January 6, 2021 • Blog
When COVID-19 began, MSS thought hard about what solutions we could offer toward the problems associated with emergency distance schooling. We shifted to supporting teachers with distance professional learning about distance teaching — not about science. Why? Because we believe that the most meaningful learning experiences are the ones that are the most relevant. What teachers needed when they began emergency distance teaching was support around emergency distance teaching, not support around science.
We kept true to the goal of the MSS project — supporting the success of teachers and leaders with respectful, impactful professional learning — we just shifted the content focus away from science to distance teaching and learning.
How We Made the Shift
And how did we make this shift? We started where we always start, by involving teachers in their own learning experiences that are challenging, relevant, and empowering — this time at distance. Teachers learn in the distance space and our staff facilitate that learning. Sometimes the topic is in science. Sometimes it is a math or ELA topic.
What really matters is the collaborative analysis and sense-making that teachers do about their learning and our facilitation. As teachers work together to unpack their learning experiences, they discover the approach, the underlying frameworks, the pedagogies, and the technologies that made their learning experience impactful. They come to own an understanding of what makes for an engaging and impactful distance learning session. We then follow up on those discoveries with sustained collaboration that supports them as they apply their experiences to their work with students and over time refine their implementation.
Your presentations have increased the technological literacies of our staff members in the school district and have provided a way of reimagining how distance learning pedagogies can serve as assets rather than obstacles during this unprecedented time.
~Participating Principal
The Impact of Professional Learning
Our prior research has established that teachers do provide students high-quality, next generation science learning experiences after participating in MSS science-focused professional learning. We believe the same will be found to be true about our distance learning-focused professional learning.
So far we know that after teachers experience MSS distance learning-focused professional learning, they report having clearer frameworks to guide their distance teaching and a better toolbox of effective distance learning technologies and instructional strategies. They also report feeling more confident and excited to teach at distance — and that shift in mindset may be the best outcome of all.
This SCIENCE Corner was brought to you by Jen Folsom. Jen is the Lead Learning Architect and Associate Director for Making Sense of SCIENCE. Visit our Distance Learning page for FREE resources and to learn more about our offerings.
