Shrewsbury Public Schools
Goals & Guiding Principles for Remote Learning

During the school closure period due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our district has shifted to a remote learning model.  The goals and guiding principles for remote learning in the Shrewsbury Public Schools are:

Goals

I.  Keeping our students connected to educators and classmates in ways that enhance their well-being

II.  Engaging students in remote learning, with a focus on:

A.  Providing supports to help ALL students learn at home

B.  Maintaining and developing key academic and critical thinking skills

C.  Helping students learn important academic content 

Guiding Principles

• Maximize access by doing whatever we can to overcome barriers to remote learning to reach all students to the greatest extent possible
   
• Create consistency by providing guidelines for students, parents, and educators
   
• Empower educators to work within those guidelines to determine how to best achieve the goals
   
• Provide structure and predictability so that students, parents, and educators know what to expect
   
• Focus on the essential, since remote learning cannot replicate all that we would normally do in school
   
• Emphasize independent, differentiated, and varied student work as parents have varied capacity to assist with home learning, so that there are options for different students' learning needs, and to promote at-home learning that doesn’t require technology
   
• Institute accountability with flexibility and grace in order to assign students responsibility for engaging with assignments and learning tasks, while doing our best to support students and families who are facing significant challenges that may get in the way