Change Agent Case Analysis: Covid 19 and Rolling Knolls Elementary School

Kristen Bradshaw
Towson University
ISTC 702
September 14, 2023
Part 1: Executive Summary

I am a third-grade teacher at Rolling Knolls Elementary School (RKE), in Anne Arundel

County, MD. Rolling Knolls has historically been a smaller, neighborhood elementary school

since 1963. In 2016, the district built a new, state of the art, campus for the school and

demolished the former location. There was also a redistricting plan for the area which expanded

the feeder neighborhoods, increasing the students attending RKE. Another change with the new

construction, was adding a regional specialized education program for students with severe

emotional disabilities. This program brought some challenging students to our school, but also a

lot of support staff, including a full-time assistant principal position, school psychologist, and

behavior interventionist.

The comprehensive side of the school has an average of three general education teachers

on each grade level team, 4 special education teachers, and 5-6 teacher assistants (TA) or teacher

support assistants (TSA). The main difference in the two positions is that the TSAs primarily

support special education students with a 1:1 ratio, whereas the TA can assist any students,

deliver student intervention groups, and have a larger caseload.

Despite having a relatively new school building, the maintenance and funding after the

initial construction budget diminishes quite quickly. The “new construction” contracts also are

awarded to the lowest bidder in most cases, and there are unfortunate repairs that should not be

required for an 8-year-old building (leaking roofs, seeping glue from floor tiles, faulty and

inconsistent central air systems etc.) It doesn’t seem to be a priority to support the repair of these

issues, and frankly, they wouldn’t be issues if the building was constructed in a sturdier fashion.
 In 2019, the school year, my school served approximately 435 learners in grades PK-5 in

the Annapolis area. RKE is a diverse school, ranging from multi-million-dollar waterfront

communities to low-income apartment complexes. According to the MD Report Card, in 2019,

the school had 31.5% FARMS students, 20.5% English Language Learners (ELL), and 8.3%

students with disabilities (SWD). The student demographics were 3.9% Asian, 13.8% African

American, 23.4% Hispanic, and 51.2 % White. Our school quality and student success score

were 31.9 out of 35 possible points (91%).

The MCAP scores for the 2018-19 school year were 65.2% proficient for 5th grade math,

48.6% for 4th grade math, 46.8% in 3rd grade math. There was 75.4% proficiency for 5th grade

reading, 58.3% for 4th grade, and 36.5% for 3rd grade. The increase in scores amongst grade

levels could be attributed to potential technology awareness and comfortability of older learners,

and their increased exposure to content material and mastery of compounded skills by the time

they complete 5th grade. I proudly taught 5th grade for that school year, before moving down to

third for the 2019-2020 school year.

Overall, I think the teachers did their best, at this time in 2019, to challenge themselves

with technology, including using several web-based apps to support instruction. The students

were familiar with the Google Classroom learning platform. Most intermediate teachers had

these digital systems interwoven with their in-person classroom. Due to the construction budget

and the fundraising of our Parent Teacher Organization (PTO), the students had 1:1 Chromebook

access and charging carts in each classroom. The teachers did not have district provided laptops,

just the school’s desktop computers. In 2019, RKE was a motivated community of educators,

doing their absolute best to work as a team and support the needs of all students.

Part 2: COVID-19
 Being a few years removed from the COVID-19 school closures, I have done my best to

recall the most accurate details from memory. In early March 2020, we were told, as a staff, that

the school would be closing for two weeks, and reopen at the end of the month. We were

instructed by our principals to send students home with a Chromebook, and we could borrow an

old laptop from the school to use, as needed. There was an incredible amount of media-driven

hysteria and confusion as we transitioned into the two-week break. The teachers were told by the

AACPS Board of Education that we were not to post any new instructional materials for students

during this time. I think that several students and schools across the county had limited internet

access and may not have had the 1:1 device situation that my school was fortunate to have, and

the county was trying to come up with a hurried plan.

