Former SHJH principal now heading online instruction effort

Kelly Kenoyer

Colleen Henry, who has been principal at Sweet Home Junior High since 2013, now finds herself in a new role as a result of the coronavirus.

She’s become a bridge builder to take the school district across the digital divide.

Instead of sitting at SHJH, she’s now located in the district’s main office, surrounded by the detritus of intense planning, with papers visualizing education philosophies and sample web pages pinned on every wall.

“It’s going to look like ‘Beautiful Mind’ or something,” she said apologetically, referring to the 2001 film about American mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr.

Henry this summer accepted a new job as the district’s Coordinator of Instructional Technology, and her main job right now is to find a new way of operating before classes start in the fall. While the district hopes to bring back as many students in person as possible, digital integration is a must in case a child has to stay home from school during quarantine, or in case schools suddenly need to shut down again.

Supt. Tom Yahraes said Henry was absolutely the right woman for the job.

“Technology and instruction is her strong suit,” he said. “She’s a great instructional leader and her understanding of technology learning management platforms is superior.”

The first step in that plan is acquiring hardware. By September, the district plans to have a Chromebook laptop for every student, from first graders to seniors, with tablets for the kindergartners. So far, the district has 1,519 Chromebooks and 20 tablets for the district’s 2,106 students, with 575 more laptops and 150 touchscreens on order, set to arrive by the time school starts. That means every single child in the district will have access to a device and be able to take it home.

Step two is software: The district is planning to integrate a learning management system called Canvas for every grade level. Henry calls it “a digital container for everything a student may encounter in the classroom.”

It can hold lesson plans, set up Zoom meetings, act as a white board, and allow students to turn in homework.

“It’s all self-contained,” Henry said, “A one stop shop.”

The biggest challenge, perhaps, will be training students, teachers and parents to use the new technology.

“There’s different experience levels at every school across the district, different capacity when it comes to using technology in a way where you don’t have to worry about it,” Henry said.

At the Junior High, Henry worked closely with staff to help them integrate technology into the classroom. Some got a handle on things quickly, while others needed step-by-step instructions and a lot of help to get the ball rolling. She even gave homework assignments to some of the staff.

“I think about how powerful it is for teachers to show that I’m learning something that I’m not comfortable with,” Henry said. “It’s going to be messy and that’s OK. Because when we learn things for the first time, it is messy.”

This isn’t the first time the district has tried to implement Canvas in Sweet Home schools, and the first time didn’t go very well.

“When it comes to technology integration, the pitfall is in the launch,” Henry said. “We don’t want to launch something in September, and then by November have it just be a mess.”

The original launch with Canvas a few years ago involved a few trainings about how the program works, then very little follow-through, she said. At the time, Canvas was a blank slate that teachers could set up however they wanted. But because teachers don’t have a lot of free time, a lot of them didn’t see the value in spending a lot of time on the new technology, especially when not all the students had access to computers.

This time, Canvas will be set up for every grade level going into the school year, and there will be training, as well as follow-through.

“I think the consistency is going to be super important across the district, at least in our first year,” Henry said. “I want to make it gift wrapped, I want to plug and play as much as we’re able in the next six weeks to develop and get ready to go. That’s my goal. That’s my priority.”

But Henry sees the demands of this pandemic as an opportunity as well as a challenge. The school district administration hopes to develop lesson plans for every grade level for an online school, so any student could learn entirely remotely if that’s what the family prefers.

At the same time, Henry hopes the switch to a more technology-integrated education model could lead to some great leaps forward for students in this district.

She got tearful, thinking about the opportunity these changes could provide.

“Sometimes you get caught in the system or the structure of current education and it’s hard to see any change or any impactful change in the system,” Henry said. “We have the opportunity to change education for the better.”

“I wish it didn’t come at the cost of this pandemic and the people who are suffering and lost family members because of it, but I feel so passionate. I’ve been so lucky to live and work here in Sweet Home,” she said, fighting back tears.

“It’s gonna take time, it’s gonna take hard work. And I know the folks in this district are not afraid of hard work. And this community really rallies around this district a lot. So they put a lot of time and effort and support for teachers in our schools. And so I think we owe it to do this right and give them the best product we can.”

Henry said she especially hopes to give Sweet Home students training in technological fields, like coding, tech support, and other science and technology-related skill sets.

“Finding ways that we can give our students the most competitive job skills and education so that the doors are open to them, and they can go anywhere they want. That is what really makes me excited.”

The district is facing a few challenges, including internet access for students working from home. For that challenge, the district plans to partner with the city to use municipal buildings as WiFi hot spots for SHSD students.

That’s a grant-funded proposal awaiting approval, Yahraes said. They may also place “access points” out in the neighborhoods, and they’ll try to boost the internet connectivity within the schools so WiFi reaches out into the parking lot.

“I love how innovative this crisis is making us and our partners in this community to help just local connectivity,” Henry said.

There’s also the concern of training parents on how to use Canvas and the new devices, especially for younger students who may not be able to figure things out on their own. Henry said the district is hoping to delegate Canvas training to certain parents, who will act as digital room parents.

“Teachers are great at mobilizing people,” Henry said.

Teaching the youngest students remotely poses serious challenges, but Henry hopes Canvas can work as a great platform for hosting videos of teachers reading books and facilitating Zoom calls.

“But it’s not like Canvas is going to replace that one to one teacher instruction,” she said.

To bridge that gap, the district is looking at Marcola’s example, where students are paired with “educational facilitators” who help students learn independently while staying on track.

“That educational facilitator, they help with the external motivation, they check in with folks see what they need. That’s part of the reason the district is trying to get as many students back as possible.

In early August, a group of teachers will work together to set up Canvas for the entire district and develop a training plan. And while Henry expects it to be challenging, she’s ready to put in the hard work.

“We just we have to work together, and we have to really be patient because eventually, we’ll get there. We’ll get to something that’s better than it is right now,” Henry said.

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