This year is likely a year of multiple transitions for students — from remote to hybrid, back to remote, and then to fully in-person, for example. Our students, particularly those with disabilities and diverse learning needs, may be challenged by these transitions. To them, this feels like unstructured, anxiety-creating, and/or unsafe learning conditions. So why not plan for the inevitable? As we make daily educational programming decisions, from schoolwide planning to individual student goal setting, we can keep student transitions top-of-mind. Making their educational settings safe will transform how students access content and this will impact outcomes. If educators and families collaborate to streamline transitions for all students, particularly for those who struggle with these changes, our schools can mitigate some of the turbulence of what will otherwise be a very challenging year. We created this interactive Roadmap For Schools with a downloadable planning tool to help schools with this planning.
How to use the Roadmap
The roadmap seeks to provide a clear set of principles and ideas for consideration by schools in the planning process for school start regarding the provision of support to diverse learners through multiple transitions and unpredictable setting changes that are inevitable with the COVID-19 health crisis.
There are multiple ways to use this guide. Here are a few examples:
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Educators planning supporting individual or groups of students in the classroom: A group of teachers may choose to collaborate by reviewing a section at a time with an eye toward identifying 1-2 strategies that can be implemented at a time;
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Administrators planning for schoolwide programming or policies: A Director of Student Support can print and review the printable guide prior to convening the Student Support Team to update a policy written for prior school years focusing on how the new policy might impact diverse learners; or
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Individual student goal setting: An IEP team developing goals on a student’s distance learning plan may use the Roadmap Organizer to prepare for a meeting with the student’s parents.
Read the article published on Medium.com
