By LeiLani Cauthen
Schools and districts across the country are calling the Learning Counsel for guidance now that many must close campus buildings. To help you decide the right direction quickly, we’ve created this practical questionnaire and action plan. Use it to evaluate your situation and then contact us for a tailored list of resources and provider recommendations. There are thousands of products on the market; we can help you narrow choices and implement effectively.
Question 1: How long will you be “out”?
The Learning Counsel anticipates many schools will remain closed for the remainder of the school year because of the public health risks related to Coronavirus. Even if your closure is short-term, you must take essential steps now—especially if you lack infrastructure or have equity-of-access problems. Consider training staff online immediately (for example, through Zia Learning or the Learning Counsel’s EduJedi Leadership Society) so your team is better prepared for future disruptions.
Decide how long you will be out and whether you can run catch-up sessions in the summer. Consider awarding reasonable grades for work not fully completed this term and offering only online learning you can truly support through the end of the year. This approach can help retain your student community and reassure families that learning continuity is real, not abandoned.
Question 2: What do you want to do as a school or district? Pick one option below.
- Continue your usual schedule but deliver it virtually, drop live extracurricular activities, and use teachers online.
Pros: You remain on track with standards and testing. Cons: Most schools are not ready for a full virtual replication of the school day. Teachers may lack online instruction experience, students and parents may not be prepared, and strict replication of a full-day schedule at home is impractical. Attempting a direct copy of the school day often widens equity gaps and risks widespread failure.
- Maintain the usual schedule, replace live extracurriculars with online options, and use teachers online.
Pros: You can partner with third-party course providers to deliver extracurricular content and create community spaces inside your LMS or social platforms for discussion. Cons: You may struggle to replace extracurricular staff long-term and will need oversight plans for outsourced content, which can require quick teacher training.
- Abandon strict schedule alignment and testing emphasis; provide limited, grade- and subject-relevant new learning using teachers.
Pros: Streamlines remote schedules so parents and students can realistically engage. Create student “houses” using homeroom groupings for daily check-ins and community. Use professional courseware and carefully selected lessons to continue meaningful learning without trying to cover the entire curriculum. Cons: You’ll need to decide how to deploy teachers and manage expectations around standards and assessments.
- Adopt option 3 but reorganize instruction into front-line and back-line roles.
Pros: Fewer teachers handle direct online guidance while others focus on retraining and building digital lessons for future blended learning. This creates a sustainable model for switching between in-person and remote modes without major loss of progress. Cons: Requires administrative coordination and staff role changes.
- Rollcall continuity with a loose schedule: mixed live sessions with heavy reliance on courseware, apps, and sites. Teachers engage selectively and focus on building forward your lesson workflow.
Pros: Prioritizes student engagement and community over strict adherence to existing course programs. You can develop a resource matrix that prepares you for future disruptions and use teacher time for training and digital lesson development. Cons: You surrender some alignment to traditional course sequences and may have to assign provisional grades pending high-stakes assessments.
- Outsource semi-coverage of core curriculum digitally while retaining local oversight and transitioning teachers.
Pros: Rapid onboarding for students across large districts with maintained alignment for main subjects. Administrators can mix outsourced content with locally-developed materials while training teachers to support and extend those resources. This is fast and effective but requires strong leadership and may mean temporarily reducing subject options for cost or manageability reasons.
- Outsource full digital coverage for curriculum while transitioning staff into supporting and customizing those resources.
Pros: Fastest route to comprehensive digital instruction and consistent coverage across subjects. Cons: Existing staff can be sidelined unless you arrange rapid training and integration into the deployment; you’ll need a plan to blend vendor content with your district’s expectations and identity.
Question 3: What do you already have?
Below are common readiness scenarios. Identify which one matches your district so you can pick the right model from Question 2.
Scenario 1: No online learning systems, no LMS, no office suites; a few site subscriptions or apps used sporadically. Teachers mostly rely on traditional lesson planning and projection tools. No end-to-end matrix of courses, lessons, resources, and assessments. Administration has only top-line pacing guides and limited visibility into daily lesson work.
Scenario 2: No LMS, but some office productivity tools (Office 365 or Google) and random apps or subscription sites used for remedial or supplemental work. No consolidated resource matrix.
Scenario 3: Same as Scenario 2 but with an LMS that some teachers use and some do not.
Scenario 4: An inventory of digital resources mapped by grade and subject for core and supplemental materials. Subscriptions are accounted for.
Scenario 5: LMS in place, using Office 365 or Google, many apps and subscription sites. Teacher-led workflows exist with lessons sequenced across the term, but most navigation and student progression still require teacher direction. This model can be difficult to scale for full remote replacement because it preserves a teacher-centered whole-group orientation.
Scenario 6: Self-directed lessons and sequencing are built so students navigate most work independently, convening only for required check-ins or targeted instruction. Teachers primarily guide, convene discussions, and provide intervention for students who fall behind.
Scenario 7: Advanced mix of systems, apps, and courseware supported by a separate workflow/forms engine that routes students through personalized learning pathways (checksheets, coursesheets, and lesson sheets). This model supports automatic cohorting and individualized byways for remediation and enrichment. While full automation is still emerging, a manual implementation of this workflow—sequencing lessons end-to-end and monitoring progress—can be built now with existing tools.
Question 4: What can you do right now?
- Immediately inventory all systems and digital assets. Map them in a grid by Grade – Subject – Use so you know what is available for each course.
- Ask teachers to prepare lesson plans in sequential order (e.g., “6th Grade Math – Lesson 1”) for the remaining term and, if possible, for a full year.
- Deploy supplemental apps and subscription access you already have to as many students as possible right away.
- Focus on community building: give students a sense of belonging to your school every school day through consistent rollcalls, check-ins, and communications.
- Provide immediate training so leaders and teachers become “EduJedi”—able to flex between in-person and online learning smoothly.
- Contact the Learning Counsel for help planning implementation, selecting partners, and building a sustainable software and services architecture. We consult on models and will recommend partners where appropriate.
If you are a vendor with solutions that can help schools now, please contact us to be considered for our resource lists and announcements to readers.
Contact Learning Counsel: [email protected] or 888-611-7709 extension: 26
About the author
LeiLani Cauthen is CEO of the Learning Counsel and author of The Consumerization of Learning.