ive Essential Tips: Highlights useful tips for thinking through the elements of communicating during a crisis that can be used for family engagement.
Back to School Planning: Checklists to Guide Parents, Guardians and Caregivers: Provides up-to-date checklists for parents/families to plan and prepare for students’ return to academic learning in 2021-22. This CDC site provides guidance, checklists and action steps to support planning for in-person classes and for virtual or at-home learning. Planning considerations address both physical health and safety steps, and mental health and social-emotional well-being considerations. It also links to several resources to help parents navigate stress and uncertainty related to COVID-19 and their students’ school activities.
COVID-19 Planning Considerations: Guidance for School Re-entry: Lists and describes numerous factors that should influence and shape collaborative decision-making among school districts, state and local health departments to facilitate a safe and appropriate return to in-person school for K-12 students. This resource, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, focuses especially on student-centered and on environmental considerations, and provides a curated set of resources from both AAP and CDC to support preparations for returning to school.
Leveraging the Power of Social Emotional Learning as You Prepare to Reopen and Renew Your School Community: Shares a framework with actionable recommendations to help school leadership teams plan for the social emotional learning [SEL] needs of all students and adults during the beginning of the new school year. This CASEL guide positions SEL as a critical underpinning to the success of transition planning, recognizing school leaders have multiple other considerations for reopening schools, including academics, operations, access to technology, and physical health.
Schools' First and Forever Responders: Preparing and Supporting Teachers: Elevates a rationale and considerations for evidence-based strategies and innovative approaches to support teachers and teacher candidates during and following the COVID-19 crisis. Because teachers are the most vital in-school education resource, supporting the teacher workforce through the disruptions created by COVID-19 is essential to ensure continuity of learning for students. Each consideration highlighted in the brief is supported by research or examples from states or districts that can be helpful to learn more and guide decision-making.
National Center for Systematic Improvement Webinar Series: Strategic Resource Management in Response to COVID-19: Archives a series of recorded webinars featuring experts who share best practices to help state education leadership teams to make informed decisions and best utilize available resources during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
COVID-19 Resource Guide for High School Professionals: Furnishes a substantial set of resources created or curated by the JED Foundation to support educators’ efforts to help students to maintain mental and emotional health while they strive to maintain focus on their studies.
Building Developmental Relationships During the COVID-19 Crisis - CHECKLIST: Presents relationship-building steps informed by Search Institute’s research to cultivate students’ developmental relationships with parents, educators, youth program staff, and other adults leading to improved outcomes, including reduced risk behaviors. This resource emphasizes that school and youth program staff should continue to build and nurture developmental relationships with young people while they are at home during the national COVID-19 crisis.
Video Chats, Phone Calls, Postcards: Teachers Rebuild Connections with Students During Coronavirus Pandemic: Examines the loss of school rituals for both students and teachers as part of their school closure experiences. This Education Week article describes numerous ways that K-12 schools and districts are improvising shared experiences to rebuild their communities.
Virtual Learning in a Time of School Disruption