to use those, teaching kids how to log in on their own. You know, think back in the spring, we didn't have time to prepare for closings. Well, unfortunately, we might have time to prepare for that now if you're in person. So take this opportunity to teach your students how to log into Google Classroom, how to log into Boom, how to log into Seesaw, because if there is another closing, they will be more prepared. Let's talk cleaning. What are your— I want to hear some of your ideas. If you are in person, what's your plan for sanitizing, for cleaning? I think if we just have a general like, hey, let's tell our team to deep clean everything every day, that's not gonna go really well. So drop in some of your ideas for keeping everything clean, keeping everything sanitized. I want to share a few of the ones that I heard from teachers in the membership that I really liked. Assigning staff members specific cleaning responsibilities, having a bin for to be cleaned or to be sanitized and putting anything in there throughout the day and then sanitizing at the end of the day. My idea was to have a double-sided visual with one side that says clean and one side that says need to be cleaned and putting that on like the computer or tables or different kind of areas of the room that are used together. So you can like flip it like, okay, a kid was playing at the Lego table. Now let's flip it, says need to be cleaned. So we know another kid shouldn't come there until it's sanitized. I love this idea, having plastic plates placemats in front of kids at the table. So one, that's a nice cue for where their stuff should stay, but also their germs and all their stuff is just on that placemat, and then you can move that. So lots of nice little ideas like that. And again, you don't have to do all these things, but some of these might spark an idea of like, oh, that would really help my classroom, depending on the needs and on the age. Um, question here: Do you have a one for social distancing students struggling with no physical contact? And that need deep pressure, have deep pressure sensory needs. I don't know if one specifically for that, but I can definitely work on that. I think you're on the right track there, you know, thinking about how else they can get that sensory need met, um, whether that's, you know, if you have one of those tubes to go in or some type of like weighted vest or another type of sensory tool. I would definitely talk to your OT about that to get some suggestions and then really prompt that student to ask for that activity, um, you know, versus a, you know, deep pressure hug, something like that. Um, okay, let's talk hybrid schedule. Who are my hybrid schedule people? Either your kids have 2 days on, 2 days off, your kids can pick virtual or online, um, half days— kids come in the morning, other kids come in the afternoon. I don't know which is the worst or best option of all of those. They all sound super complicated, right? There's been so many funny memes going around of like, you know, on every third Tuesday these kids come. I mean, keeping track of that schedule is going to be half of your job. Um, so tips for hybrid schedules, I think my big one here, like I just said, is going to be organization and keeping on top of, you know, who— which kids are coming when. And if kids have split time, if kids are 2 days in the class and 2 days out of the class, they have so amount of in-person and some amount of remote, spending those times that they are in the class working on the digital platform. So if you use Google Classroom, if you use Seesaw, if you use, you know, whichever platform you use, if you use Zoom calls, whatever, teaching kids how to use those platforms while you're in the classroom. It's gonna be tempting those days to be like, oh my gosh, let's use our work test boxes and let's use I'm gonna use our hands-on tools and worksheets because that's what I'm used to. But instead, you want to really spend those 2 days in school preparing for those virtual days. Like, hey, let me teach you how to log in yourself so we can build up more success on those virtual days. Try to take all of your data and get your IP goals and new learning done in your in-person days as much as possible, um, and then have those other days be kind of the extension opportunity. This is gonna be really hard, I think, for the hybrid people. Someone just commented, yeah, I'm responsible for in-person and online. It seems crazy to basically have two full-time jobs, right? Because planning for virtual learning is one full-time job, and then doing your in-person teaching is another full-time job. So, you know, give yourself grace. It doesn't have to be perfect. This isn't the year to like redo your classroom layout, you know, just because, or redo your decoration. Decorations. It's— you're gonna do the best you can, and that's all you can do. Um, and we'll get back to, you know, looking at where your classroom was before another year that we don't have to deal with having two full-time jobs. So there's a lot of cool suggestions on the hybrid schedule, like when you download this, or the hybrid tip sheet, um, for if you're in that hybrid schedule. And like I said, I did make, um, a hybrid schedule social story for your kids that are coming some days and not coming others. Last, let's talk virtual instruction. If you go to my blog, The Autism Helper, and you search basically any of the posts from the last 6 months, the bloggers have done an amazing job sharing what they've been doing for virtual learning, and it's been great. I— this is like made me so excited having a team of bloggers, and this is really always what I envisioned. Everyone's doing different things. Like Holly's using Google Classroom, Jen's using Seesaw, Gina's using Zoom calls. So there's so many different tools you can learn about, or if you have to use one, you can read from those bloggers what they're doing. So there's a ton of cool suggestions there. Um, uh, Bailey just said boom calls are wonderful, and her district chose, um, to have students come every day because online learning was a flop for them. So I would still be using those boom cards in our, in your in-person class. That's what I got so excited about Boom Cards. I was like, this would be great in person, right? We always complain we don't have enough staff, but now we can have kids doing Boom Cards on their own. If you are online, I'd highly, highly recommend asking your administrators to buy you a Boom login so you can get that data and keep using Boom Cards during virtual learning. I put on here a bunch of different platform options and other online tools that that you can use. I think emailing and physically mailing or dropping off at kids' houses, if you're allowed to do that, a list of all their logins, laminate it, give it to mom and dad if there's any drop-off system. If you are allowed to have parents pick up kits and things like that, or worksheets, definitely think about doing that or ask administrators. I know some of you did that back in the spring and that worked really well. And then routines and reinforcement. So I talk about routines and reinforcement all the time because the start of the year is all about routines and reinforcement. Actually, I'm doing a whole Facebook Live on only routines and reinforcement next week. And someone asked me recently, they're