University of Central Florida associate professor Humberto López Castillo was recently looking at a student project when he saw that it cited a paper by Castillo himself. There was, however, a problem with this citation: López Castillo couldn’t remember ever writing this paper or conducting the research it referenced.

“It was a hallucination,” López Castillo says.

The student had clearly used AI, and López Castillo shares the story as an example of how not to use AI in the classroom. Still, he has plenty of counterexamples.

López Castillo, a trained pediatrician and associate professor in the Department of Health Sciences, has also seen students use AI in creative ways to promote public health understanding, and as a research tool. For one project, López Castillo asks students to explain health concepts from class to non-experts, and since he started encouraging students to use AI, he’s seen the projects get better. Students have created health-themed board games and Hamilton-style rap songs. Others have designed AI to aid in health research in ways that wouldn’t be possible without the technology.

This compassionate and student-centered approach to AI use is part of why López Castillo was named Superhuman (formerly Grammarly’s) 2026 Educator of the Year. The student who nominated López Castillo for the award, Vardhan Avaradi, is a bioscience major, who with López Castillo’s mentorship, is using AI to try to comb through massive data sets with the goal of predicting people who are at risk for cardiovascular disease.

López Castillo shares some advice for other educators on how they can use AI in their classes.

Teaching With AI Effectively: Set Expectations

The first step to positive AI use in a classroom is making it clear to students when they can and can’t use the tool, López Castillo says.

“Perhaps my most important advice is to set expectations up front around what is allowed, what is not allowed, what you are expecting to see, and what is a big no-no for your classroom,” he says.

He adds that at the University of Central Florida, “We have several policies on the menu that we could use. We can say, for example, ‘AI is absolutely not allowed in the classroom,’ all the way to ‘AI is absolutely encouraged in this classroom,’ as long as you specify there's a critical thinking component.”

López Castillo leans toward the permissive approach but makes sure that student AI use is human-driven.

Model Proper Use

Part of encouraging proper AI use is modeling the types of uses you want to see.

For example, for a summer course López Castillo is teaching in Barcelona, he is asking students to share regular blog posts. He tells students, “You may generate some content through AI, but you still have to put in your human element.” He models exactly what he means in his introduction post in which he shares photos, talks about his hobbies, and makes it clear the post was written by a human.

“Without even giving them guidelines on what their introduction post should look like, they just take that as their model, and they go with it,” he says. They can use AI to help generate their posts, “but of course they have to tweak it, and they have to provide their own input on who they are.”

Learn From Students

López Castillo is not afraid to admit that when it comes to using AI in the classroom and health science more broadly, he is frequently as much a student as those he’s teaching.

“I learn a lot from students,” he says. “Teaching and learning is a two-way street, so they are teaching me new tricks, I'm teaching them new tricks on how we use AI, and it has been very collaborative.”

His students, for instance, encouraged him to use AI to code, which, with proper oversight, has been really helpful, López Castillo says. They’ve also used the tool in unexpected ways, from the aforementioned projects looking at cardiovascular health to a virtual escape room in which participants had to correctly diagnose a patient with diabetes in order to escape.

Embrace Teachable Moments

López Castillo has long allowed open-book tests because that is what the clinical world is like.

“I don't think real life operates like, 'We're gonna lock you down in a room without resources, and you have to produce everything from your brain,'” he says. “I'd rather make sure that you have a fair balance of the tools that are available to you.”

He feels the same way about AI, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to work with students to ensure they are using AI correctly. For instance, when that student cited a paper by López Castillo that didn’t exist, he met with the student.

“We sat down, and it was an interesting moment, where I was like, 'Tell me more about this paper by me that you incorporated in your reference list,'” López Castillo says. The student immediately got nervous because he couldn’t provide any details since the paper wasn’t real. When the student admitted to not checking his sources, López Castillo reminded him that even with AI, humans are still in the driver’s seat.

“You are the one who's responsible for that writing,” López Castillo tells his students. “Your name is the only name that's going to be among the published authors, so you are the one who needs to verify those sources.”

He adds that rather than being a drawback, allowing students to make these types of mistakes with AI use in the college setting has value.

“It is a teaching opportunity," López Castillo says. "This is the moment to make those mistakes."

It’s no secret that many schools are not equipped to handle the increasing number of hot days that students and staff experience during the school year due to global climate change. Some 36,000 U.S. schools lack adequate HVAC systems, according to one estimate.

Beyond causing extreme discomfort and negative health impacts, all this heat is decreasing student achievement, say researchers.

Travis Roach, an economics professor at the University of Central Oklahoma, and Joshua Goodman, an education and economics professor at Boston University, have researched the link between heat and student learning separately. Their research, and that of others, reveals a compelling link between more hot days in the school year and poor educational outcomes for students.

Fixing this problem is beyond educators alone and requires more action from policymakers, both say. However, they do offer small steps educators can take right now to mitigate the impact of heat on their students.

The Negative Impact of Hot Schools

To study the impact of heat on schools, Goodman looked at 10 million students who retook the PSATs. Goodman and the study’s co-authors found “that hotter school days in the years before the test was taken reduce scores, with extreme heat being particularly damaging.” The authors were confident in their findings in part because weekend and summer temperatures had little impact on test scores and the presence of air conditioning seemed to mitigate much of the negative effect.

“Heat not only affects learning in the short run but in the long run, too,” Goodman says. “Hot classrooms during the school year make students appear to have less knowledge a year or even more later.”

Also, lower-income students see a bigger negative impact from heat. “[They] tend to be in schools and homes that have fewer resources to mitigate the effects of heat such as AC,” Goodman says.

Finally, the problem is not limited to American schools. “These patterns show up in the U.S. and across the globe, so it's a universal phenomenon,” Goodman says.

In a 2020 study looking at students in grades 3-8, Roach found that each additional day over 100 degrees in the school year decreases student achievement. and the link between heat and decreased success was higher in areas with lower average maximum temperatures.

Roach says that many teachers have seen the impact heat can have on learning without necessarily being aware of it. "I've been in the front of a classroom where it just feels like things aren't quite jiving, they're not going well. And some of that could just be purely environmental,” he says.

What Teachers Can Do

Goodman and Roach both stress that improving school infrastructure is the main way we should address this problem, and that is the responsibility of policymakers who control school budgets, not educators. That said, there are some steps educators can take to mitigate the impact of heat.

“Rearranging annual and daily schedules to attempt to avoid the hottest times of year or times of day may be helpful. Small interventions like electric fans and ice water can be helpful too,” Goodman says.

Roach says teachers should try to be as flexible as their teaching situations permit with important tests. “Maybe if you're planning on having a test on a Wednesday, and it's an especially hot day, but you know it's going to cool off the next day, if you can, have a little flexibility. Your students might do better the next day, for no other reason than it's a little bit cooler that day and their bodies are under a little bit less stress,” he says.

Scheduling breaks for students to cool off can also help, Roach adds. As can teachers simply being aware that heat might be the reason a given lesson isn’t resonating with students.

Finally, teachers can understand that the impact heat may already be having on their classrooms is an important part of the ongoing conversation around climate change. “These climate change impacts are not so far off into the distance anymore,” Roach says. “We're feeling them now, and we're starting to see them show up in outcomes like test scores and learning.”

• People Hate To Think, Says Research. What Does That Mean For Teachers
• Discussing Climate Change with Students and Teachers

Overwhelmingly, teacher education programs prepare new teachers to develop and utilize effective pedagogical strategies, support student well-being, and assess learning with an eye for continuous improvement.

While these are core skills needed for teachers to be effective practitioners, there are other factors, particularly for new teachers, for which they must be prepared. Teachers must be mentally ready with the capacity to handle the colossal undertaking of “all the things” that are related to teaching and learning beyond the primary focus of instruction and assessment.

To that end, here are a few ways that new teachers can mentally prepare for teaching.

1. Prioritize and Plan for Self-Care

When preparing for any airplane travel, you are reminded to take care of your own oxygen mask before trying to assist children and other passengers. The same can be said for teaching, except that the oxygen mask is the focus on your overall mental health and wellness.

Prioritizing and planning for self-care in advance is an excellent way to center mental wellness. When days are tiresome and stressful, you will know that you already have strategies prepared to help cope. Similar to how our students require their physiological, physical, and other needs met (think Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs), teachers need to have their needs met to be mentally ready to be the best version of themselves.

Engaging in mindfulness activities can be helpful as well.

2. Avoid Taking on Too Much, Too Quickly

After several years of preparing to become a teacher, it is exciting to be ready to jump right in and try all the learning activities and technology tools that you have learned about in your own teacher preparation programs. But remember, in addition to your list of action items, the school administrator and/or school district will have other priorities and policies that you must adhere to and focus on handling.

Instead of taking on too much, and too quickly when starting, choose one instructional item and one technology tool that you want to incorporate in your teaching, and gain fluency with it. This way, you will not have to stress about getting everything done at once and trying too many new teaching strategies in the beginning of your teaching journey.

3. Prepare to Pivot

Even the best-laid plans do not always come to fruition. In education specifically, there are so many elements of life that enter the classroom for students and for other teachers that we co-create with, as well as environmental impacts, that can contribute to the need to change well-planned lessons.

When lesson planning and developing activities for each day, have a backup plan and prepare to pivot to something else, if necessary. By mentally preparing yourself to be flexible for when these things do happen, it can make the difference in how you feel during that time and what actions you take to ensure that learning still happens.

4. Connect With Colleagues

Starting with new teacher orientation, make connections with other teachers, both experienced and novice. It can be helpful to also connect with front office and administrative staff members who may be knowledgeable of the interworking of the school. Find time to share what is going well in your first days of teaching and areas that you need support.

By networking and communicating with your colleagues, you will not feel alone and can enjoy being in community with other individuals who have a shared experience. Beyond your school, try to connect with others in the field. This can be done by joining communities of practice in social media spaces, at conferences and training, and as you continue your own teacher education.

5. Utilize Mental Health and Wellness Resources

Along with self-care, knowing what mental health and wellness resources are freely available to you is key. Some of the mental health resources used during the pandemic may still be relevant in your work today. Discover all of the resources available to you through your health insurance plans and through the district human resources office employee benefits. Some districts even have embedded mental health days in the academic calendar, and your district may have similar programming.

These are just five of the many ways to prepare mentally prepare for teaching as a new teacher. If one, some or all of these interest you, try it out and see what works for you.

Related:

• 5 Mindfulness Apps and Websites for K-12
• Supporting Student & Teacher Well-Being

Like many of us, Craig Aarons-Martin had a revelation about his health and his weight during what seemed like a normal day at work as a superintendent for Bridge Boston Charter Schools: “There was just no way this six-foot-three-inch ‘care bear’ could keep up!” he says.

Aarons-Martin, now CEO of CCM Education Group, weighed more than 300 pounds back then, and realized that he needed to change his lifestyle in order to improve his health if he wanted to be able to interact with students. He also decided that he might be successful in this goal if he could get others to join him. Plus, improved mental and physical health across his district could support social-emotional concerns, for students as well as educators, many of whom were suffering from similar mental health challenges.

Ultimately, Aarons-Martin was able to lose more than 100 pounds and boost his entire school community in the process.

Starting Small

Growing up in New Orleans, Aarons-Martin was no stranger to an abundance of good food. “I had gained a significant amount of weight, some of that attributed to some of the depression that I was going through as a queer man who struggled with his identity, but also someone who was trying to figure out how do I become more agile and fit mentally as well as physically for the young people I serve,” he says. “I wanted to be able to run and play ball and do all those things, and I need to have a really good mind-heart-body-spirit connection. And I made a decision that I was going to go on this journey unapologetically and see what happens.”

Aarons-Martin started his process by being open and vulnerable with his staff and students about his own health and goals, and encouraged others to do the same.

“I told them, ‘This is my journey, but I welcome you to take whatever parts of it resonate with you,’” he says. “Each person defines wellness for themselves but what we wanted to do was have a school-wide wellness plan, but it was driven by me.”

From there, he and his staff started off with small, attainable steps, including:

• Creating more opportunities for physical activity
• Mindfulness moments throughout the day
• Creating peaceful paths for students
• Providing movable weight-loss equipment

Aarons-Martin also constantly looked for opportunities to model healthy habits, such as holding meetings while walking around the block.

As they began to have success, Aarons-Martin and his team expanded their efforts to integrate it into the community by participating in events such as organized walks and 5Ks. They also implemented other actions when possible, such as providing healthy snack alternatives.

To help foster and support a sense of community, and also reduce absenteeism, event planning was focused on scheduling can’t-miss events on days when students and families might skip school, such as a Friday before a holiday weekend. In one school community, absenteeism dropped from 12% to 7%.

“We found kids were coming to school because they didn't want to miss the thing, and it was going to be fun and active and deeply engaged,” he says. “And we saw that our discipline numbers, our suspension numbers, went down as well. I went from 25 suspensions in one year down to five. We also used restorative justice.”

5 Tips For Implementing A Top-Down Wellness Approach

For other district leaders looking to implement a similar approach, Aarons-Martins offers this advice:

1. Keep It Simple to Start - Aarons-Martin recommends starting with no more than three new initiatives in a school year. “For school leaders who are trying to figure it out, get clear about what's the one to two things school-wide that you can manage,” he says. “There's going to be sustainability with it if you are going to go the distance, and make it clear why this is important. Because it shouldn't just be personal to you.”

At the beginning, for example, Aarons-Martin simply tried to make sure that every morning that students were outside and active to start the day. “So before they walked into classes, I wanted them to take that lap. I want them to get their bodies oxygenated,” he says. “And then we would all start with a pledge and a reminder of who we are and what we need to do.”

2. Get Buy-In and Build Support - As with any initiative, buy-in from students, faculty, and community is critical. “You need staff members and students who are going to champion it and you have to show them how to execute it,” says Aarons-Martin. “They’re going to steward the work with you so that if you go to a meeting or conferences, they're going to continue the practices because ‘This is what we always do.’”

3. Publicize Small Wins - Highlighting and showcasing the success stories via social media can help to build a sense of momentum, says Aarons-Martin. “I always tried to find the folks who were kind of on the fence and apprehensive, to highlight,” he says. “Like, if I saw they actually had a kid do a mindfulness moment and lead it, even though they didn't believe in it themselves, they still had a student doing it. I know it may feel like, ‘Oh that's kind of hokey,’ but they were trying.”

