Pep Squad

Educators go the extra mile to bring remote and in-school students together and brighten their days.

Our Lady of the Elms

Each school day, some Our Lady of the Elms students check the school’s pink chicken coop for new eggs to collect. The students then wash the eggs to ready them for sale at the school. It’s been a regular task for science teacher Diana Ross’ sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade girls year-round. It allows them to bond while social distancing.

“They love to get outside,” says Ross, who also teaches sixth-grade English language arts. “It’s a lifesaver for them to be able to do something that seems normal. When they come back, they’re all very chatty and happy.”

The farm is a part of a middle school academy program Ross helped start in 2017, and a lot of the farm work is incorporated into the science and math curricula. In the fall, the girls also spent a lot of time tending to raised garden beds and harvesting tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans and a variety of peppers and herbs. Ross’ students discuss recipes and animal care, along with managing the farm’s budget. It helps girls develop their problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

For example, Ross uses questions remote and in-person students bring up as an opportunity for a science lesson. “A lot of the girls had no idea that [the chickens] make an egg every day that’s not fertilized. They think that when they eat the egg, they’re eating what would have been a baby chicken,” she says.

She teaches a lesson about how the eggs the chickens produce can’t develop baby chickens without proper fertilization from a rooster. That also opens up a discussion about human genetics.

The winter months are spent prepping for crops Ross and her students will plant this spring. They are tackling the topic of pollination to find out why some crops, like zucchini, which usually produces an abundance in the summer and fall, didn’t produce fruit last season. And they are working to determine if beekeeping might aid in the process.

Throughout all of it, the girls are continuing to work together to take care of the chickens.

“The first day that we found an egg I thought they were going to lose their minds,” Ross says. “They were so excited.”

Seton Catholic School

Teachers and students are big on spirit at Seton Catholic School. They go all out for holidays, dress up for theme days and celebrate birthdays. When the coronavirus shut schools down last March, the festivities kept going.

To salute her students’ birthdays, kindergarten teacher Mary Ann Love, her teaching assistant and the students’ families piled into separate cars adorned with decorated signs, waved and honked horns.

“It was quite a parade at times. It was very fun for them,” Love says. “It was the best that we could do for a makeshift birthday celebration.”

During lockdown, Love took her students places virtually. In an online field trip to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, they observed animals and learned a zoo-themed lesson. Love and her teaching assistant also delivered individual porch packets and supplies, so students could have more learning tools at home.

When students returned in person in August, masked teachers and families displayed fanfare with balloons, ribbons and Welcome! signs. With most of her 23 students in person and some remote, Love found new ways to engage them. When the weather was good, Love and her students took camp chairs and sat outside to draw or write and went to Hudson Springs Park for leaf studies.

“These kind of give us a bit of a different perspective,” Love says.

To closer connect virtual students, Love wheels carts with computers displaying online students’ videos wherever the in-person students go. For a fashion show on the school’s stage, both in-person and livestreamed remote learners wore a paper bag vest inspired by a letter in the alphabet and “walked” the red carpet to show off their creations.

Around the clock, her 5- and 6-year-old students have been able to follow social distancing guidelines and keep their spirits up.

“We’re so happy that we are able to be here,” Love says. “The children having to stay distanced and having to wear masks all day — they are doing an amazing job. They are so resilient in whatever we ask them to do.”

St. HIlary School

Lunch is typically a time when students get away from the classroom and connect with friends. But as a coronavirus precaution, it’s in the classroom at St. Hilary School. Seventh-grade English language arts teacher Sean Gadus makes it more interesting for students with fun activities like movie days.

Students discuss and vote for a movie to watch on Disney+. Once, the students debated between the animated and live-action Aladdin movies. It was an eight-on-eight tie, and he enjoyed hearing students’ opinions.

“There’s a lot of stress. So giving them a release, a way to kind of funnel that or forget about that for a while, I think was really important,” he says.

Gadus enjoys how these lunches have helped him learn more about students.

