While it may be commonplace for finance or IT workers to work remotely, it is definitely not usual to have school teachers and district employees working remotely. That is, until now. Working remotely is a great benefit for some people, while others consider it akin to torture to endure what seems like solitary confinement.
So, what do you do if you are managing staff that are now trying to figure out this whole “working from home” thing? We have a few tips for you and would love to hear what additions you would add to our list. Let us know in the comments!
Set Guidelines and Expectations
If your staff has not worked remotely before, it is advisable to provide clear guidelines and expectations to them. Office rules that were once understood take on a whole new meaning when everyone is dispersed — including supervisors. See what others in your capacity are doing and what expectations they are communicating. Tweak those to fit your district’s policies and your personality.
Just like in your work environment previously this year, your staff perform better when they understand what is expected, what success looks like, and have the freedom to ask questions and get clarification. Being in a forced remote working situation makes that even more critical.
Encourage Routines
“Routines” don’t have to be a negative word. Whether we realize it or not, we all most likely have routines at work each day. Routines provide predictability, which, in turn, can help us cope and adjust to new situations more quickly. If your routine when you arrive at work is to get a cup of coffee, talk with your coworker for five minutes, and check email before diving into the heavy lifting for the day, consider how that might translate to working at home.
Some routines may need to be adjusted a little to fit the new environment of working remotely. At the office, you probably don’t think much about your routines; you just do them. Pause for a moment and actually write down what your routine might look like now. It might even help to put start and stop times to tasks and activities on your schedule. Decide to try it out for a few days and examine it as you are going through it.
After a few days, examine what you wrote out and tweak as needed. Building predictability into your day will help you get in a rhythm of being more productive and satisfied with how you are managing the “new normal.”
Get Moving
If you are like me, you may do more walking at work than you realize. Trips to the printer, restroom, front desk, break room, etc. all add up to not being quite so sedentary while in the office. If I’m not conscious of it, though, I may realize (afterwards) that I’ve been sitting in the same spot on the sofa for several hours working.
While it’s great to get in the zone, we don’t want to neglect our body. Encourage your staff to take a fifteen-minute walk mid-morning and then again about an hour or so after lunch. Getting up and getting the blood pumping doesn’t necessarily mean doing cardio, but it does mean that your staff will most likely be able to think better and therefore work better.
Have Face-to-Face Communications
Even when we cannot meet in person for staff meetings, we can still meet online and try to emulate some of the practices that we benefit from in face-to-face meetings. Plus, changing to a quarantined environment with little transition time makes it even more beneficial to see others, and to be seen.
There are some reports and bits of information that can be effectively shared by email. And, in a normal office environment, it might be advisable to cancel a meeting if there was no real need to get together. That is, if everything could be handled via email and collaborative documents. But right now, even if you don’t have a heavy agenda, it is important for everyone to feel connected.
Now that we at TCEA are all working remotely, at least through the next couple of weeks, one of our rules is that everyone has their video camera on during meetings. We aren’t meeting high executives or CEOs and trying to win over million dollar accounts; we are meeting with each other in real life situations, which sometimes means an occasional kid or pet running through the background, the doorbell alerting that a package has been dropped off, or (gasp!) a house that hasn’t had a maid step on the premises in years (if ever).
Keep Things Light
Yes, these are serious times. Yes, we are all under a lot of stress. That’s why it’s important for leaders to find ways to make staff feel less frightened and more able to handle the situation. You can do that by putting some fun in their day.
At our first TCEA remote staff meeting, we played a Kahoot! game to get to know each other even better and to help us reconnect. At our next one, Executive Director Lori Gracey has said that it will be silly hat day for us all and we should come to the Zoom meeting with our best bonnets on. I’m sure there will be other surprises as this sheltering in place continues. But that seems less stressful because we are all in it together and able to laugh at each other.
Gauge Your Staff
You should already know your staff. You know those that do better when you drop in for just a minute each morning, those that think of being quarantined and working alone is better than a Disney cruise, and those that need your occasional reassurance that they are doing a great job. Working remotely doesn’t change any of that. So, as you think about your staff, consider how you can be that same great leader you are in person, but now via telecommuting.
You don’t want to micromanage, but you do want to help each staff member in a way that is meaningful to them. Unfortunately for you, though, this will probably take more time on your part and require you to be more conscious of your actions. But you can do it. You are a great leader and that is what great leaders do.
Thank Those Going the Extra 1,000 Miles
While what the teachers are doing with distant students is absolutely amazing, there are other staff members who are also going above and beyond. The cafeteria workers, the bus drivers, the other admin members of the team — all of them are putting the needs of the children first, sometimes even about their own health or family. Be sure to let them know how much you appreciate them for that.
And don’t forget your tech staff. While we’ve been talking about digital learning for years, being thrown into the deep end of the pool like this without preparation or training time is scary. They believe that this remote learning can be a true boon for student empowerment and achievement. But they are stressed beyond belief right now as they try to solve issues like digital equity, parents who don’t understand how technology works, log in and software problems, and more. Give them a virtual high five to show that you’ve noticed their very hard work.
