How schools have adapted to assist students with additional needs during online learning

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Editor's note: This story first appeared in our 2020 Private School Handbook.

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close their doors this spring, educators across the nation scrambled to help students adjust to learning by webcam. For students with a variety of educational, social, and behavioral needs, support during this time had to extend well beyond the academic arena. 

Among the biggest challenges: transferring individualized learning and support to an online platform. 

With so much of the emphasis on project-based learning and hands-on activities, educators at Miriam School considered, How do we re-create that experience for kids individually online? “They did it masterfully,” says Mary Cognata, head of school. Using student-driven digital portfolio SeeSaw, kindergarteners through third-graders received personalized learning boards. The platform allowed teachers to upload, grade, and comment on assignments.

Personalized learning plans accommodate both social-emotional and occupational therapy needs. “We’re very collaborative in school,” Cognata says. “We have teams, so there are therapists for each team of kids. Our three youngest classrooms are a team; they have an occupational therapist assigned to their team. They had almost daily Zoom meetings, so the therapists were able to continue the work as they do in school by adding activities, lessons, and social support to that platform, which they developed in conjunction with the classroom teacher.”

LOGOS School serves students with a variety of social, emotional, and mental health concerns. Having worked with this diverse student body for many years, head of school Dr. Kathy Fenger says the institution was prepared to customize the remote-learning experience based on each student’s needs. For those students who needed options beyond LOGOS’ primary student learning system, the school provided alternatives, mailing or delivering assignments to their doorsteps. The same concept applied to the individual and group therapy that LOGOS supplies: Some students chose to do virtual therapy via Google Duo, while others turned to FaceTime or Snapchat video chat. 

Giving students agency over their learning and mental wellbeing is of utmost importance, says Fenger. “Kids who are finding difficulty with succeeding need to feel that they have a voice and empowerment in finding the solution,” she says. “When they have choices and can think about what’s going to work best for them, they own it more—it becomes theirs.” 

In the same spirit, at the Missouri School for the Blind, daily assignments were sent by email, and teachers scheduled Zoom meetings for direct instruction. Teachers at Miriam School incorporated prerecorded lessons into learning plans, allowing students to work through lessons on their own schedules. Miriam Academy high schoolers also created their own timeframes to complete individual assignments before teachers’ deadlines.

At the same time, Kathy Puettmann, associate head of school at Miriam Academy, saw that students craved some structure among all of the change. Anticipating the move to online learning, Miriam Academy’s staff worked through spring break to establish a new schedule. “We wanted some sense of normalcy,” Puettmann says. “We recognize that, especially with our population, this was an uncertain time for them, so we wanted to connect with the kids [and] let them know: ‘We’re still here; we know you’re still there. It’s going to be OK.’” Although not all classes met daily on Zoom, Puettmann and her team decided to keep the meeting times for each subject close to the time classes would normally meet in person.

Educators also analyzed students’ needs when deciding how to grade remote learning. Miriam Academy and LOGOS administrators determined that the best course of action would be a hold-harmless grading approach. “Basically…a student’s grade could only improve during this alternative learning environment,” Puettmann says. For students at LOGOS, the approach helped contribute to academic success. “For a lot of kids, they used that as a great opportunity,” Fenger says. 

Joy Waddell, assistant superintendent at the Missouri School for the Blind, says the school carried its “zeros aren’t permitted” policy into the second half of the spring semester. “If the teachers assign it, the kids must finish it,” Waddell explains. The school also has a policy that all assignments must be completed with a score of 80 percent or above; if scores don’t meet this expectation, teachers will work with students to ensure that they eventually meet this goal through re-teaching.

Waddell says she often finds that students who don’t reach this goal need access to specific materials to complete the task. “Our heart is to help,” Waddell says. “We talk to them until we figure out what they need to help them get it done.”

Aside from academic support, the schools acknowledge the need for social connection during the pandemic. At the Missouri School for the Blind, this often took the form of what Waddell dubbed Missouri School for the Blind Visually Impaired TV. Special Zoom segments featured everything from aerobics classes to a week on microwaving lunch. The school even created a TV guide with all of the programming for each day or week. “We thought it was so important to keep our kids connected,” Waddell says. “They’re going to be online anyway, and we would much rather they be online with us and with each other talking about school stuff, talking about dogs and microwaved eggs and how to make brownies in cups.”

Miriam School hosted a glam day. “The girls had been asking the occupational therapists for makeup tips, so [one therapist] went and bought a little makeup bag and loaded it with some basic makeup things for the kids and drove one to each girl’s home,” says Cognata. “The next day, when they had their girls’ group lunch, they all had their makeup, and they could do all the activities.”

Miriam Academy’s school counselor held “lunchrooms” on Zoom twice a week, when students could hang out virtually in a nonacademic setting. Puettmann saw how gathering—even though not in person—for a purely social purpose encouraged the kids and sparked hopes that they one day could be together again. 

“When we are able to all come back together, I think there will be an appreciation for that,” Puettmann says. “I think they will be happy to be back together in a structured situation.”