Social media is also where students are, and when certain stories about the district’s efforts went viral or reached a wider audience, it fueled positivity. “Young people loved the fact that we became a school that we have always said we were when we said we're one of the best schools in Boston,” Aarons-Martins says. “They saw themselves in places outside of the school and people talking about it to the degree that they feel a sense of pride that like, ‘Yep, this our school.’”

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Share Your Challenges - “I was very vulnerable and upfront in front of the community about where I was in my journey,” says Aarons-Martin. “Like, ‘I'm dropping the ball’ and ‘Here’s why I didn't do X.’ And people would say, ‘Hey, Mr. Martin, well, let's get back on the ball again.”

Aarons-Martin adds that sharing failings helped humanize him to students and also provided an opportunity for the community to hold him accountable.

5. Remember, It’s A Team Effort - Aarons-Martin said that while he benefited from many of the initiatives and decisions, he had to maintain a broader focus. “If you're doing something because that's for you, and it's not for the community, then you need to rethink what you're doing and why,” he says. “I wanted to make sure that the people who were choosing the journey with me also found resonance as a school, and as a wider community.”

All of this started with a few small steps.

“I never said, ‘We're gonna have a weight-loss challenge,” says Aarons-Martin. “I just tried to say, ‘Hey, can we be more active for 30 minutes? You know, this week? I can. I can figure that out.’ Ultimately, I want everyone to thrive!”

Related:

• Addressing The Critical Impact of Chronic Absenteeism
• School Wellness Coordinators: What to Know

Edtech ergonomics should be a bigger part of the conversation around technology in school, says Madeleine Mortimore, Global Education Innovation and Research Lead for Logitech. The era of one-to-one devices and ever-present classroom technology has brought with it many learning opportunities for students but also a good deal of physical discomfort due to poor edtech ergonomics.

“We did a survey with over 1,000 participants and district leaders, educators, and students,” Mortimore says. “Almost 50% of students report being physically uncomfortable with the current edtech hardware that they're using.”

The good news is that some of this discomfort can be eased easily. Educators can pay more attention to edtech ergonomics when planning lessons and making purchasing decisions. As part of this process, they can help encourage healthy posture in their students and encourage ergonomic edtech design that takes into account the different ages, shapes, sizes, and needs of students. 

1. Edtech Ergonomics: Provide Companion Tools

Research into the physical strain devices place on students also shows that more than 60% of kids 10 to 17 report feeling actual physical pain and fatigue when they’re using school devices without companion tools, Mortimore says. These companion tools can range from external keyboards or mouses to stylus pens and headsets. These devices can help students have better posture in unexpected ways. For instance, “With headsets, you're not having to strain and lean over to hear,” Mortimore says. 

2. Make Sure Devices Are Age Appropriate and Adoptable to Individual Student Needs

Students of different ages need different sizes and shaped devices, and there is, of course, huge variability among students of the same age. Educators should not only provide the types of companion tools referenced above but should encourage students to customize their devices based on their individual needs. “When schools come to us and they’re not sure what to do, we encourage the concept of the Edtech Pencil Case," Mortimer says. "This is just having a selection of these tools, headsets, mics, styluses, so that students, depending on their personal preferences and needs, can really add and adopt and unlock the full capability of their device.” 

3. Consider Student Comfort When Making Purchasing Decisions

School leaders involved in purchasing decisions should keep ergonomics in mind. Mortimer says schools should seek out “tools that were designed from the ground up for kids.” Schools should also focus on tools that have incorporated student voice in the design process. “We talk a lot about including educator voice, but at the end of the day, student voice is just as important, if not more important, since they're going to be the users,” Mortimer says. “Make sure the tools that are selected are really age appropriate and have been tested with all different ages.” 

4. Schedule Breaks Throughout The School Day 

One free and simple way to improve edtech ergonomics is to make sure your students are not spending all class hunched over their devices. Mortimer advises educators to break up screen time with full class engagement and avoid having students using their devices for extended periods. This can also help students build good habits around edtech ergonomics when they use their devices at home. “As educators know, breaks are beneficial for the learning process,” she says. “But in this current landscape with all the one-to-one devices and obviously the at-home usage as well, having those breaks is just as important for the physical wellbeing of students.” 

• Rethinking Learning Spaces: 4 Strategies for Student-Centered Learning
• How One District’s Mental Health Program is Saving Millions & Helping Students

To share your feedback and ideas on this article, consider joining our Tech & Learning online community here

Health at Every Size is a set of principles that focus on promoting overall health rather than weight loss in both children and adults. Research indicates it could be more effective than focusing on weight. 

Amanda Raffoul, PhD, who studies health at every size policies and is an instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical, and Stephanie Campbell, a Hawaii-based researcher with a doctorate in school psychology who studies weight-related stigma in the school setting, explain more about Health at Every Size and what it means for educators. 

What is Health at Every Size 

“Health at every size is a philosophy or a movement that reaches back decades and works under this core foundational element that weight is not the only or even a reliable determinant or indicator of a person's health,” says Raffoul. “Health at Every Size addresses that health and well-being are more holistic than just physical. It includes social-emotional health, and even physical health doesn't need to be determined by or limited by how high a person's weight is.” 

Raffoul began studying Health at Every Size because her work focuses on preventing eating disorders. Her research indicates that Health at Every Size policies in school settings can do a better job of promoting health in young people while avoiding the unintended consequences of weight-focused interventions, which may include an increased chance of developing eating disorders and other negative outcomes. 

Health at Every Size policies have gotten more attention in relation to schools and young people because the philosophy stands in stark contrast to the American Academy of Pediatric’s recently updated clinical practice guidelines in regard to children with obesity. Those guidelines call for intensive interventions for overweight children and adolescents, prescription treatments, and even surgery in some instances. 

What Role Do Schools Currently Play in the Conversation Around Health?  

Weight-related challenges are not often directly taken on by most schools. 

“Despite their negative effects on the emotional, physical, and social wellbeing of students, weight stigma and anti-fat attitudes are rarely systematically addressed in schools or within school psychology,” Campbell wrote in one paper. “Weight-based oppression is regarded differently than other domains of prejudice.” 

Campbell believes it is difficult for schools to overcome these stigmas because of how systemic weight-related stigma is in society, and it’s often hard even for progressive educators to understand their prejudice around weight, which she is dedicated to changing. 

“We cannot be emotionally and mentally healthy when we're living under this deep oppression where we're forced to feel self-hatred and all these things that create really unhealthy habits," she says. "Youth eating disorders are extremely common in a way that I don't think we understand and measure because we don't have good data on that. But the data we have is already pretty damning.” 

How Should These Policies Shift?  

Raffoul says school policies can shift in a positive direction. “When we make the core focus of school programming reducing students’ weight or a students’ body mass index or BMI, we might be unintentionally promoting students to engage in unhealthy behaviors to achieve that weight loss,” Raffoul says. “We're also underselling students on the value of engaging in behaviors, like physical activity or healthful snacking, and the benefits they can present besides weight loss."

Even small tweaks in presentation can make a big difference. "So for example, when we reframe something like physical activity and instead of saying, 'Physical activity is a good way to lose or keep off weight,' we say, 'Physical activity will help you sleep better at night, or it might help you focus better on homework,' or 'Physical activity is a really good way for you to make friends by joining a running club or joining a soccer team.' Those types of reframing can have positive implications for the way people connect to food and exercise too.” 

But Isn’t Weighing Less Healthier?  

Weighing less is not necessarily healthier, say Health at Any Size advocates. “There are studies showing that having a higher weight is associated with some health consequences, but we have to dig a little bit deeper into why that is,” Raffoul says. “People with higher weights face a lot of discrimination, and studies have shown that that discrimination is associated with what we call an increased allostatic load, which is a physical indicator of stress. And we know from the literature on discrimination that people with higher allostatic loads will have worse cardiovascular and health outcomes because they're experiencing stress.”

This association between stress and health is perhaps better understood in the context of race, in which discrimination has been shown to take a physical toll and help fuel health disparities.  

“Many studies show that people with higher weights face so much discrimination in medical settings, that they almost fear going to see the doctor and that avoidance of healthcare is associated with much worse health outcomes," says Raffoul. "One example of this is a couple of papers show that for women with higher weights, especially racial minority women with higher weights, they avoid going to the doctor for cervical cancer screening, and that actually means that they have have higher rates of cervical cancer.” 

What Else Can Schools and Educators Do? 

Educators being more mindful of how they talk about food in front of students is important, Campbell says. One progressive former teacher of Campbell’s who she still admires would regularly say problematic things about food without realizing it. “She'd say in front of a student like, ‘Oh, I'm gonna eat this cake, but I'm going to eat salad later, so it's okay,'” Campbell says. “[She was] accidentally putting these moralizing terms of what's good and bad on food in ways I think we don't realize can be pretty damaging, especially from a social justice perspective. We know that children especially don't have a lot of control over which foods they eat, or can access, or their parents can afford.”

Raffoul adds that existing research can help guide school policies around health and weight discussions to focus less on weight loss. “Talk more about things like body ideals and how they can be harmful and how your self-worth is not tied to your weight or your appearance,” she says. “Focus on the benefits of physical activity and nutrition for health.” 

Additionally, she’d like to see more training for educators on how to detect potentially harmful weight engagement and for weight- and appearance-based bullying to get more attention alongside other types of bullying. 

“I know that lots of schools and educators care a lot about preventing bullying or detecting bullying when it comes to gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, but I don't know that a lot of the anti-bullying policies really zone in on weight or appearance-based bullying,” she says. “Improving those types of policies can help make schools more Health at Every Size-aligned.” 

• What is Digital Wellness? How One School Implements It
• 4 Ways To Prevent Cyberbullying

Phys ed teachers and students are giving new meaning to the term “screen time.” 

Technology is increasingly being utilized as part of physical education classes, just as with any other subject, says David Daum, a professor of kinesiology at San Jose State University. 

Daum shares five ways in which phys ed teachers are utilizing technology to help kids be more active and ultimately healthier and happier. 

1. Heart Rate Monitors 

Heart rate monitors that are now readily available provide an opportunity for phys ed teachers to teach students about exercise science. “They're really teaching students about their bodies and how hard they’re actually working,” says Daum, who is also the education specialist for HiveClass, a mobile platform that encourages kids to engage in physical activity with videos and other instructional materials. 

Daum adds the devices can help students track aerobic vs. anaerobic exercise, and the differences between the two.   

2. Videos That Help Students Improve Form 

Professional athletes have long analyzed videos to optimize performance, and increasingly, more and more students are utilizing video in a similar, if somewhat scaled back, manner. 

“I've seen a lot more use of video, especially among high schoolers [who are] using cell phones to record each other to analyze their movement,” Daum says. “If we were partners, I would record you doing the badminton serve or something like that, then we would use a rubric and we'd evaluate our movement and provide feedback to each other.” 

3. Videos That Teach New Skills and Exercises 

Short instructional videos provide lots of opportunities for educators to get students up and moving, including demonstrations of sports and activities as well as providing advice for improving specific athletic skills and techniques. However, many of the free resources available on YouTube and elsewhere suffer from poor quality.  

Part of what drew Daum to work with HiveClass was that he wanted to help create more age-appropriate, standards-aligned phys ed videos that educators could utilize for classrooms. 

4. Promoting Accessibility  

Video can also be a great way to inspire phys ed students from diverse cultures with diverse abilities and levels of fitness. 

At HiveClass, Daum has helped advise the company to offer videos that feature students of different cultures, nationalities, body types, shapes, sizes, and abilities. Representation and modeling matters. 

“When you get children performing the skill, it's relatable,” he says. “It's like, 'Oh, they can do it. I can do it.' I talk about that in my classes when I'm teaching people how to be teachers. You can demonstrate, yes, of course, but it  seems more achievable, especially for younger students, when they can see a peer do it.” 

5. Increasing Student Choice  

High-quality instructional materials that are available online can better help teachers incorporate student choice into their classes. “We know that students value being able to make decisions about their own learning,” Daum says. 

However, this isn’t always feasible for many phys ed instructors. “When a teacher is teaching 45 students or 60 students, it makes it logistically difficult for them to do certain things, especially around the idea of choice,” he says. 

Resources such as HiveClass make incorporating choices doable. For example, students can be broken into groups and told to watch an instructional video focusing on one skill or exercise while the teacher roams between groups to provide additional instruction. 

Ultimately, Daum says that increasing the quality of a school’s phys ed offerings can boost students’ ability to focus as well as their mental health. 

“Physical education is for a lot of students the only physical activity they get in the school day,” Daum says. “It is the only subject area that has the potential to impact an entire school culture.” 

• An MD Turned High School Teacher’s Prescription to Improve School Mental Health
• CDC: More Than 1 in 3 High Schoolers Experiencing Poor Mental Health. What Schools Can Do

The lessons we’ve learned about COVID mitigation two years into the pandemic still apply, even with the Omicron variant. 

“Omicron requires us to bolster, but not reinvent, our existing approaches for teachers and staff,” says Dr. Sara B. Johnson, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-director of the Rales Center for the Integration of Health and Education and the Johns Hopkins Consortium for School-Based Health Solutions.  “What worked before works now, fortunately, but we need to update some strategies because of the greater transmissibility of this variant.” 

Even though many of us know COVID mitigation best practices at this point, we’re still likely to make mistakes. It’s human nature, says Dr. Marney White, a psychologist and epidemiology professor at the Yale School of Public Health. 

“We are very bad at evaluating personal risk and evaluating the risk that our various behaviors have on our health and our lifespan,” she says. “If people were able to accurately appraise risk, nobody would smoke, nobody would speed, everyone would wear a seat belt.” 

In addition to getting vaccinated and boosted in accordance with CDC guidelines, here’s a reminder of some common but potentially risky behaviors to avoid. 

1. Relaxing During Meal Times  

“Meal times are a particular risk because students are unmasked and also because meals are often a chance to catch up and chat with others for students and adults,” Johnson says. “Eating with others, drinking, and congregating in small spaces are still riskier activities. Whenever possible, create space from others when eating and replace your mask when you’re not actively eating or drinking. In climates where it’s possible, eating outside is still great.” 

