MYP student orientation 2020 ideas @KIS
We are getting ready to welcome our schools back to campus next week! The logistics and planning for reopening have been challenging. Our senior leadership team and administrative staff have worked very hard the whole summer to ensure safety and health measures are in place. I am thankful for their dedication and our teachers are very excited to meet their students. Finally! It’s so clear that we yearn for interaction and social connectedness as human beings.
Transitioning to the hybrid teaching and learning model for remote learning, we know it will be very important for us to (re)build relationships with our students and create opportunities for social connectedness. Lots of data have suggested that teenagers have suffered from the period of lockdown.
15-year-old Liv McNeil’s short film, Numb, illustrated her complex and complicated emotions resulting from self-isolation and being bombarded with online learning and communication from her teachers so vividly. It made me misty as my daughter also went through a similar experience.
Teenagers are now the greatest mental health risk of all age groups during the pandemic. Adolescents need to go to school to be with their friends, develop their senses of identity, become responsible citizens, learn about how to deal with racism and prejudice (especially if they live with parents who may be racist and prejudiced), and so on.
(Strauss, 2020)
Idea #1: Humans of KIS inspiring individuals
It has not been easy to plan the MYP Student Orientation this year. Lots of constraints. All school community members need to wear masks and keep physical distancing. However, as I always say, every challenge is an opportunity. Everyone needs to wear a mask on campus, but we don’t want to forget what everyone looks like! It is also very important to welcome our MYP year 1 students! We want to see their faces and make connections with them. It got me thinking of the Humans of New York idea. What if we can find out everyone’s stories and find the connections between us? Wouldn’t it be cool if we collected these stories and posted them around campus? Wouldn’t it be nice if there are always positive messages posted on campus to uplift our spirit when we feel down? I felt this idea aligns with our school vision, inspiring individuals so well. Voila! This is what I will propose to do with our students next week. We create some questions for students to choose and interview their friends.
Important rule! Students cannot take off their masks to take a photo. They will select a photo to share with the interviewer and the interviewer will use the template provided to report the interviewee’s story together with the photo.
Idea #2: Restart design challenges
Wouldn’t it be a good opportunity for students to work in a group and involve them to re-create norms and think about how we can move forward together when returning to campus? An idea I have in mind is to encourage students to work collaboratively and create a campaign in responding to an issue. To emphasize the message and increase their awareness of the COVID-19 related safety and health measures the school has put in place, it seems like a no-brainer to engage students in advocating and promoting these topics. Our students are familiar with the design thinking process and also successfully worked together to complete inquiry projects during the online learning period. In the process of creating a campaign, students can reconnect with their friends, collaborate and take action to make an impact.
Idea #3: Building community for connection and learning
Facinghistory.org has organized fantastic Back to School 2020 Resources to support teachers and students. The toolkit focuses on developing identities and establishing social connectedness. Lots of great ideas for the student orientation week that teachers can use right away. Themes, lesson objectives and implementation details are clearly provided.
Go slow to go fast
Many teachers naturally worry about the learning gaps and want to help students to bridge their knowledge and skill gaps right out of the gate. We need to refrain from doing this and be mindful of our assumptions. We have not seen our students face to face for a very long time, and we don’t have all the stories of our students. To go fast, we must go slow. Helping students develop confidence and build relationships with others in an incremental manner will pay dividends in the long run.
References
- Strauss, Valerie. “Perspective | The Education Technology Students Will Need – and Won’t – after Coronavirus.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 6 Aug. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/08/06/education-technology-students-will-need-wont-after-covid-19/.
- Mrs. Smith. “Lesson Plan Three – FrankenFriends.” Google Sites, 5 Aug. 2014, sites.google.com/site/frankenfriendsedrd/assignments/lessonplanthree. (Samples of Humans of New Yorks are organized by the author via Google Slides.)