“We watched the Phineas and Ferb movie, and I had no idea what that was. It was nice to see something that they were really interested in,” he says. “We spent a lot of time building relationships this year with students.”

He also occasionally leads Kahoot trivia games at the end of the school day so students can compete and stay socially distanced in their desks that are 6 feet apart. Sometimes, the winner gets to choose the next topic, and it can be educational, too. One student interested in geography chose African countries.

“They need social time,” Gadus says, “and also it’s a way to get them to stay in their seats.”

To make sure the remote students working on iPads at home feel included, Gadus pairs them with in-person students during class discussions. Both groups of students also participate in exciting schoolwide activities such as themed dress-down days, a pumpkin decorating contest and a door decorating contest.

“Something outside of the normal school curriculum I think is good for them,” Gadus says. “They have a camaraderie.”

St. Vincent-St. Mary High School

As St. Vincent-St. Mary High School first switched to virtual learning last spring, intervention specialist Marian Shoemaker knew constant communication with the students she assists in English and science classes was most important. Her students have dyslexia, autism or learning disabilities, and being remote presented challenges. Routine and guidance are helpful, so Shoemaker held office hours over Google Meet and was surprised by how many students logged on.

“I would have kids that would come on for the entire time. They didn’t need work help. They just wanted to talk,” says the department chair of intervention services. “They missed that social interaction. For so many, that’s an important piece to their disability.”

One senior attended almost every session. “It was really tough for her. The college application process was very stressful. Just that impending We don’t know what’s gonna happen, but things are gonna change,” she says. “Students have a lot of anxieties, and those can snowball if we don’t take care of them and let them talk it out.”

The students Shoemaker helps have individual education plan goals, and that senior was working on writing and reading comprehension. She got Shoemaker’s input on her college applications essay. “We have her presenting her screen. I would be editing the essay. We would be talking,” Shoemaker says.

Since the fall, most of the students with IEPs are back in person, but a few remain remote. They join Shoemaker and her colleagues for study halls to work on their goals and check in when they are getting behind or need help on an assignment. Typically, intervention specialists work with a student side by side, but now they wear a mask and use a whiteboard from 6 feet away.

“It’s hard to read facial expressions as it is. Students, especially students with autism, have a difficult time with that,” Shoemaker says. “I’m being way more animated with my eyes and eyebrows.”

With intervention specialists’ guidance, students have learned how to stay on track and better adapt to the continuous changes.

“Giving each other grace and having that open communication,” Shoemaker says, “has been pivotal to get through this tough time.”

Immaculate Heart of Mary School

Jennifer Conti had one week to transition the Immaculate Heart of Mary School into distance learning in March 2020.

“At first, it was a little bit of panic. Then it was, Let’s get everybody what they need,” says the technology integration specialist. “We were lucky to have a little bit of time.”

Some may consider having a week to overhaul an education model less than lucky, but Conti immediately stepped up. She helped teachers troubleshoot remote technology and assured that students had at-home devices and internet. 

Parents expressed concern about the huge jump in screen time, so Conti created minute guidelines for teachers to follow.

“We tried to limit as much as we could,” she says, “based on … parameters set forth by different agencies.”

After a couple of weeks, Conti realized it was difficult to fit work for both core and elective classes within those time slots, so she created a secure website for teachers’ extra activities.

“It really did evolve … day by day and week by week,” Conti says. “We had to just keep adjusting it.”

For the 2020-2021 school year, most students are learning in person and some remain remote. Teachers are using Google Meet, and thanks to parents’ donations, they now have two monitors in their classrooms — one for lessons and the other for livestreams of remote students.

“Teachers can see students, share screens, raise hands, pin a student,” Conti says. Both groups of students can also participate via platforms like digital interactive flash cards and digital math tools.

Despite the challenges, she has seen the tech-based hybrid model spark fresh interest in learning. 

“It can level up that engagement for the students,” Conti says. “It can add a little bit of excitement. There’s a newness to it.”