White says, “Educators can reduce this risk by eating alone or at a far distance from any students or colleagues. If they must perform lunch duty, they should be sure to remain masked and try to stand at least 6 feet away from anyone who is not wearing a mask.” 

2. Not Masking Properly

“For teachers in settings where many others are unmasked, it’s particularly helpful to use strategies like double masking; if possible, wearing a KN95, KN94 or N95 may provide additional protection above a basic cloth mask,” Johnson says. She adds the mask should fit tightly over the mouth and nose. “Because there are a lot of counterfeit masks out there right now, use the lists assembled by the CDC and FDA to identify authorized mask manufacturers. If possible, try out a few different styles to see which one is more comfortable and secure.” 

White would prefer everyone be masked, but notes one-way masking can help. “While imperfect, wearing a mask and staying at least 6 feet away from others will decrease personal risk,” she says, pointing to Mayo Clinic research that provides evidence of effectiveness for one-way masking.  

3. Gathering With Colleagues  

CDC research last year suggested that educators may often play a significant role when the virus does spread in schools. 

Johnson says before work each morning educators should mentally walk through the day and flag potential risk. “In the morning, are people gathering around the copy machine? Are they stopping to chat with colleagues in the hallways on their way to the parking lot after school?” 

She adds, “I think there is broad awareness of what increases transmission risk, but we all need reminders to map out potential risk points and proactively avoid them. It can be hard not to fall into old habits without realizing it.” 

4. Forgetting About Proper Ventilation Protocols  

“There’s a tendency to be lax in our controls,” Dr. Joseph G. Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings Program at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health told us last year.  “I’ve toured some schools where the policy was to keep windows open, even a couple of inches, and the windows are closed. Or in a school that has a portable air cleaner with a HEPA filter, which is a terrific strategy, they're running them on half-speed, or they tuck them away in the corner.” 

A half-speed filter is going to be half as effective, and positioning it in a corner will limit its capabilities as well, says Allen, the chair of The Lancet’s Covid-19 Commission Task Force on Safe Work, Safe Schools, and Safe Travel. “If you're gonna have a portable air cleaner in the room, try to move it out from the corner. It doesn't have to be the exact center of the room but should be running at full speed. More windows open is better, even if cracked a few inches.” 

5. Thinking Schools are Safer Than They Are  

Because spread of the virus at schools has been relatively limited, White says that some have gotten the impression they are somehow unique spaces. 

“It almost seems as if some people have interpreted it to mean there's some kind of magical force field around schools and that is not the case,” she says. “Schools are an indoor environment. They are currently considered relatively safe because they have been so careful about enforcing the mitigation strategies.” 

To help prevent spread at schools, White suggests providing basic health education to children. “In the same way that we teach children to take turns, not to cut in line, and to raise their hand before speaking, teaching children about respecting their fellow human beings' physical safety is appropriate,” she says. “Young children can be taught basic disease prevention strategies, such as hand washing, as well as the importance of wearing masks to help protect themselves and their peers.”  

• What Type of Mask Should Educators Wear?
• How To Improve School Ventilation Without Spending Thousands

Not all masks are created equal. 

That may be obvious at this point in the pandemic, but choosing a mask that offers the most protection possible is once again important for educators who continue to teach in-person in the midst of the surging Omicron-fueled wave of COVID infections and the still significant tail end of the Delta wave. 

At many schools masking is optional, however, educators who choose to wear a mask can still afford themselves a good deal of protection. 

“One-way masking is fine,” said Dr. Joseph G. Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings Program at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in a recent Tweet. “If you're vaccinated, and boosted, and wearing an N95, that's as low risk as anything in your life, regardless of what anyone around you is doing.” 

Allen, chair of The Lancet’s Covid-19 Commission Task Force on Safe Work, Safe Schools, and Safe Travel, now believes masks should be optional in schools because of the option of a vaccination, relative low-risk from the virus to students, and the high protection good-quality masks can offer for those who choose to wear these. Despite this, he remains an advocate for masking overall, especially for those who want an added layer of protection during a pandemic surge.

Here are his tips on mask selection and fit.  

First choice: N95

This mask is one we’ve all heard of for good reason. If worn correctly these masks will block 95 percent of airborne particles. But these have at times been expensive due to the limited supply and intense demand, Allen suggests some alternatives that can be nearly as good. 

Second choice: KF94  

Made in South Korea, these high-quality, certified masks block 94 percent of airborne particles. “It’s very comfortable and it’s what I’ve been wearing,” Allen says. 

Third Choice: K95* 

In theory these masks made in China are the equivalent of N95s but it’s not quite that simple. “Here, you need to be very cautious because there have been counterfeit KN95s,” Allen says. “So if you're going to use a KN95 you need to do your homework.” He advises checking FDA and CDC websites to be sure the mask is what it claims to be and has a real NIOSH certificate.  

Cloth Masks 

Allen cringes when he hears people say cloth masks don’t work when it would be more correct to say these are less effective than other masks. He notes these can reduce a person’s inhaled dose of virus by 50 percent for the wearer. If two people are wearing cloth masks, the combined efficacy is 75 percent. That’s not insignificant but still less protection than one person correctly wearing a higher quality mask will get. So while he disputes cloth masks being useless, as some experts have stated, he agrees it’s time for better masks. 

I Can’t Find These Masks. What Can I Do Today?  

“If a teacher wants better protection right now you can double mask,” Allen says. “I like the strategy because it's using materials that most people can access and are very cheap and affordable. So you wear a surgical mask, which has good filtration, and then a cloth mask on top that helps improve the seal, and that can get you over 90 percent.” 

How Should I Put The Mask On?  

Even the highest-quality filtration won’t do anything if you don’t wear the mask right and your breath escapes through the top and sides. 

“The mask needs to go over the bridge of your nose, down around your chin and be flush against your cheeks,” Allen wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post: 

“Americans should become familiar with ways to test a mask’s fit. Every time you put on a mask, do a ‘user seal check.’ Put your hands over the mask to block the air moving through it, and exhale gently. You shouldn’t feel air coming out the side or up toward your eyes. Then, test to make sure it stays in place by moving your head side to side and all around. Read passages of text, like the ‘Rainbow Passage’ that’s commonly used for respirator fit testing, and see whether the mask slides around too much when you talk.”

Are Face Shields Necessary?  

Allen says that face shields can be helpful as an add-on to a mask in a healthcare setting as they provide eye cover but that they are not necessary for educators. 

“This virus spreads through some combination of these large ballistic droplets that masks catch and these smaller aerosols that will float through the air beyond six feet,” Allen says. “The mask is the most important thing, and certainly a face shield should not be worn in place of a mask. Could it provide some extra protection? It can from those direct ballistic droplets, but I think in most settings, a school included, that's not necessary.” 

• New CDC School Masking Study: What You Need to Know
• School Ventilation & Cognition: Air Quality Is About More Than Covid

The CDC recently endorsed test-to-stay strategies at schools as Omicron replaced Delta as the dominant coronavirus strain spreading in the U.S. The health agency cited new studies showing that the policy can allow students with COVID exposure to continue to attend class without increasing the spread of the coronavirus. 

“These studies demonstrate that test-to-stay works to keep unvaccinated children in school safely,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said during a recent press briefing. “The CDC is updating our materials to help schools and parents know how to best implement this promising and now proven practice, along with our multi-layer prevention strategies that will help keep our children in the classroom safely.” 

The strategy calls for repeatedly testing unvaccinated children who have a COVID exposure while allowing them to stay in school during their quarantine period provided they mask, remain symptom-free and continue to test negative. 

Many school districts, including those in Massachusetts, started the year with a test-to-stay strategy in place.  Other districts adopted similar strategies as the school year went on, but this is the most forceful endorsement the strategy has received from the CDC to date. 

Gigi Kwik Gronvall, PhD, an immunologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, applauded the new guidelines. “If done well, it can be a really great way to follow the science,” she says. “It's really important to keep children in school.” 

However, she cautions it will only be successful if implemented along with other mitigation strategies such as masking and good ventilation, which have helped limit the spread of the virus in schools. “In previous studies, only 2 percent of the students who were identified as close contacts actually did have COVID,” she says. 

 Evidence for Test To Stay  

The CDC cited three new studies supporting test-to-stay (TTS) strategies. 

• A cluster-randomized trial in the U.K. that compared 86 secondary schools and Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) that used daily testing for close contacts in lieu of quarantine to 76 secondary schools and IHEs using traditional quarantine for close contacts. Daily testing while remaining in-person did not differ from traditional quarantine in limiting SARS-CoV-2 transmission, resulting in similar rates of school absence and transmission to contacts, though only 42% of contacts participated in daily testing.
• A study in Los Angeles County in California compared COVID-19 student case rates (CRs) in 39 school districts that implemented TTS to 39 school districts using traditional quarantine from September 20 – October 31, 2021. The ratio of student COVID-19 case rates in TTS districts compared with non-TTS districts was similar before and after TTS adoption. Schools implementing TTS did not identify tertiary transmission among school-related outbreaks. 
• In a study of 90 K-12 schools in Lake County, Illinois, that implemented TTS during the fall 2021 semester, secondary transmission remained low, at 1.5% among 1,035 students and staff members enrolled in the program. None of the secondary cases appeared to transmit SARS-CoV-2 to other school-based contacts. However, nine additional cases in five households were identified among household contacts of the 16 secondary cases 

These new studies build on previous evidence in support of the policy, including a CDC study conducted at Utah schools last year. 

“The strategy seems to work really well,” J. Lucian Davis, an MD and epidemiologist, at Yale School of Public Health, told Tech & Learning in September. “Testing in the classroom doesn't necessarily decrease the prevalence of cases, however, you get rid of all these lost days. So you have the same amount of COVID that's in the classroom, but a much larger number of kids are there.” 

Test to Stay and Omicron  

Omicron is predicted to cause case numbers to rise, and test to stay is part of the Biden administration’s strategy to keep students in school. 

“One truth that the pandemic has underscored is that our students’ social and emotional growth and their academic development are best nurtured in-person in their classrooms with their peers and teachers,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in a statement about the new CDC data. “It’s encouraging that test-to-stay strategies are proving effective both in limiting transmission of the virus and in ensuring that students can remain learning in school, so that entire classrooms or schools do not have to shut down when a case of COVID-19 is discovered in the school community.”

However, Omicron may make more frequent tests necessary, 

“For any test, there is a point at which you are going to be below the limits of detection, but it doesn't mean that you aren't infected,” Gronvall says. “It’s a bit like when you're looking at a sunrise, there's a point at which you cannot see the sun, and then all of a sudden, the sky is filled with light.” 

Previous strains of the virus took a while to go from undetectable to infectious but Omicron seems to make this jump more quickly, increasing the odds that a contagious window could be missed if testing is not done frequently. “If you were to test in the morning, and then in the evening you're going to see people – that is more risky than it was before,” Gronvall says. “You should test closer to the event.” 

• How Dangerous is Delta for K-12 Students?
• School Ventilation & Cognition: Air Quality Is About More Than Covid

“My message is, ‘Help is here. Help is here.’”

That’s what President Biden told attendees during the virtual National Safe School Reopening Summit, an event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education designed to provide support and critical resources to educators, students, and other stakeholders as they work to reopen schools to in-person learning.

During his remarks, Biden stressed the importance of in-person education and focusing our help on those students who were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. “These aren’t someone else’s children, these are all our children,” Biden said. “They are the kite strings that lift our nation's ambitions aloft, and they need that opportunity.”

Biden also told educators that he’s depending on them. “As my favorite teacher, the First Lady, likes to say, ‘Any nation that out-educates us will out-compete us,’” he said. “Everything our nation is going to be tomorrow is dependent on how we educate our young people today.” He also reminded states and educators that $130 billion from the American Rescue Act is now available to support schools.

First Lady (and classroom teacher) Dr. Jill Biden also addressed attendees during the three-hour event, which also included other guest speakers and multiple panel discussions around key topics related to safely reopening schools to in-person learning. “There are some who have questioned whether or not educators want to go back to school. Of course we do!” Dr. Biden said. “Classrooms are where our work comes alive, they’re where we can truly connect with our students, and where we build community.”

“We still have lots to do,” said Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “We learn best from one another. We know that, and that’s why we’re here today.”

Watch the full summit

Key Takeaways

The Summer Learning and Enrichment Collaborative

As part of the Education Department’s efforts to mitigate learning loss, Biden and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona announced a new program, the Summer Learning and Enrichment Collaborative. Cardona, who also announced that he’ll be going on a nationwide listening tour, promised that the summer collaborative won’t be a traditional “drill and skill” program, but part of the ongoing effort to improve education and an opportunity “to hit the reset button on the things that aren’t working.” More details will be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

5 Key Mitigation Strategies

“The CDC believes that schools should be the last place to close and the first place to open,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Reminding attendees that “Science must lead the way,” Walensky discussed how the CDC has reviewed all the data in creating return to school strategies that have been built on evidence. 

Walensky also said that the key to a successful and safe reopening relies on five key mitigation strategies that should be layered or implemented together to increase effectiveness.

• Proper masking 
• Appropriate social distancing, for which the CDC just revised guidelines, going from 6 feet to 3 feet 
• Proper hand washing (at least 20 seconds, and repeated throughout the day) 
• Regular cleaning of high-touch areas, such as door handles and light switches 
• Screening, testing, and then quickly isolating those who test positive for COVID-19

All schools should have a plan for diagnostic testing, said Dr. Greta Massetti, Co-Lead of the Community Interventions and Critical Populations Task Force for CDC COVID response. If someone shows symptoms, there needs to be a place to isolate them. Funds are now available for school screening and educator vaccination.

“There’s no way to completely eliminate risk,” said Massetti. “What the objective should be is to keep that infection spread low. To prevent that one case from becoming five or 20 cases.”

Although not one of the key mitigation strategies, Massetti also stressed the need for proper ventilation and air exchange. Districts can use a combination of strategies, such as bringing in outdoor air (cracking windows open), ensuring HVAC are set to maximize ventilation, and increasing filtration (changing filters more frequently, using exhaust fans and hepa filters in classrooms). 