like, "Well, what about virtual learning? Do I still have to do that if I'm doing virtual?" I was like, "Heck yeah!" The start of the year still needs to be all about routines and all about reinforcement even if you're virtual. So that means setting up your systems, setting up your routines, and making it fun. You're not coming in with the new hard skills. You want to keep it really reinforcing and really, really routine-based. I love the idea of having some type of weekly schedule. You know, on Mondays we do boom cards, on Tuesday I assign a household task, on Wednesdays we do show and tell on Zoom, and embed reinforcement, things like YouTube clips, Bitmojis, changing the background on your Zoom calls, playing games. There's, you know, we go noodle thinking really outside the box on how to find reinforcers, but we definitely can find reinforcers for our kids remotely. It's just gonna take obviously a lot more work, you know, and it's gonna be hard, but we can think of things that we can do on our Teams calls or that we can embed in our activities or in our PowerPoints we're showing kids. That are reinforcing, even if that's show a little clip of a movie midway through, something like that to kind of keep up that engagement. Think about when you— I mean, we've all done a ton of virtual training and virtual, you know, things now, right? We all see our friends on Zoom meetings because we no longer get to see our friends in person. And think about the things that make any online activity more fun for you, right? When there's humor involved, when there's jokes, when it's lighthearted. So we want to think about embedding reinforcement in the same way. So the last page of this download that I really wanted to include was tips for utilizing your team, your paraprofessionals, and communicating with paras. I think for, um, paraprofessionals, the big thing is modeling having a positive attitude and being calm and just making the best of it. Like, yes, this sucks, right? Objectively, this sucks. If you talk about how much it sucks every day, then that's all anyone in your room is going to think about. So it's out of our control. It's not what we want. I think modeling that positive problem-solving attitude and being calm about things is the best gift you can give your team. It's not going to solve everything. You're not being like fake, you know, you're not being fake. It's just that, hey, this is what we're gonna do, and this— yes, we can acknowledge that this isn't the best case scenario, but we're gonna power through. Um, I love this idea for virtual learning for your paraprofessionals. If you are virtual, one teacher told me she made a weekly staff choice board and let staff members pick which activity they wanted to do each week. So they could research for a lesson plan, they could make materials, they could create a video. And it gave them a choice, and I loved this because paras that I've worked with in the past, some of them I know would have hated being on video, like hated. So then don't make them be on video. There's other things they can do. So think about different ways to give your staff members some choice as well. So I love that idea. Teach your paraprofessionals how to use those learning platforms while you're in person. And really get that connection going as well. Let me grab a few of these questions. Um, Carrie asked if you can repeat the suggested schedule. So that is on this download. Um, if you click the link in the caption here, you can download this. But, um, a sample, you know, weekly schedule for virtual learning could be something like Monday there's Boom Cards, Tuesday it's an assigned household task, Wednesday it's a Zoom show and tell. So having basically something that you could do the same day of the week— Wednesdays we always do this, Mondays we always do this— could be really good. Um, Mariana asked about connecting Boom Cards to our Google Classroom. I'm going to drop a link for you after I get off on how to do that. Um, and yes, definitely setting up a schedule for online learning for kids can be super helpful, especially if your kids have short attention spans. You know, then parents can help them come back in and out of activities activities. So last thing to talk about is communicating with parents. We want to communicate a lot now, even more than we used to. And I know you guys are all awesome at communicating with your parents. Sending home those parent surveys on a regular basis can be really helpful. If you are in person, that first day back, it's kind of like the kids' first day back, first day of school ever. Like, think about it that way. Like, if you are a parent, the first day your kid goes to preschool, you're like terrified, right? It's kind of gonna be like that day because it's scary and there's a lot of unknowns. Um, the first day my kids went back to daycare, the daycare director called me in the middle of the day and told me they were doing okay. And I was like, it meant a lot. It was like, I was way more nervous than going back now than I was when they started daycare when they were 1 and a half. So think about, you know, even that first day, just calling and checking in and letting them know how they're doing, or sending a text. I know you have a lot on your plate, but that will go so far with parents and just help them feel at ease with everything. Someone gave a great suggestion using Google Voice to make phone calls with parents instead of giving parents your phone number. And having your paraprofessionals help you call and check in with parents. If that's something like the first day of school, you're like, "That's a great idea, but I'm gonna have a million things on my plate," then ask one of your paras, say, "Hey, after, when you get back from lunch, can you text each one of the parents and let them know their kids are doing okay?" okay. And they're, you know, everything's been going well. So yeah, that's all the things, right? If you have any ideas related to anything that I have talked about, please feel free to drop them in the comments. Definitely go and download this PDF. Like I said, the teachers from the membership gave all of their great suggestions, so there's lots of great ideas. And just hang in there. I feel like that's been my, like, resounding theme lately is hang in there and you got this. Take it day by day. It's so intimidating and overwhelming to think about it long term if you're like, oh my god, this is gonna be the whole year. It's really easy to get overwhelmed like that, but you got this. Your students are so lucky to have you, and it's not gonna be absolutely perfect, but that's okay. Like, this is not something we were trained on how to do. None of us went to college to do virtual special education, right? So it's just gonna be something we're continuously getting better at and we're continuously learning about. So definitely hang in there, and I am gonna be doing another Facebook Live next week. I off the top of my head can't remember what day. It'll be a nighttime one, and I will be talking about how to set up those routines and how to establish yourself as a reinforcer in the start of the year, even for virtual learning. So that's a really important thing to talk about. I'll also be sharing my new social stories, um, coming soon as well. So hope everyone has a great rest of your week.