Cedar Rapids’ Approach to In-Person Learning
In addition to prioritizing teaching and learning this year, schools and districts across the country have to focus on reducing health and safety risks for their students and staff. Many risk reduction strategies, however, impact how teaching and learning occurs. Cedar Rapids Community School District experienced this acutely, not only modifying their instructional approach due to the pandemic, but also experiencing an extreme weather event, a derecho storm, a week before the start of school. In response to these challenges, Cedar Rapids had to make changes to their approach around teaching and learning. The examples below highlight the challenging tradeoffs between risk reduction, teaching and learning, and time limitations.
Priority Standards Provide Focus Given Limited Time
Cedar Rapids created priority standards for the current school year in response to marked limitations on learning time. As the school year began, leaders recognized there were content gaps from the previous spring and lost time due to a delayed school start caused by the derecho. There was also a general consensus that a reliance on remote learning would be less effective than in-person learning. Developing power standards enabled them to identify the essential elements of grade-level learning for this school year (examples of art, science, and social studies power standards). This creates clarity for teachers and school leaders on how to prioritize teaching and learning given the suboptimal conditions.
Rotating Teachers Instead of Students to Minimize Contact
In order to prioritize safety, Cedar Rapids has elected to have students stay in the same classroom throughout the day. In grades PK-5, students are assigned a homeroom teacher responsible for their instruction for the entire year. Middle school and high school provide a more challenging set of circumstances, given students usually have different teachers in different classes for each subject. In order to minimize interactions, students in grades 6-8 stay in the same advisory class throughout the day. Students in grades 9-12 are fully remote due to considerable damage to the high school buildings from the August derecho. Each classroom is home to about 20 students and an advisory teacher. Students rotate through core subjects via synchronous online learning where the content specialists connect with them via Google Meet, and the advisory teachers help facilitate learning in person.
Cedar Rapids recognizes that instruction would likely be stronger if content teachers rotated classrooms, but district leaders had to accept the tradeoffs of synchronous online learning to reduce teachers’ interactions with multiple cohorts of students throughout the day. To mitigate this somewhat, Cedar Rapids is allowing teachers to rotate advisory classrooms on three-week intervals, allowing students to have in-person connections with each core subject teacher for three weeks during a twelve-week timespan.
Delivering electives in person is also a challenge for the district. Classes like music, choir, and physical education lend themselves to higher-risk activities, and in some cases, elective teachers are acting as advisory teachers. Given these limitations, Cedar Rapids has worked to provide access to electives through asynchronous learning. For example, they offer an online music class through which students watch videos with relevant content and work through learning activities. A music teacher creates the content videos and grades assignments, ensuring students are progressing appropriately through their learning.
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