Most of the prevention strategies are either low-cost or no cost. For example, social distancing by creating one-way hallways or rethinking learning spaces can be effective.

These layered mitigation strategies will work against COVID variants, said Massetti. 

Lessons from the Field

In a panel session moderated by Cardona and Walensky, educators, staff, and students from Cleveland Metropolitan School District and New York City Public Schools shared their best practices for reopening.

“As hard as closing was, opening is harder,” said Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eric Gordon. The district, in which 75 percent of staff has been vaccinated for COVID-19, used the CDC guidelines to create a three-point reopening plan that focused on physical safety, virtual social-emotional support and messaging, and collaboration with stakeholders every step of the way. The district also partnered with the local healthcare community to create a reopening playbook and organized teaching teams, and has phased in synchronous in-person instruction four days per week.

“We didn’t get into the pandemic overnight, and we’re not going to get out of it overnight,” said Sheri Obrenski, president of the district’s teacher’s union, who stressed the importance of collaboration and communication among everyone in the district during the process.

“This is new to all of us,” said Aaron Creel, Facilities Director, who also cited the need for flexibility and working together. His team met with each school’s staff to optimize student flow and provide the appropriate signage to maintain distancing. They also prioritized ventilation, replacing 15,000 air filters in newer buildings and adding more than 900 air purifiers to older ones, and created PPE stockpiles across the district.

In New York City, which has been hit hard by the pandemic -- including more than 70 public school staff who have been killed by COVID-19 -- it was key to focus on allaying anxiety and fear for everyone and dealing with it, said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers. “So it was transparency and safety at all times, and being clear,” said Mulgrew, who noted that there were multiple virtual town hall meetings with faculty and staff. “Everyone who walks into a school building wants to help children, so we had to take that and use it as our guiding force as we went through.”

The main focus of that effort was on ventilation, said Meisha Porter, NYC DOE chancellor, who, with other leaders, personally inspected every building, checking each individual classroom to make sure it had functioning ventilation. “It was important for people to know that the leadership walked through the buildings to make sure it was safe,” Porter said, adding that more than $31 million was spent to upgrade filters and add air purifiers.

To also help ease fears and model good masking practices, leaders stayed transparent and connected with their communities. For example, at PS 1 in Manhattan, principal Amy Hom help workshops with students and shared pictures of staff wearing masks so students would know what to expect when they returned to class. Staff showed students how to properly wear masks. “We also bribed students, I’m not afraid to say,” laughed Hom. “We have stickers, we have candy, we have decorations -- whatever is needed to keep those masks on.”

Social-Emotional Needs

The final part of the event focused on strategies to support the social, emotional, and academic development needs of students, especially those who have been historically underserved, as they returned to in-person learning. Educators and students from Cajon Valley USD in California and Tulsa Public Schools shared how they’ve been addressing those needs across their entire school community.

At Cajon Valley USD, which is returning to full in-person classes in the next week, the approach started with getting staff and parents on board first. “In order to have happy, engaged students in schools, we need to have a culture of engaged adults on our campuses,” said assistant superintendent Karen Minshew. Since last March, the district has staged more than 100 active listening sessions with all stakeholders to hear concerns and what needs were of the highest priority. “Engaging our customers was the key, and that has provided the steps and guidance to reopen,” she said.

“The reality is that social-emotional learning cannot be embedded, it has to be at the forefront of everything you do,” said Nerel Winter, principal of Bostonia Language Academy. He discussed how they have used multiple communication platforms, such as Facebook Live and TikTok, to provide opportunities for parents to have a voice in the school and community to better know their students’ values, interests, and strengths. “We want them to know we care about them and want to build strong relationships with them,” he said.

In Tulsa, wellness teams were launched to support the whole student and adults. They worked to connect directly with students, families, and staff, through phone calls and other means, to see how everyone was doing.

“You can’t have cognitive work happening without a real focus on the social, emotional needs of students, said Paula Shannon, assistant superintendent. To address that, the district embraced the CASEL framework to introduce three key SEL practices. 

• Warm welcomes, from administrators in meetings to teachers beginning classes
• Optimistic closures, when ending meetings/lessons, including time to be reflective  
• Look fors, in which leaders observe and provide feedback 

“We have lots to learn,” said Shannon. “And I would say to all of you driving toward bold change: Have the courage to be bold. You’re going to feel a lot of tension, lots of technical questions are going to come up that are mired in old bureaucracy. Forge ahead, and give your school leaders, teachers, and community partners the cover they need to do awesome things for our young people.” 

Soon after being confirmed as the 12th Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona wrote an open letter to parents and students to outline his five-point plan to get students back in classrooms and on track.

One of the first steps of that effort will be the virtual National Safe School Reopening Summit on March 24, 2021. The Department of Education will host all the critical stakeholders involved, including students, families, and educators as well as experts from the CDC and the Department of Education. The event will include taped remarks from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as First Lady (and classroom educator) Dr. Jill Biden, Cardona, and the CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. 

The event will feature three main sessions: 

• Lessons from the Field: Implementing CDC's K-12 Operational Strategy to Keep Students, Educators, and Staff Safe 
• Technical Assistance from CDC and ED: Implementing CDC's Guidance to Keep Students, Educators, and Staff Safe 
• Supporting All Students: Addressing the Academic, Social, and Emotional Needs of Students with a Focus on Equity 

The goal of this event is to get feedback in order to plan ahead as we transition back to in-person learning and address all the challenges involved.

Tech & Learning recently reached out to nearly 100 educators across the nation to see what issues they’d like to see addressed during this event. 

For most, the primary concern of educators is dealing with Covid-19 itself, including best safe classroom practices, which are the focus of the first two sessions. The DOE is following President Biden’s lead and is encouraging states and districts to support getting all educators and administrative staff vaccinated by the end of March. Now that the American Rescue Plan has been signed into law, additional guidance to safely re-open schools to in-person learning is being provided.

Multiple educators cited a concern for student well-being and mental health as they return to the classroom, which the third session will address. Loss created by the pandemic and issues such as isolation and depression during remote learning will need to be handled. Trauma-informed instruction will be a necessary component of education.

In addition to addressing the need for increased SEL support, the Department of Education will need to take a leadership role in helping to redesign educational systems to ensure that there is ongoing emphasis on nurturing the whole child.

Other key areas of interest that educators would like to see addressed, either during this event or subsequent ones:

Digital Equity

During the past year, the pandemic has shone a spotlight on issues regarding digital equity and access. Although millions of students gained access in a remarkably short time frame through herculean efforts, there’s more that needs to be done to make sure every student can stay connected to learning.

Multiple educators in the survey want to know what the Department of Education will do to ensure broadband access for all students, including the possibility of working with other federal agencies such as the FCC to establish a nationwide plan. 

In addition to boosting connectivity and expanding bandwidth, improving digital resources and professional development are also prominent concerns for educators to help close the digital divide. 

Implementing Lessons Learned

Although the last year has been disruptive and traumatic at times, there have been some silver linings. The use of technology in education has been accelerated, and much of it has created new opportunities for instruction. 

For the majority of educators, a return to the past way of teaching is unthinkable. Technology is omnipresent in our lives, and many are eager to incorporate it and the lessons learned during the pandemic into education going forward. 

The Department of Education is expected to boost these efforts, from encouraging tech-related PD for educators to providing support for continued remote learning for students and families. Examples of remote learning success stories need to be shared, as will best practices for school leaders and district administrators.

Connecting the remote learning and access pieces, some districts are also looking to establish permanent virtual learning academies, and will be looking for national guidance in regard to those efforts.

The Future of Teaching

Beyond providing in-service teachers with PD and health supports, there are a lot of questions regarding the long-term future of the teaching profession in general. 

Many districts were already faced with teacher shortages, and the pandemic has exacerbated that, particularly in rural and economically distressed areas. Districts are eager to find and hire properly trained candidates, and need help to connect, even if it means hiring virtual teachers from other parts of the country.

Encouraging students, particularly those of color, to pursue education as a career is also an important issue that needs to be addressed on a national level. And once those aspiring teachers start down the path from being in the classroom to leading the classroom, providing the necessary supports, such as scholarships and student loan forgiveness programs, will be key.

Assessments

Last year, standardized assessments were largely removed from learning efforts, which was met with widespread approval and relief. 

Many educators would prefer a continued move away from any mandated assessments, or a significant reformation of the system. Despite this, the Biden administration recently announced that states must test students this spring, which has drawn criticism from many education stakeholders.

If testing needs to be done, the question then becomes how are exams updated to reflect knowledge and mastery of critical real world skills. Another major concern is how education leaders can remove the implicit bias in standardized assessment for students of color and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. 

Cybersecurity

During the pandemic, cyber attacks on schools increased significantly, particularly ransomware attacks. The return to in-person classes doesn’t seem to have slowed this onslaught, prompting educators to seek stronger cybersecurity support. 

In addition to more guidance and PD in regard to cybersecurity training, many districts are hoping the federal government will provide additional funding to help protect students, teachers, staff, and all their associated data.

• 5 Covid Classroom Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
• 6 Feet Under: 4 Reasons for 3-Foot Desk Spacing

Updated on March 22, 2021

The CDC recently relaxed its distancing guidelines for most students in K-12 settings. Now it suggests distancing of 3 feet instead of 6 feet, provided other safety procedures such as universal masking are being followed. 

The move came on the heels of recent research  suggesting distancing of 3 feet between students is safe in schools. 

However, the shorter distance is not recommended in all instances. "Middle school students and high school students should be at least 6 feet apart in communities where transmission is high, if cohorting is not possible," the new guidelines say.

In addition, the CDC continues to recommend 6 foot distancing: 

• Between adults in the school building and between adults and students.
• In common areas, such as school lobbies and auditoriums.
• When masks can’t be worn, such as when eating.
• During activities when increased exhalation occurs, such as singing, shouting, band practice, sports, or exercise. These activities should be moved outdoors or to large, well-ventilated spaces whenever possible.
• In community settings outside of the classroom.

Prior to the new guidelines, many educators and public health experts had been calling for decreasing the distance between student desks from 6 feet to 3 feet

“The single biggest obstacle to fully reopening schools is the 6-foot distancing requirement, as we don't have the physical space or staffing to bring all students back five days a week with this distancing in place,” wrote Thomas K. Putnam, superintendent of schools, and Mark Elledge, board president, in Penfield, N.Y., in a letter to the state that argued for easing distancing requirements. 

In Indiana, Massachusetts, Florida, Ohio, Colorado, and elsewhere, 3 foot distancing between desks in schools was already permitted.

“Three-foot distancing is appropriate for the student-to-student interaction,” says Dr. Joseph G. Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings Program at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and chair of The Lancet’s Covid-19 Commission Task Force on Safe Work, Safe Schools, and Safe Travel. 

The question is complicated, says Dr. Sara B. Johnson, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-director of the Rales Center for the Integration of Health and Education and the Johns Hopkins Consortium for School-Based Health Solutions. Six feet is not some ideal number where people will automatically be at risk if they move closer. “It is a risk continuum; more distance is better,” Johnson says. 

That said, maintaining 6 feet substantially limits the number of students who can be accommodated in most school buildings, and thwarts efforts to get as many kids back into buildings as safely as possible. 

6 Feet is An Arbitrary Distance  

“There's no magic distance where droplets drop out of the air,” Allen says. “Aerosols float. They float three feet, six feet, and beyond, and can accumulate in a room.” 

That’s why other mitigation efforts such as proper masks and good ventilation are needed. 

Rather than push schools to push their students closer together, Johnson favors a phased reduction of distancing, especially given the CDC had popularized the 6-foot rule and it has become ingrained in public conscience. “In some parts of the country, skepticism about returning to school and concerns about in-school viral transmission remain prevalent,” she says. “For me, the 6-foot rule is a tool for building trust and bringing teachers, staff, parents, and kids along with us in places where many are still skeptical and have concerns about school reopening. The goals should be for schools to shift relatively rapidly to less distance once they demonstrate the integrity of their public mitigation strategies.” 

A phased approach allows time to make sure that circulating variants are still kept in check by current measures, which Johnson expects they will be. 

The WHO & Others Say 3 Feet is Sufficient  

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the World Health Organization has advised one meter distancing, which is a little more than three feet. A CDC study of 17 schools in Wisconsin found limited transmission of the virus even though K-8 students were generally not maintaining 6 feet of distancing. A large study of more than 500,000 students and 100,000 educators in Massachusetts found no substantial difference in transmission in schools if student desks were placed 3 or 6 feet apart. The American Academy of Pediatrics guidance for schools states that 3-feet distancing works when 6 feet is not possible. Prior to becoming CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky wrote the city council of her town in Massachusetts that, “If people are masked it is quite safe and much more practical to be at three feet.”

Other Mitigation Efforts are In Place 

“The 6-foot distance guidance came into being last February and March before universal masking,” Allen says. “We have a tendency to think about these controls in isolation. But when there's universal masking in place, and good ventilation and filtration, 6-foot distancing is no longer critical.” 

However, since adults educators are at higher risk from the virus, they should continue to maintain a distance of 6 feet from their students and other educators. Allen also says adults who work in schools that are concerned should consider wearing a better mask. “If you're going to wear a mask, you might as well wear one that has a high efficiency and has a good fit, because that can change the overall effectiveness from 50 percent for a cloth mask up to over 90 percent for a good mask,” he says. 

Kids are Less Impacted by The Virus  

Children, especially younger ones, have a lower risk of contracting the virus and of having severe outcomes if they do. This is another reason many argue for 3-foot distancing between student desks. 

Allen says any potential risks to children are outweighed by the risk of keeping students out of in-person school. “The 6-foot distancing rule is one of the key, if not the most, determining factors that keeps kids out of school because of space limitations,” he says. “And the cost of keeping millions of kids out of school for a year is absolutely devastating.” 

• CDC School Guidelines: What You Need to Know
• What Type of Mask Should Educators Wear?
• How To Improve School Ventilation Without Spending Thousands

Of all the subjects to share around the dinner table, or family desktop in the living room, sex education might make both students and parents squirm. However, with a little planning and sensitivity, this important topic can be handled and handled well, even in today’s world of learn-from-home. 

