School Leader’s Guide to Surviving COVID-19 Closures

In these trying times, you, the administrators, are being tapped to be leaders in new ways – there are new logistical demands as well as pedagogical challenges and constraints around distance learning that your school community is grappling with. Meanwhile, we all as individuals are struggling with the unknowns personally as well as professionally. 

Introducing the COVID-19 Resilient Educator Toolkit

The COVID-19: Resilient Educator Toolkit is in response to this overwhelming need: How can we all develop a healthy sense of resilience during this crisis? The toolkit contains seven types of content, designed to be shared with your community of teachers, parents, and students:

• Blog articles with best practices about being a resilient educator
• Family tip sheets to support families’ social and emotional learning
• Student activities to promote wellbeing while at home
• Distance learning course and guide that curate best practices 
• Video profiles to highlight the various ways others are trying to stay resilient while Learning in the Time of Coronavirus
• Resource roundups with more resources on teacher well-being, trauma-informed practices, and a guide for technology integration
• Resilient Readings that support teachers and families around resilience, mindfulness, self-care, health, wellbeing, and inspiration

We encourage you to share the COVID-19: Resilient Educator Toolkit far and wide using the link! These assets have been created for you to distribute easily. Consider one of these turnkey ways to share:

1. FOLD INTO MESSAGING: Include one of the blog articles or videos in your daily or weekly correspondence with your staff to boost morale. Add the URL resilienteducator.com/covid19 or pull some of the advice and tips into your regular communication.
2. DISTRIBUTE TO HOMES: Add the downloadable Family Tip Sheets to a parent portal or messaging app. Or you could include the Family Tip Sheets in any packets being sent to homes.
3. SHARE WITH STUDENTS:
   1. Distribute the Student Activities to your families via a parent portal or messaging app.
   2. Include the Student Activities in any home packets.
   3. Add Student Activities pages within Google Classroom or your learning hub.
   4. Link to PDFs within classroom daily instructions so that students can download (no sign in or gate!)
4. ADD A BLOG WIDGET: Feature an RSS feed for the Resilient Educator blog (think revolving window of timely content) on your school or district website. Just click through to this link: https://resilienteducator.com/feed/, copy the HTML code, and embed it on your site via a widget.
5. POST MOTIVATIONAL MESSAGES: Sometimes the simplest words can make a difference. Find motivational messages to share with others via email or social messaging.