As the weeks progressed, we were told that we were not able to return to the building for

another month, moving the time out of school until the end of April. We were given permission

to sign up for an appointment to come alone into our classrooms and gather supplemental

instructional materials we might have left in our rooms from early March. There were many

directives coming from the Health Officers and experts at the CDC, the MD state level, and the

district level. The main priority was keeping the community safe and healthy in this time of crisis

and uncertainty.

In April, teachers began posting weekly “assignments” to our students in an extremely

unengaging format and it continued for the remainder of the school year. It pained me to assign a

text to read, and then attach a Google Doc with the same 5 comprehension questions, week after

week, but teachers were given explicit instructions from the Curriculum developers at the Board

of Ed., to not post additional activities for students. We were able to host “recommended”

Google Meetings with the kids, but there was not a structure for grading assignments, requiring
attendance, or any assessments during the Spring of 2020. Thankfully, my students were familiar

with the Google Classroom platform, and there wasn’t a huge learning curve for them, like there

was with the kindergarten and first grade classrooms at my school. For the most part, my school

was well-prepared for the transition to virtual learning for students. Teachers, however, still did

not have district-provided laptops which could support this level of online use. The ones we

could borrow were handed down from the local middle school years prior, had poor camera

quality, and slow processing speeds. I, therefore, used my own personal laptop, and sadly by the

end of the virtual learning era, had over worked that one too. The amount of daily and

simultaneous internet tabs open, video meetings, and screen sharing that was happening required

more sufficient technology.

As a staff, we did our best to “stay connected” to the kids. We dropped off care packages

at our students' homes, recorded videos of fun messages and books read aloud from our homes.

Our school cafeteria worked to provide meal pickups for lunch each day to ensure kids wouldn’t

go hungry. I know that we did the best we could, but there was very limited instruction

happening for those 4 months from March to June. I would compare the Spring of 2020 like

trying to survive, and putting a band aid over an injury that required a surgical plan.

My school administration did their best to support the staff and the needs of the

community, but my principal was in her first year of leadership at the school and didn’t have

strong ties to the community of parents and was still working to build relationships with the staff

members. We did our best to support each other and had a lot of time to collaborate with our

grade level teams, due to the limited requirements for Google Meetings with our students. I

became much closer to one of my teammates during this time. Our other one, and the team lead,

really struggled working from home. She had a two-year-old toddler, and he often required her
attention. This teammate ended up resigning and leaving the profession after the Spring ended,

and she stayed at home with her child and became pregnant with another! The two of us younger

teachers, without kids, did most of the work and planning that Spring. It was challenging, due to

it being my first year as a third-grade teacher, and the other colleague was only a second-year

teacher overall. I think the time we spent together developed into friendship that would be

invaluable for the uncertainty that was the upcoming 2020-2021 school year.

As the school year ended, we were now adjusted to this new normal of mask-wearing and

social distancing. We were trying our best to keep our families and friends safe and healthy. The

school board and curriculum departments worked tirelessly over the summer of 2020 to plan a

fall schedule of virtual instruction and all the resources that teachers needed to prepare. Due to

those initial two weeks of COVID closures in March 2020, the board deemed that teachers didn’t

work their contracted hours and we were required to attend 20 hours of virtual professional

development sessions of our choosing, to make up for the missed work. This caused a lot of

turmoil with teachers in the county because we were given explicit directives to not work those

first two weeks, and now were getting the consequences over our summer break. I took it as an

opportunity to learn and improve with some online tools, such as Google Drive, Wixie, Google

Classroom, and the Math App.