“Let parents know their kids will need privacy, and urge students to wear headsets,” says Phyllis Fagell, LCPC, school counselor, psychotherapist, and author of Middle School Matters. “Even with these caveats, I've found that students are more guarded than they were pre-Covid. To ease their discomfort, use a Google doc so kids can pose questions anonymously. Offer the answers at the end of each class (or let them know you're looking into the answers if you don't know the answer on the spot). If you teach more than one section or grade, share the concerns that students in other classes have raised. This can embolden them if they're inhibited, too.”

We chat with middle and high school health and sex education teachers about best practices and strategies for teaching the subject remotely.

Matt Dupuis, Middle School Health Educator at Mercer Island School District, Washington 

“Teaching sex ed is definitely a different experience this year. In one sense, students can be more comfortable because they can turn off their camera and listen through their headphones, and they don't have to look at their peers and just take the information in as if there were no one else in the room. I always save the sex ed section for the end of the course because by that time I am at peak rapport, I'm as connected as I'm going to be. This is going to be my best understanding of them individually, to make it as comfortable as possible.”

Out-of-the-Box Programs. “Every class is going to be different, they take on their own personality. Remotely, this is very apparent. I have two classes, same age group--one has a few very vocal students who were willing to talk and participate early on and that brought the rest of the students' voices out. The other class, I didn't have that and it can be really difficult to get anyone to say anything. I can't get a peep out of them. So now I will start off with a yoga routine, a visit to a virtual zoo, something to loosen them up and get them engaged. This weekend I came up with a new game, "What the Heck is This?" I just found random objects around my house and held them up to the camera and had them guess what it might be. An Amish nutcracker, a block of beeswax--I hold it up and suddenly kids I have never heard from are yelling out, "It's a piece of cheese!" At least I know they are able to turn their speaker on.”

Tech Helpers. “Most parents have their own things going on, so I haven't had any jump in mid-lesson (as a few teachers I know have). I have had parents message me asking why their kids are wandering around the house doing other things during school time, because their child simply turned off his camera and checked out telling them there was no work. This is when the Schoology page I use to organize all of my lessons and student work is great, because I can send parents there to see exactly what we are doing in the class and what their child has or has not participated in.” 

Challenges and Solutions. “Our class time is cut in half. We had to make decisions and cut entire chunks of material. Fortunately, one non-negotiable is sex ed. It's part of my contract and fairly scripted as a state requirement. It’s not ideal, but I know kids are hearing me and I know they are learning since much of the participation is now done through trackable online worksheets. Some students who struggled in the classroom are thriving now. One student told me it was because she doesn't have the distractions of other students in the classroom, she can get the lesson and just work through it.” 

Unexpected Perks. “As a teacher, I have embraced some tech I never would have touched or looked at. Now I learned how to use it and it will be another tool in my toolbox to add to my lessons when we return to the classroom.” 

Drew Miller, Ninth Grade Faculty of Health Education at Bard High School Early College Manhattan, New York 

“The thing I've loved and will help my program in the future is Google Classroom. I didn't start using it until lockdown. There's no way we can get through everything that's important, but we can teach them how to access valid and reliable information and post a lot of resources there that we wouldn't have time to cover. We have the class archived, so they can carry all of these resources we have gathered with them through high school. This may seem like, ‘I don't need this right now,’ but they may in the future so we tell them to hang on to this material. This has turned out to be a huge positive for the ongoing health and well being of the students.”

Admin and Parent Buy-In. “I teach in NYC so I am spoiled in having a lot of freedom with my curriculum and support from parents. For instance, in thinking what's important to talk about with kids suddenly on the screen all the time now, my co-teacher Rachael Gibson and I developed a pornography lesson plan—discussing how what's depicted is not necessarily real life. You get the kids who are shocked, but you also know that data shows the majority have been exposed in some form.” 

Student-Centered Approach. “The biggest element for student success is the teacher's comfort with it. They have to know their stuff and if they don't know something, they have to be comfortable saying, ‘Let's talk about this and figure it out,’ or ‘Let me come back to you.’ This can model the importance of accessing resources for students and that it’s okay to reach out for help or information.” 

• Take care with your expression. “We spend a lot of time teaching inclusive language: not assuming gender or sexual preference, using non-gendered references, such as ‘you all’ instead of ‘you guys.’” 
• Understand a need for privacy. “I preface at the beginning of the unit, ‘Camera on if you can—if not, message us and let us know and we'll make it work.’ The Zoom chatbox is a life saver on that. I can call on someone and they can type their response instead of opening their mouth.’ 
• Avoid direct instruction as much as you can. “Give students a choice of activities and readings or breakout rooms (if allowed). Let them talk about it and digest together -- they learn a lot from one another, even if they are reading your Powerpoint or text together. Give them that organized time away from you to absorb. 

Unique Tech Programs. “I have them pick a sex ed topic they are passionate about and make a ‘piece.’ This could be a video or infomercial, a song, rap, or poem -- they use cameras, audio equipment, FlipGrid, make TikToks and podcasts. It lets them express their mastery of the material through tech.”

Pro Tips. “The tech side was a challenge for me. I did my graduate degree in Sex Ed, but the tech took time to learn. If you can, join Twitter. There's a really solid health ed/sex ed community who post feedback, video links, and lesson ideas. I think Twitter has been a godsend—sharing ideas, registering for conferences, ideas of how best to use the tech. The answer and support can always be found. When we are back to face-to-face classes, I will continue posting their work and lessons to the Google Classroom and be a little more paper-free.”

Challenges and Solutions. “In class I always do a condom demo, so they can feel how it works for themselves and be prepared. Somehow despite doing this all the time in the classroom, it felt a little strange to be making that video myself, so I relied on one of the great videos through Amaze.org. They cover health topics so well, menstruation, gender, sexuality—teaching students how to access this information and what makes a quality source is an important skill we teach. Kids can then request condoms through the Condom Availability Program (CAP) of the NYC DOE and follow along with the video. CAP has set up ways for students to obtain condoms through the mail privately without parental involvement, so they are really trying to keep the kids as healthy, sexually, as possible. 

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Weekly testing of students and educators is a key part of President Joe Biden’s plan to reopen a majority of K-8 schools in the country to in-person learning within 100 days, and all K-12 schools soon thereafter.  

The Rockefeller Foundation has been working closely with the Biden administration and, consequently, Biden’s rapid Covid testing plan for schools is similar to TAKING BACK CONTROL: A Resetting of America’s Response to Covid-19 that the foundation released in December. The plan advocates for testing students once per week for Covid-19, and teachers and staff twice per week. 

The Rockefeller Foundation plan estimates the nation’s K-12 schools will require 300 million Covid-19 tests each month from February through June at a cost of $8.5 billion per month. Biden has called for a $50 billion investment in a massive expansion of the nation’s testing capabilities, including at schools. 

Beyond funding, successfully implementing testing on such a scale will require mass production of fast, inexpensive, and accurate tests, says Mara G. Aspinall, a co-author of the Rockefeller Foundation report and professor of practice at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions. 

“It's likely that we will use a mix of [testing] technologies, including PCR-pooled, PCR, and antigen tests,” Aspinall says. Regardless of the type of test, “It is essential that results are available to schools very, very quickly.” 

PCR Tests 

Polymerase chain reaction, or PCR tests, detect genetic material – the RNA – of the virus, and are highly sensitive and accurate. But these tests generally need to be analysed in a lab, which makes getting results expensive and often slow. Pooling PCR tests, mixing samples from many people together and then testing the sample as one, is a way of making PCR tests more efficient. If a pooled test comes back positive, each member of that pool can then be tested individually. 

The Rockefeller Foundation calls for improving PCR lab capacity by building or expanding 6 to 10 high-capacity regional labs throughout the country that will be able to ensure a 24-hour turnaround on all tests. 

Dr. Gigi Kwik Gronvall of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health says that pooled testing is a cost-effective strategy for schools when spread of the virus is low, but grows more expensive as cases rise. “If you're going to have to keep doing rounds of tests, because you have a positive case that's going to be a problem,” Gronvall says. 

Antigen Tests  

An alternative to pooled PCR tests are antigen tests, which detect a protein that is part of the coronavirus. These are less expensive to make and provide results faster than PCR tests. Though less sensitive than PCR tests, antigen tests are nearly as good at identifying those most likely to transmit infections to others, according to the Rockefeller Foundation plan. 

“The tests are presumably much more effective at detecting people who are spreading virus, as opposed to people that are carrying virus,” says Dr. Howard Forman, of The Yale School of Public Health. The fact that antigen tests are almost instantaneous is another advantage. “After you have symptomatic disease, it's easy to pull people out of the population,” says Forman. “It's that 24- or 48-hour window before you have symptoms that you’re most dangerous.” 

In October, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation to launch a program to send more than 120,000 Abbott BinaxNOW antigen tests to six pilot areas: Washington D.C.; Louisville, Ky.; Los Angeles; New Orleans; Tulsa, Okla.; and Rhode Island. The program was designed to gauge the tests’ effectiveness in keeping schools open and its results are currently being studied. 

Will This Testing Strategy Work? 

Experts are optimistic that if implemented, this plan can help schools fully reopen to in-person classes and that more rapid testing in the general population can help the nation’s overall pandemic response.

“I'm in this cohort of people who believe that testing from the first moment of the pandemic has had far more potential to do good than we've ever allowed it to do,” Forman says. “We spend an awful lot of time testing where the results come back late, or testing where it's symptomatic people where we already know they should be isolating. We should be doing so much more testing on asymptomatic individuals. There's almost no limit to how much you can scale this up and have a positive impact. And as the infectiousness of the virus picks up, which we think it is, this can be used to bring the reproduction number down.”

But testing alone won’t be enough. Other mitigation strategies need to be included, such as using masks, social distancing, vaccinating teachers, and improving school ventilation. “The Rockefeller Foundation has been very clear in calling for teachers to be considered essential workers,” Aspinall says. “They should be getting the vaccine as soon as possible.” 

Even in a post-pandemic world, some of the covid-mitigation strategies can be useful, Gronall says. Children learn better in well-ventilated schools and testing infrastructure built now could one day be used to test for seasonal flu and other infectious diseases that tend to spread through schools. 

“It would be great to see some carrying on of some public health lessons into the future,” Gronvall says. “There's plenty of diseases that would be really nice not to have.” 

Further reading

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President-elect Joe Biden initially pledged to reopen a majority of schools during his first 100 days in office but recently refocused the goal for K-8 schools. He has said teachers should be eligible for vaccinations as soon as possible after those who are at highest risk, according to the Associated Press.

Educators in New York began receiving their first doses of coronavirus vaccine earlier this week, and other states are expected to begin vaccinating faculty and staff at schools and colleges in the coming weeks and months. 

The CDC has classified those who work in education, including teachers, support staff, and daycare staff, as essential workers, but where they fall in line to receive the vaccine still varies by state.  

When Will The Vaccine be Available for Most Teachers? 

Dr. Robert Hecht, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and the president of the nonprofit Pharos Global Health Advisors, says that most states are falling within three categories with their teacher vaccination plan. Some states, such as Connecticut, Maryland, Washington, and Michigan, have prioritized teachers for vaccination right after the elderly and health care workers, with hopes to start vaccinating by the end of January and into February. In-between states, such as Colorado, want to do teacher vaccinations among a large array of essential workers but are not sure it will happen until March. And then there are states such as Florida and Texas that have not even announced where teachers fit into the priority list or when they might be vaccinated. 

To find out where teachers are in vaccine-priority, check the Vaccine Allocation Planner for COVID-19 developed by Ariadne Labs — a collaboration between Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, or The New York Times’ fill-in-the-blanks form. 

When Should Educators be Vaccinated? 

Although there is widespread agreement to offer initial vaccine doses to the elderly and health care workers, there is less consensus on who should be included in the next group. 

Hecht and his wife and colleague, Dr. Shan Soe-Lin, a lecturer in global health at Yale, recently argued in a New York Times op-ed that the next phase of vaccine distribution should target hot spots rather than be distributed based on profession. However, if you go by profession, they say putting educators closer to the top of the list makes sense. “Education is crucial and getting teachers vaccinated is tremendously important,” Hecht says. 

Soe-Lin adds that K-12 schools do not seem to be large drivers of spread, in part because younger children seem less susceptible to the virus. “Yet there's a lot of teachers across all age groups who are vulnerable,” Soe-Lin says. “So it's more about protecting teachers, or at least giving them the peace of mind to want to keep schools open.” 

What Will Change After Educators are Vaccinated? 

Vaccinating teachers will hopefully reduce transmission among school and staff members but it won’t eliminate the need for other safety measures such as masking and distancing in the short term.

Kelsie Snow, an assistant professor at Husson University’s School of Pharmacy, says the vast majority of K-12 students won’t be vaccinated since Pfizer’s vaccine is only authorized for those 16 and older and Moderna’s for those 18 and up. “While fewer children have been sick with COVID-19 compared to adults, youngsters can be infected with the virus that causes the illness,” says Snow. “Since there tends to be more students in an educational setting than educators and staff, this will complicate our efforts to return to  normal.”

“When prevalences come way down and vaccination coverage rates are high, we can eventually start to unmask,” says Soe-Lin. “Up till then, and especially if you're between shots, it's really, really important that everyone maintains the masks and social distance for themselves and for others.”

What About the Vaccine Rollout in General? 

The current vaccine rollout has been going too slow observers say. The Kaiser Family Foundation released an analysis recently saying that the varying timelines between states has resulted in “a vaccine roll-out labyrinth across the country.”

“One of the major challenges has been the inconsistency in the frequency of shipments,” says Snow. “This has caused a number of headaches in the planning process. In addition, we need to continue improving the dissemination of the vaccines. We currently have a number of available pharmacies that are willing to help administer the inoculations. Unfortunately, they have yet to be utilized to their full potential.” 

She adds, “There is also some confusion among members of the public about who qualifies for the vaccine and when they should get vaccinated.” 

Snow is holding a six-hour course, and a more advanced 20-hour course, for pharmacists looking to learn how to administer the vaccine. (Anyone interested in registering for either course should contact snowke@husson.edu). 

