One of the stars of the Boise Digital Transition Discussion was Dr. Derek Bub, Superintendent of Schools at West Ada School District. His presentation, a recap of the many challenges and subsequent successes his team achieved during the pandemic, gave wall-to-wall useable ideas for all in attendance.

“I have not seen education move as fast as it has in the last two years,” said Dr. Bub. “Moving organizations is never easy. Moving in education is even more challenging. What we've done in the last two years is commendable, by all of you folks.

“Educationally, we have a mixture between some standards-based grading schools, our traditional grading schools and our competency-based schools in our academies,” said Dr. Bub. “The way we grade and assess learning is vastly different from school to school and even classroom to classroom. I think that we'll try to look at the positive sides of the pandemic. And one of the things that we've been able to do, in our transition is really look and focus on what we call our priority standards and dig into what kids need to know rather than what we want them to know. And so that's forced the transition a bit.”

One of the interesting points Dr. Bub talked about was the way room configuration is making a difference in his schools’ learning transition. Holding up a picture, Bub said, “This is an 1896 classroom. Kids are sitting in rows, teachers up front. The only difference that we see from 1896 until recently is we went from blackboards to whiteboards. We started to transition out of that and look at technology and how can we use technology to enhance the educational experience. Then, COVID pushed us off the cliff and really forced us into a different day and age. When you look at our classrooms now, they're totally different. They look like workspaces.

“I had the privilege to go downtown and meet with a startup Internet company and ask them some questions about what does that looks like in there? I was shocked the CEO of this startup Internet company, which is a giant company now, literally has a cubicle or a desk that he sits in the middle of the work floor. I said, ‘Is this your desk?’ He said, ‘Well, no, it's my desk right now. I sit here today and then tomorrow, if I'm late to work, then I'll probably sit over there. And the next day I'll probably sit over here. I learned that there are more power conversations out amongst us than I would ever get when I sat in an office.’ And so, we really figured that out with our kids as well. When you walk in the classrooms, you have kids talking together.

Speaking of his challenges, Dr. Bub said, “I think that one of the pieces that we are now trying to get out of is what I call ‘pandemic pedagogy.’ Because of some of the tools that we have in our classrooms, a lot of our teachers have been forced to be behind their desks, operating a camera, operating their computers, troubleshooting, all of those things that really limit what I call teacher proximity and our teachers’ ability to be in the face of kids, teachers talking to kids, teachers asking, ‘What's going on?’

“There are a lot of new shiny tools out there, right? There are literally billions of dollars being invested in educational technology right now. How do we get tools to get our teachers back into good teaching practices, in a comfortable way?”

Another challenge Dr. Bub spoke to was the need for digital citizenship. “We need to be able to teach our kids how to act, how to behave while they're online,” said Bub. “We've seen things that we never thought we would see o and challenges that we never thought we'd see, that were now having to face.
And I'll just give you small examples, kids committing school rule violations when they're on-camera with their teacher. How do we deal with that? They're at home. Is that our responsibility? That's just a little piece of the things that we're seeing. We need to have really good systems in place to help, to train and teach our kids age-appropriate use. This was a big challenge for West Ada.”

The challenges that the superintendent shared struck a chord with the attendees in the room. With every new challenge, you could see attendees shaking their heads up and down. Yet thankfully, every new challenge presented also had a solution crafted by Bub’s team at West Ada.

Digital Transition events are wonderful learning experiences. If you would like to attend an event near you, click this link to see your upcoming events.