{"id":1042,"date":"2020-05-27T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-05-27T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T16:00:00","slug":"los-angeles-high-school-sustains-connections-that-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/education\/blog\/2020\/05\/los-angeles-high-school-sustains-connections-that-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles high school sustains connections that matter"},"content":{"rendered":"
Hector Lopez, a teacher and head of the math department at El Camino Real Charter High School<\/strong><\/a> in Los Angeles, thinks a lot about his students\u2019 well-being during social distancing. After all, being apart from friends and teachers is hard. But he\u2019s not terribly concerned about student learning.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve managed to make a really good transition. Speaking for myself, in some ways, I see this as an exciting time in education,\u201d Hector said, adding that he believes teachers are innovating and will take some of the new practices they develop during distance learning back into the classroom.<\/p>\n El Camino is a public charter school that serves 3,600 students, more than a third of who come from low-income families. The school, which has a 90 percent graduation rate, is a Microsoft Showcase School<\/strong><\/a>. Schools in the Showcase School program are committed to delivering student-centered, personalized learning and sharing their ideas and collaborating with others to transform education.<\/p>\n El Camino has been training its teachers for the past two years on the use of Microsoft Education tools. Just before switching to remote learning on March 16, school leaders led additional professional development to go over best practices during distance learning.<\/p>\n The school began working toward a 1:1 student-to-device ratio in the 2018-2019 school year, and both students and teachers have Windows 10 devices. \u201cOne of the main goals of this initiative has been to have equitable access to technology for every student so they can focus on what really matters,\u201d said Ryan Guinto, the school\u2019s Director of Technology.<\/p>\n He added that the school also has provided hot spots to the small percentage of families that needed internet access. As a result of all this, the school transitioned to distance learning seamlessly, \u201cThey did not skip a beat,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Ryan\u2019s colleague, Fernando Delgado, the school\u2019s Chief Information Officer, added that teachers are entirely comfortable with the tools they\u2019re using remotely because they were using them, albeit in different ways, before the current closure. \u201cRight now, they\u2019re holding their virtual meetings using Microsoft Teams<\/strong><\/a>. They\u2019re posting the materials using Teams, and they\u2019re using Microsoft Stream<\/strong><\/a> to record their Teams sessions, which they then can share for later use,\u201d Fernando said.<\/p>\n He added that the school has integrated Teams with Canvas, the school\u2019s learning management system (LMS). Microsoft Education and various leading school LMS providers worked to ensure teachers could set up a Teams meeting<\/strong><\/a> directly from an online classroom within a school\u2019s learning management system earlier this year when schools worldwide were switching to remote learning.<\/p>\n Microsoft Teams is a core learning tool for El Camino. Hector says he uses it to run his classes, post assignments, and more. He appreciates its ease of use and finds that it meets his students\u2019 academic, as well as social and emotional, needs. To address the latter, he starts each class with a check-in question. \u201cIt can be something as simple as, \u2018Tell me what you had for breakfast today,\u2019 or something else really simple to make them feel welcome,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cMy role as a teacher is just allowing them, or giving them the platform, to express themselves and their feelings,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are worried\u2014especially the older students\u2014about graduation, not knowing what\u2019s going to happen or how they\u2019re going to graduate.\u201d<\/p>\n Hector teaches whole-group lessons and allows students to work together in small groups during remote learning. He likes using Whiteboard, the freeform digital canvas that can be integrated with Teams<\/strong><\/a>, and sometimes empowers his students to be presenters and use the Whiteboard to lead discussions and show how they solved problems.<\/p>\nInvesting in students and teachers<\/h3>\n
Teaching and connecting with Teams<\/h3>\n
Drawing lessons from remote learning<\/h3>\n