In addition to better education around the vaccine across the board, Snow believes holding mass-vaccination events could be a more efficient way to distribute the vaccine. “Under this plan, there would be a small number of vaccination locations in every state where patients could receive their shots,” she says. “This could help to reduce the challenges posed by the rigorous storage requirements for the vaccines and serve to reduce confusion about where, when, and how patients can be vaccinated.” 

Ultimately, educators shouldn’t get too caught up in who gets the vaccine and when. “I don't think we should let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We've got to get this vaccine out there,” says Hecht. “I, and other modelers, could do all kinds of detailed calculations and tell you that the perfect rollout is this group today and this group tomorrow in this group the next day because of the relative risk they face. But it's not going to work that way. In practice, it's going to be messier, and that's okay as long as the thrust is on trying to reach the right sorts of groups.”

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As we are entering the last phase of this tumultuous year of 2020 there are few topics more pressing in the mind of parents and teachers than screen time. In July, Pew Research released a report on Parenting Children in the Age of Screens, and it showed that 71% of parents of children 12 and under are concerned about the effects of screen time. 

Other reports and studies have been recently published through the fields of medicine and sociology in an effort to answer trending questions related to screen time, raising four key questions. 

Question One: What is the association of various types of screen time and depression in adolescence? 

In a 2019 study published by the Journal of American Medicine Association, pediatricians observing a cohort of 3,826 adolescents found that symptoms of depression may be enhanced by the ‘use of social media and television.’

Question Two: Are ADHD children affected differently by screen time?

A literature review and case study published in 2018 in the Environmental Research journal revealed that there are physical health effects to excessive screen time including poor sleep and health risks related to blood pressure and obesity. The case study showed that ADHD related behavior was linked to sleep problems associated with overall screen time and violent fast-paced content. 

Question Three: Is there a difference between passive and active screen time? 

A study published in 2020 observed 2,320 adolescents living in Ontario who reported having two to four or more hours of passive screen time. Children with greater than four hours were three times more likely to experience a major depressive episode, social phobia, and general anxiety. Active screen time had a considerably less effect. 

Question Four: Does the type of screen time matter?

A study published in 2019 in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity analyzed the interaction of 4,013 students aged 10 - 11 with screens over a four-year period. The study’s participants recorded their use of screen time in diaries, categorizing screen time as social, passive, interactive, educational, and other. Passive screen time was found to have the most negative outcomes while educational screen time had the most positive outcomes and no negative impact on other outcomes. The same result was evident with interactive screen time. 

These studies echo recent major works, analyses, and literature reviews. The common findings center on increased depression associated with passive screen time while more interactive and educational engagement with screens shows less effect on students’ overall health and wellness. Also noted was excessive screen time may cause children to present with ADHD behaviors when in fact they do not have ADHD. The major conclusion is related to moderation and the type of screen time. 

In 2019, the World Health Organization released guidelines for screen time that were endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Center for Disease Control. These guidelines note that screen time for children under 18 months should be restricted to video calls with loved ones, while children between the ages of 18 and 24 months should have limited screen time that is mostly educational television. Preschoolers ages 3 to 5 can have up to an hour per day but it should be a healthy balance between the different types of screened devices. School-aged children can have 1.5 hours per day but should balance that with physical activity, and finally, high schoolers gain half an hour for a recommended 2 full hours per day. 

Maintaining moderation in screen time access and prioritizing active screen time versus passive screen time can make all the difference in a child’s health and social well being. 

Here are some suggestions for teachers and parents to help moderate screen time.

Tips for Teachers: Balance Screen Time during Instruction 

• Utilize a blended learning instructional model 
• Interval lessons with on-screen digital content (video, text reading, software application) - 20 minutes 
• Prioritize videoconferencing 
• Utilize flipped learning strategies 
• Take advantage of other media platforms if appropriate (paper is still a good technology to rely on) 
• Prioritize activities where students use technology tools for creation versus consumption (see TIMS matrix) 

Tips for Parents

• Dinner/family times are no screen time, conversation is a better tool for building literacy than most literacy software 
• No screens in bedrooms, limit access to screens to maximize sleep and healthy habits
• Establish routines for outside play or family walks  
• Establish parameters for gaming 
• Review and approve all social media access and posts for children under 14
• Model these practices for your children  

Dr. Kecia Ray is a strategic thinker and a proven leader in K12 transformation. She serves as Tech & Learning’s Brand Ambassador and is the founder of the consulting service, K20Connect 

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When the New York Institute of Technology prepared to launch its esports program a few years ago, Dr. Hallie Zwibel, the university’s team physician and director of its Center for Sports Medicine, had one initial question: What is esports? 

Finding the answer to that question was easy, but his follow-up questions about the well-being of esports athletes were more difficult to pin down. “We quickly realized that you couldn't just retrofit a model for a traditional athlete to an esports player, right?” Zwibel says. “It wouldn't make sense to do training to prevent ACL tears for an esports player.” 

But when he went to consult the medical literature on esports player health, he found it nonexistent. 

“The only thing I could find was about whether esports was a sport or not, which is academically interesting, but didn't help me whatsoever, in terms of the practical nature of what I had to do,” Zwibel says. “We decided to take on the challenge ourselves, and start to do that foundational research that explores what the health and injury concerns are.” 

Examining esports players versus control groups, Zwibel and his team found that most appeared to have healthy BMIs on the surface. However, by using a body composition scanner, which measures muscle mass and body fat, the team discovered that esports players were more likely to be overweight or obese than non-esports players. 

“That sedentary behavior, that lack of movement, is taking a toll on the body,” Zwibel says. 

Esports athletes also frequently experienced eye fatigue and lack of sleep, plus back and neck pain, and shoulder and wrist pain. 

These types of risks are common among esports players, says Chad Weeden, director of Rochester Institute of Technology’s Esports & Cyber Security Range Production Operations. Like Zwibel, Weeden believes more needs to be done to encourage healthy behavior among esports athletes, especially as esports increases in popularity at grade schools and universities. 

“There is a large swath of colleges, I’m talking hundreds, that have spring-up programs,” Wheden says. He adds that many of these programs operate by saying, “‘We’ll grab six athletes, we’ll give them a coach and we’ll call it an esports program.’ They have no idea what they’re doing.” 

Running a safe and productive esports program requires more of a commitment, say both Weeden and Zwibel. The good news is that encouraging safe practices among student-athletes is fairly intuitive. 

“The remedies aren't terribly revolutionary at this point,” Zwibel says. “Some stretching, making sure you're moving around. Making sure you’re not staring at a screen before bed. These things aren't groundbreaking in themselves. But the fact that they haven't been part of the standard or the culture in that community, is why it needs to be spoken about and talked about.” 

Healthy Practices for Esports

One of the first steps to a healthy gamer is a healthy gaming space. 

“Make sure you're limiting glare, that your screen is eye level, with a certain amount of distance between you and your screen,” recommends Zwibel. “Try to have an ergonomic chair, making sure your keyboard is ergonomically designed. We also recommend taking a standing break at least every 45 minutes. And between 20 and 40 minutes, we recommend eye stretches, just to relax the eye muscles.” 

At RIT, “We encourage our athletes to do wrist, fingers, and hand stretches in between sessions,” Weeden says. If it’s a longer session, students are advised to take a break and conduct those exercises. 

Athletes are also encouraged to get at least eight hours of sleep per night, which has been proven to help performance in other sports, and engage in some physical exercise such as walking or running. 

Weeden also says mental health is a focus, and he teaches athletes to learn how to handle stress. “Not all of these athletes have competed in traditional sports in which they're always in front of an audience,” he says. “So it's a different type of stress when you put people on the stage and play in front of an audience, especially at the collegiate level, if they're not used to it.” 

A key for any esports program is to treat it seriously, says Zwibel. 

“If you do invest in a program, especially if you're competitive at a varsity or high school level, It requires attention and should be held to the same standards that you would hold a traditional sports team to, with the appropriate oversight, with the appropriate mentoring and coaching,” he says. “It shouldn't be left alone by itself, which it often is due to lack of understanding.” 

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Contact tracing is a linchpin of the reopening strategy at Temple University, says Dr. Resa M. Jones, chair of Temple’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

“You need to identify those positive cases and then contact the people who have come in contact with them as soon as possible,” says Jones who has designed a free online contact tracing training course at the institution. 

Temple is not alone in employing this strategy. As campuses reopen this fall, many will do so with their campus contact tracing teams ready to go. Administrators hope that when paired with frequent testing, social distancing, mask-wearing, smaller classes, and other infection-prevention strategies, any outbreaks of the coronavirus that might occur on college campuses this fall will be contained. 

Three Levels of Contact Tracing 

At Temple, which has more than 39,000 students, contact tracing will be conducted by Student Services and Employee Health Services. Each positive case will involve three components of contact tracing, Jones says. The first step is contacting the person who tested positive and learning who they came in contact with and where they went recently, as well as explaining to them the importance of staying in quarantine. The next step is contacting the people who came in contact with the positive case and asking them to self-quarantine as well. The final component is making followup calls to those who are quarantining to see if they need social services and other support to continue quarantining safely. 

It’s a time-consuming process. Jones notes Pennsylvania’s Department of Health estimates that for every [positive] case, there's an average of 10 contacts. She says phone calls with each contact take about 30 minutes, so on average “that's five hours of calls,” that need to be made per positive case. 

Jones says her university plans on having staff members perform the bulk of their contact tracing, but they have plans to ramp up with student contact tracers if necessary.

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Technology and Humanity Needed 

At Mississippi State University, Vice President for Finance and Administration Don Zant says the plan is to have the institution’s health staff conduct contact tracing on campus. “We're working with the local health authorities, but coordinating it helps us keep our hands on the information, so we can better communicate it,” Zant says. 

Administrators at MSU believe that contact tracing will limit the number of coronavirus tests the institution needs to administer. The hope is to get as many tests as possible, Zant says, but that number won’t be unlimited, so they will test those who are symptomatic. “If they've been in close contact we might tell them to isolate for two weeks,” he says, without administering a test. 

University officials are working with the Everbridge app developer to design a program that will assist with contact tracing on campus, and provide alerts and reminders to students and staff to check their temperatures.

While technology will be a key component of many successful contact-tracing programs, forming a human connection is also key. 

Elizabeth Scott, a 23-year-old senior health professions major at Temple, took her university’s contact tracing training course because she needs clinical experience for her major but traditional patient care wasn’t available this past summer due to COVID-19. 

Scott says one of the most surprising things about the training is how important creating a human bond is to the process. “You have to make an interpersonal connection with the person that you’re talking with because they really have to trust you,” she says. “You don’t want them to feel attacked. You want them to feel like they’re getting good information on how to say healthy.” 

Coordination with Local Health Officials 

Administrators looking to train contact tracers for their campuses can take advantage of online contact training resources. The University of Houston launched an online contact tracing course on Coursera. At Temple, the contact tracing training course is free and open to anyone, and there are currently nearly 600 enrolled. Those associated with other universities have taken the course, as have those who want to learn how to contact trace so they can work with their local health departments. 

While most of the class can be completed asynchronously, those enrolled must complete a mock call that simulates a real-life contact tracing call in order to pass. 

Jones, who designed the Temple University course, has been contacted by representatives from higher ed institutions looking to create their own contact tracing teams. She says it’s important for officials to make sure they are working lockstep with their local health department and not duplicating efforts. For example, Temple has a working relationship with the city of Philadelphia, Jones says. 

Of course, Jones says contact tracing on campus and in the larger community only works well when outbreaks have not spiraled out of control. “If there's widespread community spread then it's difficult to do contact tracing,” she says. “Our goal really was not to focus necessarily on Temple, but focusing on what's important for public health and those containment strategies for public health.” 

Thermal imaging cameras are a powerful tool in school safety management when it comes to detecting body temperatures. By using heat-detecting systems, it is possible to see if a student, faculty member, or visitor to the school is exhibiting signs of illness through elevated temperature.

These cameras are fast becoming the go-to way to help fight the spread of COVID-19 and safely get students back into a physical learning spaces.

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While at-home learning has been something many schools adapted to using the likes of Google Classroom, document cameras and Chromebooks, the move back to the buildings is inevitable. 

Thermal imaging cameras are so advanced now that there are even attachments that work with smartphones. More advanced systems can even detect a person's temperature at a distance, which is a quick and noninvasive way to scan those coming into the school to make sure they're not running any kind of fever.

With shops and offices already employing these tools, it makes sense for schools to follow.

Best Thermal Imaging Cameras

Lots of options are available but simple cameras are an affordable yet effective way to get the job done. 

Of course, these simple-to-use and handheld detectors can also be used in schools by the science department for carrying out experiments. 

One company that's been pushing the frontier of user-friendly and compact thermal imaging cameras is Flir. As such, they have adapted to create education-specific resources for their tools and take the top spot in our list of the best thermal imaging cameras. 

1. FLIR T560-EST Thermal Screening Solution

The FLIR T560-EST is a relatively new device rolled out by this temperature detection specialist to fight sickness. This tool is known as a thermal screening solution, and is designed to be used for people entering places where temperature detection needs to be very accurate but also quick and noninvasive.

The battery-powered device picks up skin temperature with graphic pass or fail indicators, and offers automatic sampling to maintain and update temperature average. It can be mounted and works with desktop software so the person working with it won't need to manually move it; rather the people being tested can stand in position to be scanned automatically. 

The downside? The system costs nearly $15,000, making it more than ten times the price of less specifically designed options, such as those that follow.

2. Flir TG165 Spot Thermal Camera

The Flir TG165 Spot Thermal Camera is a handheld device that works in a point-to-detect manner. It uses infrared beams to detect thermal variation in body temperatures ranging from 89.6 to 108.5 degrees Fahrenheit (32 to 42.5 degrees Celsius). It features a multipoint laser that pinpoints where the device is being aimed, which also helps with consistency across measurements.

Traditionally used for industry detection of mechanical temperatures, these devices are made to an extremely high standard and are reliable. Since it is a multiuse device, it's great for in-school study too. Plus, at around $500, it's a lot more affordable than many other options.

3. Fluke TIS20 Thermal Imaging Camera

Despite the name that suggests chance could play a part, this is a very accurate spot detector designed for use in industry. It's also very hardy and built to last.

