What hasn’t changed according to Lemov is the underlying cognitive science about how kids learn. “In education generally, you can only learn about what you're paying attention to,” Lemov explains. This is a bigger challenge in a distance learning setting because your students “are far away from you. They are insulated from social and cultural cues that you use to maintain their attention. And they're in a setting on a screen where they are used to maintaining their attention for fleeting periods of time.” 

Since the nationwide school building shutdown, Lemov and team have been doing in-depth reviews of online classes every single day to find out what it takes to keep students engaged and keep them learning. They are putting these videos online alongside expert analysis and practical advice. 

One big conclusion: students need “pause points” to effectively absorb an online lesson. “You're talking into the screen at people,” Lemov observes. “You have to pause every couple of minutes and insert an activity.” These can include accountability loops to test students’ knowledge, formative thinking exercises where students can make an idea their own and a simple check for understanding.

In this new environment, Lemov argues, teachers will need to figure out how to reach students “by making mistakes or being imperfect more than ever.” To learn by experimenting, schools need to be “super attentive to the data stream that student work provides.” That, in turn, means having “to constantly be gathering student work.”

• The task this week is to fully commit to striving towards effective instruction in this new world of distance learning by experimenting, observing and adapting based on what we are learning works for the students we serve. 

Find the Lost Children

“The first official data on student online participation reveal the massive challenge confronting the nation’s second-largest school district... 15,000 Los Angeles high school students are absent online and have failed to do any schoolwork while more than 40,000 have not been in daily contact with their teachers since March 16, when the coronavirus forced campus shutdowns,” Howard Blume and Sonali Kohli reported in the LA Times last week.

Most children not reached by their schools over the past three weeks are likely still in safe environments and the loss of connection is strictly educational. For other children, however, regular contact with teachers is a critical safety line for their physical and mental health and well-being. In a sign of the dangers of this new reality, the FBI issued a formal warning on the increased risk of child exploitation: “Due to school closings as a result of COVID-19, children will potentially ... be in a position that puts them at an inadvertent risk.” 

At the same time, writing in the New York Times, author Tanya Selvaratnam warns that in homes with a history of abuse, stay at home orders could be especially dangerous. “During this global public health crisis, we have more of a responsibility to reach out” and serve as a lifeline to those most at risk. 

What can be done? Emily Bailard, the CEO of EveryDayLabs, has been running pilot programs in California to test ways to reach more children. They estimate that 30 to 50 percent of low-income students may be out-of-contact with their school system. The main cause is out of date contact information. The initial pilots have shown that about 90 percent of missing students can be contacted via USPS mail. Their advice: districts and schools should immediately mail out contact cards and provide a call center and texting service that will allow families to simply and easily update contact information.

• The task this week is for every district to immediately report out the number of students that are currently unreachable and to launch a comprehensive outreach plan to secure contact information on 100 percent of their students and initiate daily wellness calls. 

Superintendent Chad Gestson stepped forward with a simple but powerful promise: “our commitment to our youth is that they will get a phone call every day.” How? His district office staff will be assigned to 8 and 12 students who they will be responsible for connecting with daily. As a result, the more than 27,000 students in the Phoenix United High School District will have the caring support of an adult who will serve as a connection point for all their needs.