The Parabola Project offers education leaders actionable guidance, tools, and strategies to understand and minimize risks while maximizing learning and wellness during COVID-19.
Decisions about when and how to reopen schools during COVID-19 need to be based on a strong set of principles, grounded in best available evidence, informed by context, and oriented towards each community’s highest aspirations for student learning and wellbeing.
Based on experience within and research from the healthcare sector and other workplace environments, the Parabola Project has identified a framework based on nine core public health principles critical for safer school reopening and implementing effective teaching and learning across in-person and remote environments.
Explore the tools and resources below to learn more about these principles as well as how to implement them in your school or system.
Learn more about the project and how to get in touch with our team at the bottom of the page.
Health & Safety Principles
We have identified nine core public health principles to guide school’s plans and strategies for safer school reopening. These principles are broken down by the intended user, ranging from district administrators to school leadership teams to classroom teachers. Each section contains implementation resources, including actionable toolkits and field examples.
System
These principles are essential for driving alignment, improvement, and coherence across a district. They are ideally centralized at the system-level and implemented by district administrators & teams.
Principle 1: Leadership and Culture
Principle 2: Risk Stratification and Prevention
Principle 3: Testing and Tracing
School
These principles must take into account existing facility layout, student populations, staffing, and timelines. Decisions are then likely implemented on a day-to-day basis by school leadership teams.
Principle 4: Screening and Triage
Principle 5: Space Layout and Air Quality
Principle 6: Cohorting and Scheduling
Classroom
These principles are critical to day-by-day learning and safety, and provide processes, tools, and practices for working with students and staff. These principles are highly local and reflect classroom-level context for teachers.
Principle 7: Masks and PPE
Principle 8: Hygiene (Personal and Space)
Principle 9: Density and Distance
Teaching and Learning Practices
Students are experiencing severe learning loss and increasing mental health risks as the pandemic has disrupted their academic lives. School leaders and teachers can utilize these curated remote and hybrid learning resources and strategies to help them focus on connecting with their students and supporting them through these uncertain times. The link below offers actionable toolkits and concrete examples.
Stories & News
Stay up-to-date with recent stories and news from the Parabola Project team. Read through recently published articles and blog posts, tune into our latest podcasts, and check out some school snapshots from the field.
Articles
EdSurge: In These Reopened Schools, Students Exceed Expectations Following Safety Rules (Nov. 2020)
Good News: In The Debate About School Re-opening, There Are A Few Things Schools Don’t Actually Need To Do (Oct. 2020)
Parabola Project: Tools and Strategies for Reopening Schools (Sept. 2020)
Parabola Project Launch (Aug. 2020)
Podcasts
Snapshots
The Parabola Project team is working closely with leaders to learn and capture insights as they return to in-person learning. These examples offers brief snapshots around school reopening, featuring recent examples and perspectives from the field.
Have a powerful learning of your own to share? Send us a Tweet @LearningAccel, @AriadneLabs, #ParabolaProject or shoot us an email!
Project Partners
The Parabola Project is a partnership between Ariadne Labs and The Learning Accelerator. Initial project funding was provided by the One8 Foundation.
Ariadne Labs is a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Our vision is for health systems to deliver the best possible care for every patient, everywhere, every time. Our mission is to save lives and reduce suffering by creating scalable solutions that improve health care delivery at the most critical moments for people everywhere. Our main areas of work focus on solutions for childbirth, primary care, surgery, and serious illness care. We work in the United States and 26 other countries across the world.
The Learning Accelerator is a national nonprofit that is working to make the ‘potential’ possible and practical for every teacher and learner. Underpinning TLA’s work is a drive to ensure each student receives an effective, equitable, and engaging education that supports them to reach their full and unique potential. Our mission is to connect teachers and leaders with the knowledge, tools, and networks they need to transform K-12 education.