The Fluke TIS20 Thermal Imaging Camera offers an IR-Fusion Blending mode to help take into account wider variations. Measurements can range in temperature from -4 degrees Fahrenheit to 662 degrees (-20  to 350 degrees Celsius). 

This tool also offers the Fluke cloud storage option, meaning results can be saved with 129 x 90 resolution images managed by the user.

4. PerfectPrime IR0002

The PerfectPrime IR0002 thermal imaging camera is a point-and-shoot device that allows for quick and easy temperature monitoring. It has a nice image mixing feature that allows you to decide how much of the light image you see of the person is overlaid with the infrared heat vision image. This lets you see the subject clearly while also getting a clear at-a-glance read of their temperature, as well as the number reading on the top, of course.

This is a relatively affordable model (around $300) that's easy to use in a point-and-shoot format. It won't record video but there is an SD memory card slot that allows for recorded storage of images if you need.

5. Seek Thermal Compact

The Seek Thermal Compact is super small and easy-to-use device that plugs into either iOS or Android devices, depending on which model you get. It's affordable (around $210), offers a wide temperature range, and can record high-resolution (compared to the competition) video. The spot mode is useful for temperature detection and the range is excellent in terms of temperature, distance, and field of view. 

This device is small so it needs to be handled with care, but since one designated person is likely using this with their phone they will probably be careful anyway.

6. PerfectPrime IR0280H

The PerfectPrime IR0280H is a thermal camera that's specifically designed to detect fevers in humans, thanks to its high level of accuracy and specific temperature range when set to human mode. It has a thermal sensitivity of 0.3 degrees Celsius. 

The detection works at a range of between one and two meters, making retaining social distancing a reality. This is handheld but can also be mounted to a stand as a static camera for easier use on a larger scale in the case of kids entering a school. The relatively large 2.8-inch color LCD display has a high 640 x 480 resolution, making it suited to human face use. This might not be the cheapest option out there but it's certainly a very useful one.

• How to use a document camera for remote learning
• Best Chromebooks for school 2020

The CDC (Centers of Disease Control and Prevention) recently updated its “Considerations for Schools” guidance, suggesting stringent cleaning and social distancing practices for school districts upon any return to physical classrooms. In addition to recommending that district leaders work with state and local officials in deciding what approach is “feasible, practical, acceptable, and tailored to the needs of each community,” the CDC also offers direction to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 and what to do when someone gets sick at school.

The Considerations for Schools  guidance assesses infection risk, from lowest (engaging in remote learning classes and activities) to more (small, in-person classes and activities following social distancing protocols such as staying 6 feet apart and not sharing objects) to highest (full-sized in-person interaction with no precautions).

Behaviors that reduce spread are a point of emphasis for educators, including the promotion of staying home when appropriate, teaching hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette, using cloth face coverings, maintaining clear communication through multiple methods, and having adequate cleaning supplies on hand.

The CDC offers advice on how to maintain healthy environments, which focuses on cleaning and disinfection, not sharing objects and devices, checking for proper ventilation, and redesigning communal spaces to accommodate social distancing rules. Spreading desks six feet apart is also highly recommended, and can be used to determine how many students can safely occupy one classroom.

Guidance for day-to-day school operations is also provided. How to properly regulate gatherings and visitors, protect students and staff at high risk for infections, potentially implementing staggered scheduling, and training staff to recognize signs and symptoms, are among the information listed.

Finally, strategies for when someone gets sick are included, from proper notification and disinfection practices to isolation and public communication policies.

Click here for the full "Considerations for School" guidance.

You’re stuck at home during the Covid-19 lock-down but you have classes of kids waiting to be taught remotely. You’ve mastered the networking, the video links and the online curriculum, but your back, neck and wrists are killing you. 

Just as it is at school, you need a healthy workplace to thrive. This starts with the idea of ergonomics, which boils down to setting up a desk, computer and lighting that is most conducive to teaching remotely without harming your body. The simple fact is that your body doesn’t have to take a beating to teach from home. 

There’s a lot you can do to prevent aches and pains from work. Here are my favorite suggestions that I try to follow every day:

• Get a sturdy desk that is roughly 30-inches off the floor. It doesn’t have to be a purpose-built desk because a piece of thick plywood, butcher block or even a flat door on top of two file cabinets works just as well.
• If you're using an external display, make sure it’s between 19- and 24-inches away, about the length of your outstretched arm. Set the screen’s height so that your eyes are horizontally aimed at its top, but if you’re a bifocal wearer, lower the screen a little so everything remains in focus.
• You need to have enough room to comfortably type, so an external keyboard for a notebook or tablet is a must have. A touchpad is a bonus because you won’t be reaching to tap and move things around.
• Don’t hunch over your work; sit as straight as you can and try to keep your elbows and knees at right angles.
• Sit in a comfortable chair. An adjustable office chair is a good idea but it can be a regular old kitchen chair. If you feel the need for some lumbar support tuck a small pillow in the small of your back.
• Make sure there’s enough overhead and task lighting to see printed pages and the display without glare.
• A footrest, even a telephone book, is a nice addition that can help relax your legs.
• Finally, all work and no play will make you a sore teacher. I generally set an alarm on my phone to take breaks to stretch or just walk around for a few minutes every hour – just not during a video class.

With 22 preset 7-minute workouts to choose from, the J&J Workout app proves that gym class doesn’t have to last 45 minutes. The app is good for four-year old students through high-school seniors and has categories from Beginners to Advanced athletes. The app covers 72 exercises and shows how to properly do the exercise as it tells you what to do. Feel free to create your own smart exercise routines along with your choice of workout music. The app has gauges to track progress and its free, courtesy of the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute. It’s available for iPhones, iPads, iPhones as well as Android systems. 

It’s been interesting to watch the world react to the COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the “Coronavirus”. In the age of social media and instant notifications on our mobile devices, it’s made this pandemic seem like the worst on record when in fact, it’s not even close. That said, as with any disaster or pandemic, there comes an increased awareness to how schools and districts respond to it. Many schools are on alert, creating plans and awaiting guidance. While others, like this school in Seattle, are shutting down as a precaution.

Last week I posted the question of how schools prepared for a long-term closure using Facebook, Twitter, and group texts as ways to crowd-source responses.  Those responses varied from “packets, we’ll just give them lots of packets” to “we’ll use Google Classroom to hand out assignments.”  Neither of these responses are inherently good or bad, but it does open the door to a slew of questions schools and districts need to be asking themselves when it comes to continuing the learning even when the building is closed to students.

This post is a cumulation of those responses crowd-sourced from school administrators across the globe. As every district is different, it’s impossible to come up with a one-size-fits-all approach to long-term closure. However, I do hope these questions can help guide you as you see what kind of plan you have in place should the unfortunate happen. Being from Texas, I know that weather can cause long-term closure as well (see Hurricane Harvey). For the purposes of the following questions, I’m going to assume that it’s a pandemic and that it’s affecting the entire community and surrounding districts. I will also post some ideas and solutions that were shared with me in the hopes of sparking an idea for your school or community.

1. How will you deliver learning to your students?

I purposefully put “learning” instead of “content” as too often times we default to what we know. Learning online looks a lot different than learning in a physical classroom. Some mentioned using LMS platforms like Schoology or Google Classroom to deliver the learning to their students but this assumes that A) they have devices and B) they have internet access (see next question). Also, most of the responses pertained to students in grades 6 and up. Some had some measures for 3-5 students while most had no plans for online learning when it came to K-2 students.

Ideas/Solutions: As mentioned, using LMS platforms seemed to be the most common response to this question, with Google Classroom being mentioned the most. Sometimes these can be online assignments, digital worksheets, or journal prompts. Some mentioned using live chats, YouTube, and Google Hangouts as a way to supplement the learning, including having “office hours” where teachers take 10-15 minutes to check in virtually with each of their students. A couple of districts mentioned their teachers creating lessons on Nearpod and using the “student-paced” option to send work home as it tracks their answers and allows them to upload work. Andrew Wallace from South Portland Maine Schools shared another creative solution. In his district, they send home a “one page cheat sheet” with passwords and usernames for online resources like Newsela, Tumble Books, Overdrive, and BrainPop (which already has a new lesson on the CoronaVirus – see below) In Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, Kyle Berger deploys a Classlink portal for all teachers, parents and students to access resources. Of course, this all still assumes that all kids have devices and internet at home which leads me to my second question.

2. How many of your students DO NOT have online access at home and how do you deliver learning to them?

This is a question many schools may already know the answer to. Online survey tools like Survey Monkey and Bright Bytes can help collect this data (ironically, you have to be online to take the survey) or you could collect this information during school registration. Regardless of how you collect it, you’ll likely have a percentage of students without access that you’ll have to plan for.

Ideas/Solutions: There were a WIDE variety of ideas and solutions for this question. Bonnie Blan from Southwest Christian School was able to leverage discounted internet access for families in need using Kajeet and the BroadbandNow initiative. Others mentioned giving out hotspots as it would be likely that students wouldn’t be able to go to places like McDonald’s or Starbucks during a quarantine (although some adults might risk it for coffee :). With either of these solutions, you would need to set these up well before disaster strikes, but I like that schools are solving this issue regardless. In general, the responses from educators seemed to indicate that you should be prepared to have some analog mixed with digital. Writing in journals and reading are easy enough for ELA, but having prompts for writing helps. Some schools mentioned having students check out extra books out of the library just in case.

3. How prepared are staff and what is their role?

Like Jennifer mentioned, setting up a bunch of brand new tools during a stressful time like a long-term closure wouldn’t be wise. Staff will be worried about their own families as well as their students. Anything that is implemented would either need to be put in place before hand or easily deliverable to a teacher’s existing curriculum and instruction. While not ideal, this could mean just sending home paper or digital worksheets, but even that can be a challenge.

Ideas/Solutions: Having a plan in place with deliverables to staff would be a smart thing to create and have on hand regardless of a global pandemic. These can range from having some one-page step-sets that show teachers how to deliver a variety of content on your LMS of choice to an internal website with a range of ideas for online learning. Schools can leverage tools like Microsoft Teams as a way to collaborate or have conversations or create Padlet walls that students can post ideas on. Any and all solutions should be web-based, device agnostic and able to work on a smartphone as that may be the only online access they have.

One bit of advice from Jennifer Pearson, a Tech Coordinator who works at the International School of Nanshan Shenzhen in China – “There should be a plan. The plan should be consistent and NOT introduce a bunch of new techy tools.”

4. Are these days recognized by your state or country as actual instructional days?

As you might imagine, each state and country has different rules around this. Here in Texas, we count instructional days based on the actual amount of minutes our students are physically in school. While there might be exemptions made, currently those days won’t count and schools would presumably have to extend the school year to make up for the loss of days and weeks while shut down which would likely push through the end of June. While I think learning should still continue even if your state or country doesn’t recognize it officially, this brings about many other questions, including contract lengths of your professional teaching staff.

Ideas/Solutions: Some states, like Illinois, recognizes a handful of “eLearning Days” that can often times come about due to poor weather. These days are counted as official instructional days and were recognized by the state, which means no make-up days at the end of the year. Phil Hintz from Gurnee D56 in the Chicago area was a part of a handful of districts that ran the pilot for eLearning days starting in 2016. While not a solution for weeks of closure, the framework they built was around giving students windows of time to complete assignments and using Title 1 funds to get those without access Kajeet Hotspots. Here’s a video of his school’s experience with eLearning day.

5. What role do other “non-classroom” professionals play?

In an average school building there are many professional, salaried staff working along side the classroom teachers. Some of these teach special area subjects like art, music and PE. Others include counselors, nurses, and campus administration. While the majority of the interaction of students will come from the teacher in an eLearning concept, these staff still have a role to play.

Ideas/Solutions: Principals are the go to source for school-to-home communication. They should be posting updates regularly to both parents but also to staff and help identify families that might not have online access at home. They also have to set expectations for teaching staff in making sure online instruction is consistent. Special area teachers should continue to serve students and provide instruction whether it be having students post a video of them doing push-ups on a FlipGrid or capture their art and reflect using a digital portfolio tool like Bulb. Counselors and nurses can provide support to families in need either through one-on-one at home visits or through online video chat tools.

6. What about itinerant and paraprofessional staff?

Those professional staff on salary can rest easy knowing that they are still getting their paycheck every month, even if the school is closed. Sure they may have to work some extra days, but they aren’t clocking in to work an hourly job. Custodians, administrative assistants, cafeteria workers and teacher aides don’t have that luxury. For them, a shut down could be a devastating hit to them financially if they aren’t working.

Ideas/Solutions: There are still roles for many of these staff to play even if the building is closed, but they may be very different compared to the normal school day. Custodial staff should do a deep cleaning of the building and prepare it for the eventual return of students. Admin assistants can help connect teachers with students and vice versa as they have access to parent contact information. Cafeteria workers can help provide and deliver meals to those families in need. Teacher aides can use tools like Google Hangouts to meet with those students they serve and check in or assist on the work that they have to do at home. In some cases, while human contact in masse is to be avoided, they can also make one-on-one home visits like the counselors and nurses. While the building may be closed, there is still plenty of work to be done and these staff are vital to keeping things running efficiently as well as helping our students with special needs.

In summary, there is a LOT to consider before shutting a school down for a few days or even a few weeks. The questions above are just the tip of the iceberg, but they come from a multitude of librarians, teachers, and administrators across the world that genuinely care about keeping the progress of learning happening despite the closure of a physical building.

What plans does your school or district have in place? If I’ve learned anything from this post, it’s that we all are better when we work and collaborate on ideas together.

cross-posted at https://hookedoninnovation.com

Carl Hooker has been a part of a strong educational shift with technology integration since becoming an educator. As Director of Innovation & Digital Learning at Eanes ISD, he has helped spearhead the LEAP program, which put one-to-one iPads in the hands of all K-12 students in his 8000-student district. He is also the founder of “iPadpalooza”- a three-day “learning festival” held in Austin annually. He's also the author of the six-book series titled Mobile Learning Mindset, a guide for teachers, administrators, parents and others to support and embrace mobile learning in our schools. Read more at Hooked on Innovation.

In partnership with Learning Undefeated and Discovery Education, AstraZeneca announced today the launch of a new STEM program to inspire the next generation about science and to build a strong foundation for tomorrow’s researchers. 

