When Covid Subsided, Israel Reopened Its Schools. It Didn't Go Well.

As schools across the United States weigh the pros and cons of sticking to remote learning, welcoming students back into the classroom, or a hybrid, there are lessons to learn from schools around the world. In China and France, teachers have gotten creative by having students wear wings that help them remember proper social distance, and other teachers have decorated the playground with smiley faces to indicate where students should stand. Other schools in Denmark and Finland reintroduced students to class by age, since data has supported that children under 10 are less likely to transmit the virus.

Whether students should or should not return to the classroom, and how that would be done remains a large-scale experiment amid a continuing global pandemic. Limited, but ongoing research seem to support that children under the age 10 are less likely to transmit the virus, which is helping educators formulate plans to return to in-classroom teaching. Some African countries require students and staff to don masks, others opted for a "pod" model, where students were allowed to interact with a limited number of people in their group. Many of these plans are contingent on the level of risk within each community.

Some schools in Italy held trial reopenings after having to close due to the pandemic, and are modeling their new classroom environment after Denmark's "forest schools," where classes are held outside. In order to maintain social distancing, and high safety measures for both students and teachers, students are kept in small groups with assigned zones, and school days have been shortened. More schools across the country are also re-opening slowly and in small groups after seeing the results from the trial run.

Universities are breeding grounds for COVID-19. In August and September they had to figure out the best way to test, control, and contain a virus on campus. Across the country universities launched a plethora of methods: weekly testing, staggered testing, training student health ambassadors, and even a community court. This article highlights the endeavors of 5 universities.

13 Washington school districts are piloting COVID-19 testing. By doing so, they can catch stop asymptomatic people from spreading the virus, offer testing to families who might not have access, and add a “sense of security for many staff members who are nervous.” Three of the districts participating “have tested more than 4,000 people using nearly 10,000 tests.”

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the NFL played all scheduled games during its regular season – including the Super Bowl – by enacting strict protocols and using data to make adjustments as necessary. The league relied heavily on contact tracing and testing, which prompted the CDC to change guidelines after the NFL's data showed that previous guidance about exposure was likely too lenient.

Across the state of New Hampshire, school districts found themselves adjusting to the meet the particular needs of special needs students. Outside tents, remote games, and equipping paraprofessionals with Chromebooks, where just some of the things different school districts implemented.

When Salisbury University faced the likelihood of having to enact a campus-wide lockdown due to the rapidly increasing prevalence of COVID-19 cases, the school took steps to revise protocols and mandate further regulations in order to keep operations running. From hybrid classrooms to "mandating negative tests on file every 30 days for university members to retain access to campus facilities," the university has recently been touted as a model for successfully staying open amid the pandemic.

Teachers are having to restructure the way they teach due to the pandemic imposed challenges of virtual classes. This story chronicles how three different teachers adjusted their instruction. From having students break out into chat rooms, to changing the material they teach, these teachers are adjusting as they go along to accommodate learning.

Norfolk Public Schools had a unique approach to addressing student performance post-pandemic—giving students an incomplete instead of failing them. The move revealed racial disparities that allowed the district to respond. “Of the 12,455 incomplete grades submitted, 71% went to Black students.” The district acted on that information and gave devices to students, limited instruction to four times a week to prevent teacher burnout, and placed a bus driver at every school to send staff to communities.