Roycemore Faculty “Go the Distance” with Remote Instruction

After the sudden closing of Chicago private and public schools, leaving a couple of days to plan for remote learning, Roycemore School faculty were already uniquely prepared to shift to a customized and flexible instruction style. Their transition was seamless when it began on March 17.

A few weeks after launching remote instruction, the school’s faculty continues to harness a range of technology and allow creativity to flourish in virtual classrooms during COVID-19 disruptions.

Teachers have found creative ways to use Google Classroom, Google Meet, Flip Grid, Loom, Edmondo, Slack, and Kahoot to keep students connected to each other during the day, and providing a variety of opportunities to produce and share their work.

Teachers log in and meet in a synchronous way with their classes when possible, and provide “live” office hours throughout the school day. The pace and rigor of instruction continues—but with a new level of energy and ingenuity.

Beth Shutters, Roycemore’s Director of Curriculum and Innovation, says maintaining students’ engagement, momentum, and offering support through the process as they adapt to working from a variety of home environments is a priority.

“As soon as it was clear we would need to move online, we developed a simple remote learning framework which encouraged faculty to post work every day, be available to their students, teach with familiar tools, collaborate with one another, and be flexible. Teachers in all divisions worked tirelessly to move their instruction online and adapted their teaching to support students in innovative ways. We are all working hard to not only to continue to teach academic content, but also to offer social-emotional support through our Advisory program and close student-teacher relationships.”

Lower and Middle School teachers have reimagined instruction, finding inventive ways to maintain the energy of a traditional classroom. From filming kitchen table science experiments, singing lesson plans to students, engaging parents (and even family pets) in projects, sharing poetry, and repurposing household items for assignments, curriculum continues to move ahead at the same pace, albeit in fresh new ways.

Roycemore has always valued the connection between faculty, students, and parents, and even more so now during this time of social distancing. The school’s Roycemore Family Page was created specifically to provide additional ways for everyone in the school community to stay connected through video shares, virtual field trips, community posts, photos, contests, and a Griffin Gratitude Wall.

Elementary and Middle School students and parents rely on faculty to ensure learning from home sustains critical momentum. Ironically, COVID-19’s challenges have also brought an unintended positive consequence, as students of all ages are demonstrating a new level of independence and embracing the flexible learning skills they’ll need in college.

Senior Cara Marantz may be headed off to Dartmouth College in the fall, but her focus is finishing the academic year strong and preparing for the challenges of college level courses at an Ivy League institution.

Upper School Science and STEM teacher, Dr. Dan Dudek, works with Marantz in Forensic Science and demonstrates how a lab course can be taught effectively online using Zoom to demonstrate the ins and outs of fingerprint analysis, from broad classifications such as loops and arches, to more specific ridge features like islands and bifurcations. Using pencil lead and Scotch tape, Marantz lifted her own prints at home and classified each one accordingly.

For Marantz and other high schoolers, maintaining rigor in their college prep curriculum is something she—and her Roycemore teachers—don’t take lightly.

According to Head of School Adrianne Finley Odell, Roycemore remains committed to their mission, “to inspire and nurture excellence and prepare each student for success in higher education and in a dynamic and complex world.”

In addition, Finley Odell says, “One of the many lessons we have learned during this pandemic is that our mission is more relevant than ever, and we are fully committed to living this mission in the midst of a local and global crisis. We must nurture and cultivate the capacities of our young people to think critically, to work in teams, to be adaptive, and to develop the social and emotional intelligence that will enable them to build resiliency in the face of the incredible changes that are ahead of them.”