The three-year signature initiative is designed to make learning about health and disease engaging, accessible, and exciting for students in grades 6–8, primarily in under-resourced schools across the country. Generation Health: How Science Powers Us will provide hands-on, standards-aligned STEM learning activities that enable students to investigate both preventative measures and innovative solutions to key health concerns in the areas of oncology, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease.  

Generation Health provides a suite of educational resources, including Learning Undefeated’s Drop Anywhere Labs—custom-outfitted STEM learning spaces built from modified shipping containers. These light, easy-to-access, and inexpensive labs provide a range of career and skills education for middle-school students, as well as flexible in-classroom resources that empower teachers and enable them to serve up to four classes simultaneously. Visit www.HowSciencePowersUs.com to find free digital lessons, videos, activities, and more. 

I had the amazing opportunity to be part of an Ignite session with 9 other ASCD Emerging Leaders this past weekend at the Empower 2019 conference in Chicago, Illinois. Each of us focused our talk on one of the five Tenets of the Whole Child from ASCD. My tenets were SAFE and HEALTHY.

According to the official Ignite organization, an Ignite talk is defined as: 

• a series of presentation that happen one after another without breaks
• each presenter uses 20 slides
• each slide auto-advances after 15 second
• the result is 5 minutes and high energy!

Watch my 5 minute Ignite below.

Kerry Gallagher is the Assistant Principal for Teaching and Learning at St. John’s Prep in Danvers, Massachusetts. She’s also the Director of K–12 Education for ConnectSafely.org (an Internet safety nonprofit in Palo Alto, CA), a FutureReady Instructional Coach, an ASCD Emerging Leader, and an EdSurge columnist. She served as a middle- and high-school teacher and digital learning specialist for over 15 years, and her passions include digital citizenship and effective integration of curriculum, pedagogy, and edtech. Gallagher is a TEDx and keynote speaker and a lawyer by training. She is on social media @KerryHawk02 and her website is www.KerryHawk02.com  

Did you know March 26th is National Spinach Day? Through this animated TED Talk, students can see how various foods, such as spinach, can help your body and brain function in a healthy way.

 Courtesy of Knovation   

 “[A]t some time in the day we need to disconnect, reconnect, and look around us.” – Laurie Colwin 

One resolution my elementary students and I are setting is to be more healthy with our digital use. I teach technology to 450+ second to fifth graders. In class we reviewed and discussed the article, Computers and Your Health. Although the article only mentions computers, I let students know the information also applies to using mobile devices, game consoles, iPads and tablets. This article is awesome to use with children, because the information is illustrated with colorful drawings. The article lists how staying on the computer too long can lead to several health issues, such as muscle and joint pain, lack of creativity, eye strain, and more.

After students share their experiences with some of these health issues, we come up with tips for staying healthy with our digital devices. We compare these tips with the ones listed in the article. Then students used 3D paint to illustrate at least one tip. I’ve added a collage of a few of their digital posters below.

The main message I want students to take away is to take breaks from their digital devices frequently and do something active like playing outside, dancing, or stretches. In class we take breaks and stretch our hands and fingers and legs. My hope is students will begin to do this outside of class. Below are some wonderful videos and resources to motivate your students to take breaks and learn how to maintain mental and physical health. If you enjoy these tips, then register for my upcoming Fully Accredited online courses (In-Service and Graduate course options) that begin on January 20th. Choose from several different classes, such as Connected Educators: Harnessing the Power of Social Media and Methodologies for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. 

Resources

Go Noodle is a wonderful resource with several short videos geared for brain breaks! Find dance-alongs, yoga videos, mindfulness activities, and other ways to move!

Get students moving with icebreakers, warmers, and fillers! Find tons of templates, activities and ideas here.

With the Move It Chrome browser extension, you can set notification intervals on the students’ computers, and the screen will present a random brain break and exercise to complete.

The Move to Learn video channel has several short video that gets students out of their seats and learning. Some videos are as short as 30 seconds.

This Classroom Breaks Pinterest Board has several posters and visuals to engage students.

The Active Learning Active Play Brain Breaks Guide categorizes their brain break activities. Find activities to learn vocabulary, spelling, math, social studies and science.

UNICEF Kid Power describes different brain breaks, including ones with play dough.

Action for Healthy Kids provides tips, ideas, and lists several resources. 

cross posted at teacherrebootcamp.com

Shelly Terrell is a Technology and Computer teacher, education consultant, and author of books including Hacking Digital Learning Strategies: 10 Ways to Launch EdTech Missions in Your Classroom. Read more at teacherrebootcamp.com.

 With the start of a new year, many of us are thinking about New Year's resolutions. And of course, one of the most popular goals each year is to exercise more.

Unfortunately statistics show that less than 10% of people are able to keep their resolutions. So how can we help to increase our motivation and commitment? One option is to make a game out of it by using technology to track our progress. What if we kept track of how many steps we took, and then mapped out that distance each day to see how far we traveled all year?

There are many tools you can use to do this, but in this post we will be taking a look at two free tools from Google. These are Google Fit (to count our steps) and Google My Maps (to track our cumulative progress on a map).

This could be a motivating project for staff, but could also have many applications for our students: 

• Social Studies - learning about the locations reached on the map over time.
• Language Arts - writing about the "journey" and places visited.
• Math - distance traveled, averages, charts and graphs, and other statistics topics.
• Health and PE - staying active!

See below for details on how to use these two tools for this project. How far will you go?

Tracking Your Steps

As mentioned above, there are many apps (such as the Health app on iOS) and gadgets (such as Fitbits) for tracking your steps throughout the day. You can use any of these that work for you. I have an Android phone myself, so for this example I will show how Google Fit could be used for this purpose.

Google Fit is a free mobile app Android. With the Google Fit app installed, and with your phone in your pocket, the app will track your movement throughout the day (among many other useful features).

First, begin by installing the Google Fit app for your device: Google Fit mobile app

Once you have Google Fit installed, it will monitor your movement throughout the day to track how many steps you have taken, how many minutes you have exercised, and more. When you are ready to see your total distance for one day, you can do so as follows:

• Open the Google Fit app.
• On the home screen, click on the mileage counter.
• This will open your "Distance" screen.
• You can use the arrows to move back and forth between different day.
• When you find the day you want, you will see the total distance you moved for that day.

 Note: Google Fit has many more features beyond simply tracking your distance each day. For example, you can manually add activities you have done, track live workouts, set goals, keep a journal, and more. 

Charting your Progress in Google My Maps

Now that you know how far you have gone each day, the next step is to track your ongoing progress on a map with Google My Maps. The idea is you can pick an initial starting point and then measure out how many miles you go each day to see how far you would have traveled. Where you start, and where you try to get to, is up to you.

• Maybe you want to cross your state during the year.
• Or travel the Appalachian Trail.
• Or get to a famous city or landmark.
• Or just see how far you can go.

 First, begin my going to Google My Maps and creating a new map: 

• Go to My Maps at: https://www.google.com/mymaps
• Then click the "Create a New Map" button.
• Alternately, you can make a new map directly from Google Drive by clicking "New" then "More" then "Google My Maps".

 Once you have your new map created, you will want to: 

• Give it a title in the top left corner.
• Then find your starting location by searching or zooming and scrolling.
• Once you find the place you want to use for your starting point, either click "Add to map" or use the "Add marker" button to drop a pin on the map.

 If you want, you can edit the starting point in several ways. 

• Click the "Edit" button (pencil icon) to change the title and description.
• Click the "Style" button (paint can icon) to change the icon or color.
• Click the camera icon to add an image or video to the location.

 Next you will want to measure how far you went for the day. Using the mileage from your step-tracking app or gadget, do the following: 

• Click the "Measure Distance" button (ruler icon).
• Click once on your starting point to begin measuring.
• Now move your mouse to measure the distance.
• If you need to make turns, simply click the mouse again at that point and keep measuring.
• When you finish measuring out the distance you moved that day, click twice to stop measuring.

You can now add a marker to the map at that location:

• Click the "Add marker" button (map pin icon)
• Click on the map at the spot where the measurement ends.
• For the title of the new point enter "Day 1" (or whichever day it is).
• For the description of the new point add how far you moved that day, or any other information you wish to add to document that day.
• Feel free to edit the "Style" as well to change the icon or color, and to add images or videos to the location.

Repeat this process each day, adding a new point on the map to show how many miles you have moved each day. 

Share Your Map

You can certainly keep your map private, but if you wish others to view your progress, you are able to share the map just like any Google file.

• Click the "Share" button below the map title.
• This will open the "Sharing settings" window.
• Here you can share the map with specific people, or you can share it as a link.
• As normal, you can give view or edit rights.

When others view your map, it will show as displayed below. The users will be able to click on any of the locations to view any text, images, or videos you have added. 

Conclusion

Google My Maps is an awesome tool that can be used in many ways in the classroom. It is a great tool for taking notes in social studies, complete with details, links, pictures, and videos for each location. Or for creating a "Lit Trip" for all of the locations in a novel in English class. And much more.

Using it to track your steps is just one more way it can be used to integrate with multiple subject areas, and keep healthy at the same time! 

cross posted at www.controlaltachieve.com

Eric Curts is an education trainer and consultant with over 20 years' experience throughout the U.S. He is an authorized Google Education Trainer and a Google Certified Innovator. Read his blog at www.controlaltachieve.com and follow him on Google+ and @ericcurts on Twitter.

Singapore-based AEvice Health is at CES 2019 spotlighting its AireSone Junior, a smart wearable for children. The AireSone Junior tracks breathing and heart rate, and detects wheezing and cough. The device notifies parents via smartphone when there are any potential concerns. AEvice Health says the AireSone Junior is the first wearable specially designed for asthmatics.

AireSone Junior is launching in the U.S. in June 2019. Pricing will be announced at the show.

Smiling Mind

Quick and easy meditation practice for busy classroom live

Pros: Integrates daily meditation into a classroom routine and lets kids to choose when and where they want to practice.

Cons: Creating an account requires a student or parent email address, and it's not possible to disable the social network options.

[Online Game Lets Kids Solve Social Problems, Practice Skills]

Bottom Line: This easy-to-follow meditation program can help reduce stress and support social and emotional learning.

Read more here.

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly.

By Common Sense Education

The eyes are essential to learning. They help the brain retain information and decipher communication cues that are necessary for collaboration. But as the modest schoolhouse blackboard gives way to interactive flat panels (IFPs) as the new gold standard for increasing engagement and success in the classroom, prioritizing eye health is more important than ever before. IFPs as well as other digital screen technology and electronic devices are a source of strong blue light waves that are hazardous to staff and students’ eyes and overall health.

On the lighting spectrum, blue light sits right next to the familiar UV rays that are produced by the sun and other powerful light sources. UV rays are invisible electromagnetic rays, the harmful effects of which can easily be prevented by slipping on a pair of sunglasses. Blue light, however, is short, high-energy visible (HEV) wavelengths. Because the rays are shorter, they flicker more frequently than UV rays causing glare that reduces visual contrast and sharpness.

While blue light can be beneficial in small doses — helping regulate the body’s wake and sleep cycles, moods, energy, memory, and attention — in excess, it causes eyestrain, headaches, physical and mental fatigue. The shorter HEV rays penetrate the eye more deeply than a UV ray and prolonged exposure has been linked to retinal damage and macular degeneration. But that’s not all. According to a study published by Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed journal published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, exposure to blue light may increase the risk of cancer.

Consumers are taking notice of the importance of shielding their eyes from blue light and the mobile device world has responded by touting the benefits of putting away devices and even created a night mode that switches off hazardous blue light. Unfortunately, screen use in the classroom is only increasing as the benefits of interactivity and collaboration proliferate.

To understand blue light, you first have to understand the science of eyesight. Eyes are the windows to the environment. Because of eyesight, the brain can collect, understand, and store information. The steps to this process first begins when light enters the eye. The pupil and iris widen and constrict, depending on the amount of light present, which then travels through the lens and the cornea. The lens and cornea focus the light onto the back of the eye where the retina — the area of the eye at risk for damage from blue light emissions — resides and is translated into color information. From there, the brain takes over to tell the person what they’re looking at. Healthy eyes are essential for this to happen and for allowing students to be engaged and work most efficiently and productively in the classroom.

Now schools, like consumers, can do something about the effects of blue light. TÜV Rheinland, a professional certification organization and the world’s leading authority on display testing, has developed a display-specific Low Blue Light testing standard that measures a display’s blue light intensity, wavelength, and on-screen flickering. To be verified as meeting these important safety and performance aspects for users, certified flat panels undergo and pass this stringent testing. New IFPs featuring low blue light filtering effectively eliminate the harmful blue light emissions to keep teachers and students eyes healthy while they work.

It’s inevitable that students will only be increasing their time in front on interactive flat panels, but eye problems and risk for other health issues don’t have to be the price of learning. Schools can equip their classrooms with the technology that can protect, making a huge difference in overall health while fostering active learning opportunities.

Bob Wudeck serves as Senior Director, Business, Education, & CinePro Solutions for BenQ, a leading global visual display solutions provider. He can be reached at Bob.Wudeck@BenQ.com.

ZisBoomBah

Fun, practical tips and tools for a nutritious, well-balanced diet

Pros: Lots of positive and empowering inspiration for taking an active role in making smart food choices.

Cons: Can be overwhelming and there are links to several games that have little to do with the nutrition theme; also features lots of corporate sponsored products (e.g. Stonyfield Farms Yogurt).

Bottom Line: Great way for kids to take charge of their nutrition that will work best if parents are also involved.

[Support Healthful Eating With Videos, Music and Games]

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App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly.

By Common Sense Education

A new report from Annals of Internal Medicine reinforces the belief that sitting is the new smoking—even if you include physical activity in your routine. While exercising 150 minutes a week has been found to have a preventive role in health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity, etc., the report shows that exercise and sedentary living are mutually exclusive, and the benefits of exercise are not enough to combat the harmful effects of sitting for extended periods of six or more hours. Guess who spends six or more hours a day seated at their desks? Students. In fact, population-based studies have found that over 50% of the average person’s waking day is spent doing sedentary activities, such as watching television or using a computer. Time for a walk?

To view the full report visit http://annals.org/article.aspx