National education institutions address covid-19

​Collaborative member national education institutions have risen to the challenge to help their stakeholders adapt to the current COVID challenges. We asked representatives from these institutions to give us the top 3 strategies that their institutions are using to effectively address COVID for their stakeholders. 

Below are impressive strategies that these institutions are using. These strategies can benefit the entire STEAM field.

Crayola
Cheri Sterman, Director of Education
At Crayola Education we are meeting teachers where they are and bringing a message of new opportunities to the discussions.

• We’re offering remote professional development courses that demonstrate best practices in remote instruction.
• To build educators’ remote instruction confidence and effectiveness, we are immersing them in arts-infused experiences that increase their engagement and that they can use with students.
• We’re providing resources that help families and educators co-educate and CREATE™ Relationships with each other. A silver lining in the pandemic cloud is that families and educators are partnering in deeper ways.

Dramatic Results
Christi Wilkins, Executive Director
We are transforming our delivery to engage with our students/families/collaborators by:

• Emphasizing Human Centered Design (Design Thinking) strategies into everything we do with special emphasis on student engagement
• Celebrating "failure" and "risk taking" as a staff to keep us innovating and responsive to our students' needs
• Continually (and rapidly!) iterating, based on active feedback solicited from our "users" - students, families and our collaborators.

Educational Theatre Association
Jim Palmarini, Director of Educational Policy, Reimagined the student-driven  International Thespian Festival (ITF) and the annual EdTA Conference for teachers as virtual events (2,000+ attendees for ITF-V and 900+ for Conference)

• Expanded Theatre Educator Pro,  our professional development website for teachers, to include virtual or hybrid standards-based K-12 lesson plans, curriculum, and production strategies, through webinars, downloadable content, and extensive links to curated tools and resources.
• Created and disseminated the EdTA Recommendations for Reopening School Theatre Programs guide, detailing best practices for ensuring the wellbeing of students, teachers, and school staff as they re-enter the teaching and learning environment in the 2020-21 school year, with specific advisories to help teachers and leaders answer the question: “What is safely possible for our school and our students under state and district health rules.”

International Technology and Engineering Educators Association
Steve Barbato, Executive Director

• ITEEA Open Access At-Home Resources for Educators: In mid-March, ITEEA began compiling the resources below as a way to support educators through the unprecedented period of “social distancing” designed to prevent the spread of the novel Coronavirus. The list continues to grow and there is now functionality built in that allows educators to easily add new resources to share with colleagues.  

• Developed an Online Learning Toolkit for the 2020-21 REACH Challenge! These downloadable resources provide educators and team leads with everything they need to complete a design-thinking project. Each section includes ready-made lesson plans, slide presentations, worksheets, hands-on activities, and inspiring explorations aligned with the ITEEA “Standards for Technological and Engineering Literacy” and “Next Generation Science Standards” (NGSS). The toolkit is designed to bring technology and engineering to life for high school and college students, giving them the opportunity to use their STEM skills to help overcome human challenges for social good, making a real-world difference in the lives of those around them. ITEEA’s REACH Challenge is an impactful Adaptive & Assistive Technology (AT) design-thinking project for middle school, high school, and college level STEM programs, showcasing ITEEA’s mission that "Technology and Engineering Bring STEM to Life"! Teachers are guided through a series of lessons to lead their students in using their STEM skills to REACH a member of their community who has a challenge to overcome. This innovative project shows teachers how they can help students use their STEM skills to help overcome human challenges for social good, making a real-world difference in the lives of those around them.

• ITEEA’s STEM Center for Teaching and Learning (STEM CTL) has created a totally virtual option for all the professional learning opportunities to deliver Engineering by Design™ courses and much more. Examples include our Digital learning and safety Micro-badging online course series. These include online STEM education micro-badging mini courses now available for a Digital Literacy Micro-badging Series and a STEM Education Safety Micro-badging Series.

 
National Association of Gifted Children
Bess Wilson, Immediate Past Research Network Chair; Assistant Professor, Department of Foundations and Secondary Education, University of North Florida

• Giving flexibility to instructors, students, and staff regarding content/course delivery modes
• Providing additional professional development to instructional faculty on engaging and best practices in online and digital instructional design
• Increasing our universal design so that all learners can access our materials in online environments
• Providing additional support to students and partners in times of crisis (e.g., counseling, ombudsman, etc.)

National Dance Educators Association
Susan McGreevy, Executive Director

• Developed a webinar series around strategies for transitioning to online learning available on demand through the NDEO website www.NDEO.org
• Provide bi-monthly virtual chat sessions for special interest groups (SIG) for K-12, Higher Ed., and Private Sector groups. 
• Created a new course, taught by four professors, through our Online Professional Development Institute: “How to Create an Online Course”. Seventy-five teachers enrolled in the course when it was offered for the first time this past summer.  

National Science Teachers Association
Tricia Shelton, Director of Professional Learning and Standards Implementation

• NSTA launched the NSTA Daily Do in the spring. New Daily Dos continue to be released daily (M-F) https://www.nsta.org/resources/daily-do
  1. “To help introduce both teachers and families to phenomena-based learning, The National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) has been developing a series of short “Daily Dos”— tasks that embed sensemaking and can be completed remotely.”  This is a quote from NAP Teaching K-12 Science and Engineering During a Crisis (2020).
  2.  These lesson plans can be delivered in a face-to-face, hybrid, or remote setting supporting the multiple environments teachers are navigating.
  3. The lesson plans focus on sensemaking (strategies and guidance to support ALL students).
• NSTA developed Distance Learning professional learning and resources. https://www.nsta.org/distance-learning
  1. The resources are adaptable for synchronous, asynchronous (aided by technology), and asynchronous (no technology).
  2. The Distance Learning strategies and tools are focused on multiple aspects of sensemaking (experiencing phenomena, engaging in science and engineering practices, and sharing ideas).
  3. The Distance Learning professional learning utilizes a suite of tools to create a learning community where students virtually work together (synchronously or asynchronously).

• NSTA has partnered with organizations like CSSS and NSELA to share Back to School Guidance for 2020-21 and to share teacher stories from the classroom
  • http://cosss.org/resources/Documents/back-to-school-docs-2020/CSSS%202020%20Back-to-School%20Considerations-full.pdf
  • https://www.nsta.org/distance-learning​

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