When you are serving students during a pandemic, your after-school programming looks a lot different. Instead of halls filled wall to wall with students transitioning from clubs to homework help, students enter our zoom waiting rooms, eagerly awaiting the virtual activities of the day. 

Our Expanded Learning Time Program at Winter Hill Community Innovation School has evolved to uniquely serve our student body online during the pandemic. The biggest challenge is keeping students engaged while also making the material enriching and challenging to create a space where students feel they are progressing and growing, even during remote learning. 

All of the Teaching Fellows on the Winter Hill Citizen Schools team bring a unique perspective and talent to the table that has helped make remote after-school programming possible. From 10 week apprenticeships and clubs to homework support and community building. The Teaching Fellows are always looking for new ways to engage the students we make connections with daily and support in the classroom and during after-school. We have acquired many strategies for keeping our students online and engaged; here are three tips that are sure to work for you too.

1. Utilize Jamboard

Jamboard is an amazing resource. It is a Google platform that allows students and teachers to be in the same document:

• pasting sticky notes

• Utilizing text boxes 

• uploading pictures from your computer or pasting them from other websites

• and drawing with the pen tool 

With everything available on one collaborative board, the possibilities for engagement with the students are endless.

Jamboard has become an essential tool in our remote learning world. We use it to facilitate discussions, create artistic projects, collaboratively complete an interactive assignment or worksheet, and much more. No matter what activities or lessons you have planned, there is a way for a student to engage even if they do not feel comfortable being on camera or have a mic that doesn’t work. Jamboard really helps students connect and keeps our after-school program engaged and excited to participate. 

2. Cultivate Settling in Time and Community Time 

Before our after-school program clubs or apprenticeships start at 3 pm, we always convene all the grades and classes. We look at a meme of the day, our daily “which animal are you or which _____ are you” for a mood check-in, and we read out a fun question of the day. This gives our students time to settle in and get to see all of us. They can check in with us and each other and share little stories or fun things, or just talk in-depth about the question of the day. Our kids really look forward to our meme sharing and funny questions; for example, which soup would you be and why? This has helped us maintain our sense of community and connectedness during the pandemic. 

3. Setup Student Design Sessions 

Throughout the remote learning experience, we have emphasized students being the voice that creates the clubs that we offer. We used Jamboard and other ways to facilitate discussion like the game “Would you rather” to create a space where students make club ideas they want to see in the program. Most of them have come to life, and two of our clubs, “Express Yourself” and “8th Grade Club,” are currently being run and planned by student leaders! Student Design Sessions can be whatever you want them to be. The objective is simply to have the kids shape their after school the way they want it and have us help and support along the way! 

Remote learning has not been easy. However, the community we have maintained and the students we have made smile have been very rewarding! The Winter Hill Citizen Schools Fam members are World Changers, changing the world every remote project, discussion, and expression at a time!