In the 2020-2021 school year, we started the year virtually. I created a classroom in the

den, and my boyfriend, who was also a teacher but for middle school, taught from the second

bedroom of our small condo. Thankfully we didn’t have any children, but it definitely impacted

our day to day lives, and electricity bill! Each month, or as announced, we anxiously tuned into

the livestream of the Board of Education meetings to hear updates and policy changes which

would impact our ability to reopen schools. The debates and mandates went back and forth for
months, and we finally were able to return to hybrid teaching in the Spring of 2021. I had about 8

students in the classroom and then the rest of my class, about 15 children, were learning

virtually. This was insane! We were now teaching in the building, with extremely strict policies

about communal workspaces (staff lounge was off limits, we ate lunch in our classrooms,

couldn’t visit our coworkers' rooms), there were new 10-day mandatory sick leave/quarantine for

positive cases, and contact-tracing nightmares for student cases. Thankfully, teachers were given

priority for receiving vaccines and I felt more comfortable being around students again.

Part 3: Evaluation

During these unprecedented years, I surprised myself as an educator. We were able to

keep classrooms of 20+ students connected and still build a classroom community while learning

remotely. The ability to have students from a variety of backgrounds and home situations

attending school in some way, shape, or form, while trying to keep the community safe was truly

amazing.

The one significant issue to this virtual learning era was the reading instruction. When in-

person, we would be facilitating targeted small groups at the students' instructional reading

levels. We had thousands of books for students to read. During virtual instruction, students had

access to Scholastic Literacy Pro, an app which had some books online. We also posted Google

slide decks which had screen shots of books for kids to read. I know for a fact that most students

from low-SES households didn’t have consistent access to print books for about 18 months. If

they did have a few books, the students with parents who were not native English speakers had to

rely on their older siblings or cousins to help them with reading at home. This created extreme

learning deficits for several years.

 Another huge issue was social-emotional learning. This pandemic era was challenging for

our society and devastating for certain families. There were job stresses, lack of socialization,

and obviously the health crisis. Upon returning to in-person learning, educators did a lot of

research, self-development, and planning to ensure students were taken care of regarding their

social-emotional learning, not just academically.

In 2022, my school is still working to recover from the pandemic. Our math MCAP

scores dropped to 35.3% in 5th grade, 34.8% in 4th grade, and 27.4% in 3rd grade. In Reading, the

MCAP scores were 56.9% in 5th, 39.1% in 4th, and 30% in 3rd grade. These students missed their

foundational literacy instruction as kindergarten and first grade students during the pandemic.

We have done our best to provide supplemental interventions to improve reading skills before

students move into middle school, but I foresee these deficits taking years to recover. In 2022,

our school quality and student success score dropped to 27.1 out of 35 points (77%).

As a relatively young educator in my career, I have seen a lot in my 10 years. Most of my

younger teacher friends at school have left the profession entirely. The stressors of having

limited work-life balance and unrealistic expectations for these two school years were grueling.

The societal lack of appreciation for educators is also something that needs to improve. There are

not going to be new college graduates striving to become teachers the way things are now.

AACPS recently got a new Superintendent of schools, and he immediately addressed the

discrepancy in salaries with our county and those of neighboring districts. It will take some time,

but I am hopeful that we can continue to be a powerhouse community of educational

professionals and work hard to make improvements to our field. I love what I do for a living and

will weather whatever challenges the future might bring.

 References

Fulginiti, J., Lucas, T., & Ng, G. (Eds.). (n.d.). 2020 Timeline: Coronavirus in Maryland. WBAL

TV 11. https://www.wbaltv.com/article/timelinecoronavirus-in-maryland/31394971#

Maryland State Department of Education. (n.d.). Rolling Knolls Elementary 2018-2019 School

Report Card [Fact sheet]. 2022 Maryland School Report Card.

https://reportcard.msde.maryland.gov/Graphs/#/AtaGlance/Index/3/17/6/02/4232/2022

Neilson, S., & Woodward, A. (2020, December 24). A comprehensive timeline of the

coronavirus pandemic at 1 year, from China's first case to the present. Business Insider.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-pandemictimeline-history-major-events-

2020-3