At times like these, your leadership skills may shine even brighter. Those things that were taken for granted by you and others will more likely be noticed when done with intention. As you support your staff and fellow administrators, consider these tips to help make it an easier transition in a chaotic time.
I know this isn’t an exhaustive list that I’ve shared, so I’m asking you to add to it in the comments below. What tip or activity that you’ve thought of has helped you and your staff? Do you have a boss that has done something well to make this time easier to manage? Give a shout out in the comments below. This is the place to pay it forward so other leaders can implement your ideas and further everyone’s success.
You have probably already heard of Flipgrid and perhaps even started using it, at least to some degree. It definitely seems to be the perfect tool to support students in many ways, not to mention using it as a way to provide peer- and content-support to teachers. 
Begin by making sure that your profile is updated. Don’t be shy. This will allow others to better connect with you. Click on your image in the top right and select Profile. Select a photo or avatar for your profile picture. If you have a picture that has a busy background or you want to use a quick editing tool to remove the background (as I did on my 
GridPals is, as you may have deduced, Flipgrid’s version of pen pals. It’s a super easy way to connect with other educators and enthusiasts to further learning and improve education. 
Featured Disco Playlists are sets of topic templates provided by various organizations such as 
No, this isn’t creating mixtapes on cassettes like we might have done back in the ’80s and ’90s to give to someone special. This is a whole new way of sharing — but based on the same principle. 
So how do you use Flipgrid? Which feature(s) have you found to be the most impactful? Even if you haven’t had a chance to use Flipgrid, have you come across an innovative way to incorporate it in the teaching and learning process or in professional development? We’d love to hear from you! 
The first patent in the United States was issued on 
Finding patent illustrations online can be easy and complicated at the same time. For example, if I want to find patent diagrams for an iPhone, the logical idea would be to search for iPhone in the patent title. If I use 
You may be a person who has hoarded fonts on your computer in the past, only to use the basic 10 fonts that came installed … but you have those other 300 specialty fonts just in case the perfect occasion arises.
On a Windows 10 computer or tablet (that has a stylus), locate 
What Is Flip?
Students begin learning observational skills in science starting in kindergarten. Though the skill is not as robust or refined as what a high school student may demonstrate, there is still great value in having them engage in observing the world around them to start taking notice of how things work. Observation is a foundational science skill that leads to communication, classification, measurement, inferencing, and predictions.
In Flip, create a grid for observations. Each topic in this grid will show a photo or video that the student is to observe and describe. Depending on the level of skill, you can require students to use previously learned vocabulary in their responses. If you want students to use words from a given word bank that you have developed for them, create the document and add it as a topic attachment to the topic. You can reference this word bank in multiple topics by adding the link to each topic. If you have a rubric to guide the students in their work, add the rubric as another topic attachment; for younger students, you may need to record a video showing the rubric while you are reading it aloud.
Go to 
Begin by creating a grid to hold your inferencing topics. As done above, create a standard set of instructions for your students. You can go to ,
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USB Microscope – Consider purchasing a USB microscope that you can connect to your device in order to take photos and videos of actual materials in your classroom…or on fieldtrips! Read the details carefully as some microscopes will work with some devices but not all…such as Android phones/tables, PC computers, and Mac computers but not iPhones or iPads. If you need a microscope that connects with your iPhone or iPad, be sure that it explicitly states that it connects. Likewise if you are wanting to connect the microscope to a Chromebook. If it is not clearly stated, look for a link in which you can ask the seller or locate that microscope on another seller’s website to see what information they provide. 
Low poly has been around for decades in the computer industry. As early game designers needed a way to generate images (and later animation) that did not exceed the available memory, they found they could reduce the file size by reducing the amount of information contained in the picture itself. This was achieved by connecting a mesh of dots to form polygons that are filled with a single color. The most popular shape to use is a triangle. This method allowed designers to easily reduce an image to mathematical terms instead of every pixel having its own color. You may have noticed that even current gaming systems are making use of the retro look of low poly. News sites may apply a low poly filter when interviewing a witness that wants to remain anonymous so that their physical features are less likely to be identified.
Identifying Angles – Because low poly can be made using only triangles, give students a page from the Low Poly Samples pdf file (link below) and have them identify whether each angle is a right, acute, or obtuse angle by writing r, a, or o in the angle respectively. For older students, have them use a protractor to identify the exact angle and have them write the measurement in each angle. Students can easily check their work by calculating the sum of the angles in the shape. The sum of the angles in a triangle will equal 180°, while the sum of the angles in a polygon with four or more sides is equal to 360°. 
Low Poly Animals – Provide animal shapes for students to use as patterns. Laying a sheet of blank paper over the pattern, students trace the image using only straight lines and fill the image in with line segments to create triangles, squares, pentagons, etc. but no curved lines. The image to the right is my work using this method.
