Distance Learning at Seabury: Personalized, active – and fun!

With the most recent mandate from the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department instructing schools to open the year in distance learning for K-8 students, distance learning will be part of the landscape for all schools in the upcoming school year. So what will distance learning look like this year at Seabury?

We have spent the summer preparing a distance learning program designed specifically for Seabury’s gifted students that reflects both our successes and challenges from last spring. Seabury’s teachers know how gifted kids learn and grow. They know how to tailor programs that stretch kids’ thinking, develop their skills, and support both their academic and social-emotional growth. Distance learning at Seabury is not a series of one-size-fits-all, pre-designed packets or dry lessons that keep a student staring at a screen all day. It is personalized, active, and as often as possible, FUN! We have also worked to make it easier for students and families to navigate.

Seabury focuses on the development of the whole child, so in distance learning, just like when we are at school, we will address our kids’ unique social, emotional and developmental needs. We know that gifted kids often need additional help with executive function skills, such as organizing their time and materials and breaking larger assignments into smaller parts. They are often highly sensitive and can be anxious during challenging times when they can intellectually understand more than they are emotionally ready to handle. They need opportunities to connect with other students so they can have deep conversations with intellectual peers, share their concerns and fears, and engage in the joy of asking the weird and wacky questions they so love to wrestle with. And they love to learn, especially those things that are of interest to them. They need opportunities to explore areas of interest and get creative with projects. They need teachers who support them when they come up with a unique way of doing an assignment or a different approach to a project.

These are just a few of the many considerations that have gone into planning for distance learning. Here are just some of the features you can expect from Distance Learning – Seabury Style 2.0.

• Daily morning meetings will allow teachers to check in with students, review plans for the day, help students plan and prioritize their day’s work plan, and share successes and questions.
• A stable schedule will allow for a seamless transition to/from in-person and online learning.
• Simplified and streamlined daily/weekly schedules, classes, links to virtual meetings and assignments will be given through a fun and easy to navigate virtual classroom.
• There will be explicit teaching of mindfulness, self-regulation, executive function and other social-emotional skills that sensitive gifted learners need most to succeed (both academically and personally) in these turbulent times.
• Synchronous math instruction using engaging “low-floor, high-ceiling” rich mathematical tasks will encourage perseverance and deeper levels of mathematical thinking and understanding.
• Direct small and large group instruction in literacy and other course subjects will be mixed with learning tools that enhance and support instruction. Tools such as NearPod and FlipGrid will help teachers provide engaging instruction and offer students opportunities to share their learning with each other.
• Specialists and instructional assistants will provide opportunities for students to connect for fun and enrichment as well as for instruction. Even when we are at school in person, a number of our specialists will be providing their programs remotely so that kids can interact with others in different classes and have the chance to explore more choices for projects such as art.
• Teachers will check in regularly with individual students and with families to make sure that learning targets are being achieved, students are doing well, and issues are addressed before they become problems.
• The school and teachers will provide training for parents before the start of school so that they are familiar with how the schedule will work, what distance learning tools will be be used, and how students will get help.
• During the first weeks of school, the focus will be on working with kids individually and in a developmentally appropriate manner to teach how to participate independently in distance learning. Our goal is for parents as much as possible to be cheerleaders rather than teachers for distance learning for their children.
• Project-based, integrated curriculum focused around a universal concept will continue to be at the heart of the program because it allows gifted kids to dive deep, interact with complex ideas, and develop high level thinking skills.
• Personal passion projects will allow students to explore areas of personal interest.
• Students will have unique opportunities for engagement through clubs and enrichment opportunities both during and outside of traditional school hours.

You may have read about distance learning plans that revolve around live streaming class for all or part of the day. In those programs, kids at home will spend the bulk of their days at their computers, listening to their teachers and working on the same assignments at the same time. While Zoom meetings, synchronous instruction, and teacher directed lessons will definitely be part of our program at Seabury, we will not live stream class all day every day. First and foremost, this kind of teaching and learning is not what we do at Seabury. Learning is not a passive, sit at your desk, everybody does the same thing at the same time experience. If we’re going to meet individual needs in a class where one child might be on grade level in reading and four grade levels ahead in math, while the student sitting next to her is reading at a high school level but on grade level in math, we need teachers to be able to work with small groups and individuals at the level that’s appropriate for each child. Teachers need to be able to provide different assignments to different kids when that makes sense or to adjust the expectations on a common assignment to meet the needs of each individual child. And for kids to do the inquiry based, complex, high level, creative and critical thinking that will stretch them intellectually, they need to be able to step away from the computer to think and create and explore.

