High School's Associate Superintendent Pens Remote Learning Letter

Press release from Oak Park and River Forest High School:

August 26, 2020

Dear OPRF Families,

As we prepare to wrap up our first full week of virtual learning at OPRF, I first want to take a moment to thank you. Your partnership (and patience!) with us as we learn along with you, and provide an excellent remote education for your children, is critical and not taken for granted. Toward that end, I am writing about five opportunities to further our partnership related to:

• Cellphones
• Digital Citizenship
• Open House: September 3
• Student, Faculty, and Parent Feedback
• Student Hotspots

Thank you! This may be a long message, but please read on!

A Note from the Cell Phone Committee

As many of you may remember from last year, the OPRF Cell Phone Committee has taken up the task of devising new expectations and practices around the use of personal electronic devices during the school day. While we cannot meet in person this semester, our work continues, and we hope to again partner with parents and students to develop useful strategies that will allow students to get the most out of remote learning.

After a year conducting research on the academic, social-emotional, and mental health effects relating to cell phones, as well as educating and surveying our key stakeholder groups to further understand how students are using their devices throughout the school day, we landed on a significant change to our building policy. We made a commitment to implement phone-free classrooms across the building, throughout the school day, for 2020-2021. For our institution, that marked a significant departure from past practices.

Then COVID-19 arrived, and we all went home for the spring, stalling the momentum we’d built throughout the year. The core philosophy behind this shift does still warrant your time and consideration -- perhaps now more than ever before. We know that much of our educational time will be in front of the screen this semester. For that reason, it is absolutely critical for students to establish positive, healthy habits early on. Without any real ability to enforce our own classroom policies with respect to personal devices, we need your help in ensuring that students are engaged with their teachers and classmates. Here’s our ask:

Parents and guardians, work with your students to develop a plan to keep their workspace as distraction-free as possible. Consider using the screen time controls available on nearly all devices, or perhaps keeping their phones in a separate space during the school day. In light of what the research unambiguously confirms about teens, screens, and addiction, we simply cannot afford to “leave them to their own devices,” so to speak, in the remote learning environment. It is asking too much, and the stakes are too high.

In the coming weeks, we hope to share some research to help you start, or perhaps restart, a family dialogue, as well as some additional concrete strategies to help parents and students manage this aspect of e-learning together. We welcome any input you would like to share, and we thank you in advance for your support in our effort to improve the culture of our school community, and to give students their best chance at a healthy, successful year.

A Note from Our Deans

Our deans have asked that you partner with us in more closely monitoring our students’ online activity to help promote positive digital citizenship.

First, we are concerned about academic dishonesty, given that students might feel the ability to engage in this behavior is easier now in a remote environment. Second, we are also dealing with a few instances of Zoom bombs, a term new to us all. This involves someone using an alias and entering a teacher’s virtual classroom and engaging in some kind of inappropropriate behavior. Finally, we are seeing an increase in cyberbullying - where students are using social-media to make hurtful, harmful, and offensive comments about fellow students.

Our Educational Technology department is increasing virtual safety measures to try to combat/prevent some of the above from occurring moving forward, and we have made some procedural changes as a result. Your help in paying closer attention to your student’s online activity will also have a positive impact on the safe virtual learning environment that we are trying to create for all students.

Open House

Next Thursday night, September 3, we will be hosting a virtual open house for all OPRF families. Beginning at 6:30 p.m. you’ll have an opportunity to hear a brief introductory message from our administration, as well as a chance for you to go through your student’s schedule, meet their teachers, and obtain information about each course. Please be on the lookout for more information in the coming days.

Thoughtexchange

Next week, we’ll be running a Thoughtexchange survey for students to see how successfully they’re getting connected to their teachers and classes. Please encourage your students to participate. Then in mid-September we’ll be running another Thoughtexchange for students, staff, and families to learn what’s working well with remote learning and what could use improvement.

Student Hotspots

We have had a huge influx of requests for mobile hotspots for students to use during remote learning. While we had already increased our stock far beyond what we expected to need, our stock is depleted, and we are working with multiple vendors to get more. As you can imagine, this is not an issue unique to our district, and we are encountering limited supplies and delays in shipments. Unfortunately, this problem is inhibiting our ability to provide hotspots to families without internet access. So we need your help.

First, if you now have home internet access in addition to a mobile hotspot assigned to your student, we are requesting that you please return the hotspot to make it available to families without Internet access. We are available to receive them at Door 3 from 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. We will be supplying additional mobile hotspots only to homes that indicate they have no Internet access at this time. As soon as our supply catches back up with demand, we’ll again make them more widely available.

Additionally, here are some resources regarding home internet discounts and quality of service that may be helpful. All links are listed in the Parent section of the Student Technology Support page.

Home Internet Service Discounts

Internet Essentials by Comcast offers home internet for $9.95 + tax a month for eligible households.

Features:

• 25 Mbps
• No Term Contract
• No Credit Check
• In-Home WiFi

Access by AT&T offers home internet for $10 a month or less for eligible households.

Features:

• 25 Mbps
• Free installation and in-home Wi-Fi
• No annual contract
• No deposit

Home Internet Speed Test

How fast is fast enough? These Internet speed tests give good benchmarks along with the test results. These tests make it easy. Click on this link to learn more. Either one will work regardless of your Internet Service Provider. If the speed test shows low bandwidth, please contact your service provider directly to resolve the issue or to increase the level of bandwidth available through your plan.

Thanks so much for making it through the whole message! We appreciate your partnership in making this a successful semester!

Greg Johnson

Associate Superintendent

This press release was produced by Oak Park and River Forest High School. The views expressed here are the author’s own.