Virtual retreat equips Western Pa. teachers with tools for online education

When the coronavirus pandemic shut down schools across the nation, it wasn’t just students and parents who were tossed headlong into a brand-new challenge.

Many teachers, counselors and principals faced the same dilemma.

“All of a sudden, we found ourselves having to write game plans and blueprints for something that none of us had anticipated and that no one had experienced before,” said Dan Gottron, an assistant principal in the McGuffey School District in Washington County. “There was no ‘how-to’ guide.”

Officials at ABC Create, a consortium of 14 Western Pennsylvania school districts based at Penn State’s New Kensington campus that serves as a curriculum incubator, saw the need for school-district staff to take stock of their experience and apply it to the equally-challenging prospect of reopening schools for the 2020-21 school year.

The group’s summer virtual retreat, held in late June, was titled “Reflect, Recharge and Refine,” laying out its goals simply.

Carmen Loughner, technology teacher at Franklin Regional’s Sloan Elementary School, said her biggest challenge during the final months of school was not being physically present with her students. While FR officials did as much as possible to recreate end-of-school-year events on a virtual basis, Loughner said it just wasn’t the same as being there with students.

It’s a disconnect that teachers across the U.S. will need to adapt to, as districts have begun rolling out plans that almost universally include an online learning option — either for parents who are not comfortable sending their children to school or should the pandemic force schools to close again.

ABC Create aimed to not just give educators a chance to destress from what they’d experienced, but to give them a host of online education tools so that things aren’t as stressful when the new school year begins.

Melinda Spampinato, a PASmart grant project facilitator with ABC Create, said teachers organizing the retreat helped to guide its tack.

“We listened to the teachers who were helping us organize, we listened to other ABC Create teachers and administrators throughout April and May, and we used feedback from our pre-survey to inform our retreat planning,” Spampinato said.

Initially, organizers weren’t even sure that teachers would be interested in a virtual seminar, having recently spent several months wading through online education for the first time.

“We worried that the teachers may be burned out,” Spampinato said.

Far from it, Gottron and Loughner said the retreat was invigorating.

“The most beneficial aspect was the collaborative nature of it,” Gottron said. “Many virtual workshops, or in-person workshops for that matter, are dominated by a single presenter. That wasn’t the case. We were constantly engaged and participating, especially in our small-group sessions.”

Loughner agreed.

“I knew going into the seminar that I would come out of it with a multitude of resources and a better sense of what is out there as far as online tools for teachers, and I did,” she said. “Not only were the resources valuable, but the network of teachers and experts I was introduced to will play a key role for the upcoming school year, and well into the future.”

Colleen Smith, STEM outreach coordinator at Penn State New Kensington, said that was the goal.

“Skills like agility, resilience, perseverance, how to use technology as a tool to achieve goals, and how to communicate effectively are critical to our current and future society,” Smith said. “The teachers were eager to hone their skills to be able to model and deliver opportunities for their students to develop those skills as well.”