Cross-School, Virtual Interventions

Overview

Given schools had adopted stricter distancing and cohosting procedures in response to COVID-19, School District of Cudahy teachers needed to figure out how to support interventions for students working with specialists who typically worked across multiple campuses.

“We did some of our interventions that were virtual because we were trying to reduce teachers traveling between different groups. So we might have a reading interventionist who was doing interventions with students at two schools at the same time, or doing a one-on-one intervention from the school they were at with the student virtually at the other school. And the student would just sit out in the hallway and do the intervention or sit in their classroom and do that intervention. And it was fine. So we were just talking today about how we can continue to use that practice because it actually created more time for interventions because there was less need for travel and movement and the students just adapted to it.”- Dr. Tina Owen-Moore, Superintendent, Cudahy Schools

Approach

Cudahy decided to test holding interventions virtually, with specialists working one-on-one or pulling small groups of students from across campuses at the same time. This approach had several surprising benefits, including:

• Students with the same learning needs but located at different schools could work together with an expert

• With less travel time, providing interventions became more efficient and interventionists could provide more individualized and small-group intervention time

• Students were able to more fluidly move between their time in their core classroom and intervention, which reduced the amount of time they would be away from the broader class

Based on learnings from 2020-2021, the district team is exploring how to continue this practice in future years.

This strategy is a part of TLA's Hop, Skip, Leapfrog release, which explores the concrete ways in which schools and systems pursued student-centered innovation during COVID-19. Explore the full guide to find additional strategies, insights, and resources.