Lessons from the Field:  The First Ten Days after Reopening

Thanks to Brad Choyt, Head of Crossroads Academy, for sharing these insights.

As faculty and staff, we often talk about prioritizing a growth mindset and learning throughout one’s career at Crossroads. This aspiration has never been more important than it is today…Thanks to the excellent preparations of the Return-to-School Task Force and so many others in our community, we anticipated many of the challenges we would face while we keep our community healthy and safe. But as we model a growth mindset for our students, we also continue to learn important lessons as we go.

Now that other schools in the Upper Valley are also reopening this week, I wanted to share three key lessons we have learned from our first ten days of classes on our campus:

1) Establish new habits quickly. Though children have not been in school since last March, students who are familiar with their previous learning environments can quickly slip back into old habits from a pre-pandemic world.

2) Keep an eye on how students are doing. Teachers know there may be some lost ground to cover from last spring and have developed strategies for helping students get “back on track” academically. But for students to be able to learn effectively, they also need to feel safe and supported.

3) Be ready to make further changes and communicate them effectively. Even the best-conceived policies may need further modification once they are practiced.

Every teacher and administrator I know is experiencing a sharp learning curve this fall semester and there are dozens of other lessons Crossroads faculty and staff are learning every day. It is important to make time to reflect on these lessons and to share them with each other.

See the full Crossroads blog post, where he dives deeper into these points, HERE.