 

This year, when students are able to be back on campus, our kids at school will be in cohort groups that will not mix with other classes. We will use virtual tools to connect kids in different classrooms, offer interest-based clubs and activities, and provide opportunities for multiage gatherings. This will be a critical part of our program all year long.

 

As we prepare to return to school in the midst of a global pandemic, it is easy to become overwhelmed with what we can’t do. But as we think about the year ahead, it is also important to remember the joy with which our children embrace learning and that light we see in their eyes when they make a new connection or acquire a new skill. Whether we are at home or at school, we plan to continue to make learning a joyful experience of discovery and creativity for our kids; to make time to laugh together, debate with one another, and embrace all our quirky, interesting, unique ways of seeing the world. That’s why families seek out a Seabury education.

 

Please join us for our next Town Hall on Thursday, Aug. 20 at 4 p.m. (ZOOM link) We will have more to share about the start of school, distance-learning and parent and student orientations. 

Seabury’s Safe Start Plan

You might have seen the recent headlines. Several private schools in Pierce County plan to open for in-person instruction fall, despite a continued increase in COVID cases. “Is that the right call?” asked The News Tribune headline.
 
Seabury School was not included in those stories. With Sept. 2, our first day of school, still about a month away and with guidance on safe reopening still emerging and developing, we have not yet decided to make the “call” to either open our campuses for in-person learning or to start with distance learning. What we have done is worked exhaustively to be ready to open safely. That is what our students and staff deserve and what many families want.
 
We keep constantly up to date on all guidance from Gov. Jay Inslee’s office, the Washington Department of Health, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, the Center for Disease Control, Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), Northwest Association of Independent Schools (NWAIS) and the Washington Federation of Independent Schools (WFIS).  We expect further guidance in the coming days or weeks that will provide us with more specific criteria we can use to determine when it is safe for us to re-open for in person learning.
Seabury’s small classes and unique classroom spaces allow us potentially different choices than are available to larger, public schools. Each of our spacious classrooms has a separate entrance to the outside (no hallways!) and each has its own bathroom, making it easy for us to keep kids and adults in small, cohort groups and minimize exposure during the day. Our maximum class size is 15. Six-foot distancing is not a problem. All staff will wear masks, so will students, from pre-k through eighth grade. Everyone will have daily health checks.
 
We are also setting up our teachers to be able to easily take class outside. We will have two new outdoor classroom spaces at the lower school. And we have the whole city just outside at the middle school, particularly Broadway Plaza which is just across the street. Each teacher and student will be provided with a portable seat and an outdoor learning kit. The learning kits for our second graders, for example, include a Coleman portable chair, weatherproof pencil box, dry erase pen, mini whiteboard, and clipboard among other items that can be carried in the pocket of their chair.
 
If we are at home, our teachers are ready to provide a dynamic and engaging distance-learning program. Weare taking lessons we learned in the spring and are planning parent and student trainings that will allow students to operate more independently and adults at home to feel more comfortable supporting students. We're adding morning meetings and daily math and literacy lessons. A combination of virtual classes and digital tools will ensure students get the support they need, including the instruction tailored to gifted learners our teachers are experts at providing. So no matter how we start this fall, students will experience the joy of Seabury learning at school and at home. 
 
As we plan for the fall, the biggest difference between Seabury and most other schools is that our small size will allow us to pivot quickly between being at school and being at home. If we open, and suddenly need to close, we are equipped to make the switch seamlessly – and vice versa. By being prepared for both in-person and distance learning, we still have time to wait for the best science available before we make a decision about the start of school. And our ability to pivot quickly now and throughout the school year, will allow us to maximize every possible minute for learning this year.
 
Seabury is a small independent school without expansive grounds or a large endowment. We serve students whose families often find us because their needs aren’t being met elsewhere, and they often sacrifice to pay tuition. Our general population doesn’t have deep pockets.  But we have invested every dollar we can to make our facility even safer, to ensure distance learning fully meets the needs of Seabury kids and families, and to provide additional financial aid to families that need support during these difficult times. 
 
Our plans for fall are to be ready for learning in the safest way possible and to ensure that Seabury‘s kids engage in the joy of discovery and that they are challenged every day whether we are at home or at school. We will be ready to provide a safe, creative and joyful place to go to school, whether in person or digitally.
 
School will start on Sept. 2. And it will start in the safest format for staff and kids based on the best science we can get our hands on. Whatever this year looks like, we'll make it a great one! 

– Seabury's Admin Team