As educators were beginning the transition to online learning due to Coronavirus, Castleton alumna Dr. Marie Hubley Alcock ’96 recognized the need for safe and secure classrooms meant to be used for children.
Through her nonprofit Tomorrow’s Education Network – which is dedicated to promoting and supporting all types of student literacy – she partnered with Elite Learning to offer 500 of these classrooms for free. She’s also covering the cloud costs through her nonprofit for teachers using this tool.
“We’re just going to keep doing it until everyone has what they need,” she said.
Dr. Alcock is also uniquely equipped to help educators navigate teaching online. Through her business, Learning Systems Associates, she has worked with organizations across the world as an education consultant, dedicated to providing professional development, curriculum instruction, and assessment design outside of the traditional classroom models. Her book, “Bold Moves for Schools: How we Create Remarkable Learning Environments” addresses a path to success designing these remarkable learning environments using the four structures of time, space, and the grouping of adults and children. She described it as, “Design learning based on how learning is intended to be, and not fitting into an industrial model.”
The schools she works with in Hong Kong transitioned to online delivery more than three months ago, which helped Dr. Alcock predict some of the things that schools based in the United States would need, including the security of personal information and meeting spaces for staff that are remote and private.
“Part of my goal is to support a profession that’s in crisis. We’re worried about the social and emotional support of the children and the families,” she said. “I can’t just push out my same old curriculum to these kids right now. They are stressed.”
According to Dr. Alcock, curriculum needs to be presented so students can understand it and that their family's social and emotional situation is considered.
She is also mindful of how COVID-19 will change the education landscape.
“We’re not going back, so what we come back to will be a hybrid – something with the wisdom of what we’ve learned through this process and our hopes for a more contemporary education going forward,” Alcock said.