How Would a Classroom Look Like in Hybrid and In-Person Learning?
Prioritizing Reopening Schools
Last January, Maryland State called on public schools to reopen for Hybrid In-Person Learning on this coming March. According to the recent Maryland School Reopening Guidance, there are mainly three groups that will have Hybrid In-person Learning.
Harvard T.H.Chan Report vs. LEED Pilot Credits
While we are focusing on how to prioritize vaccination groups when it comes to reopen schools, I would like to share what I have learned from the” Risk Reduction Strategies for Reopening Schools” report by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (published in June 2020) along with recent LEED guidelines (published in July 2020). Then, I will use a reopening of secondary school as an example.
Here is the highlight of both publications.
A Hypothetic Example
According to the Montgomery County Public Schools current Secondary Level Curriculum Subject Areas, there are in two categories:
1. Reduce the number of students in a class to keep social distancing.
In order to optimally achieve this social distancing goal, I recategorized the learning subjects into 3 major areas to reduce the number of students per class.
Once we have this new category in mind, the hyper in-person learning scenario would look like the following:
Assuming there are 20–24 students per classroom per teacher (source: National Center for Education Statistics). During the hybrid learning mode, one third to half of the original class will stay in the classroom take lessons, and the other 8–12 students will stay home practice quiz or doing online learning. The rest of students will take non-in-class seating required class (see the subject on the last category in the chart above).
Then we can rearrange the class seating layout according to the reduced student’s number.
Humanities subject classrooms in the secondary school are module with approximately 30’-32’ . Maintain 5 feet circulation space to the entrance and 8 feet clear to the lecture wall, a 960 sf classroom can accommodate 10–16 students.
Science subjects’ classrooms are the same size but with wider seating arrangement and with laboratory counters (with sink or other equipment etc.) Therefore, we can just maintain the existing furniture layout and take out one spot for each counter to keep the optimally social distancing.
2. Alternate the classroom break time to not over crowed the corridor
At the secondary school (9th to 12th grade), students transition from “one class in one classroom with one teacher for the entire school day” to “taking multiple courses taught by different teachers in different classrooms”. This kind of learning system will result in a crowded corridor if all students. (2)(see image below)
Therefore, if we alternate the class, the corridor situation during the break time will mitigate as the diagram below.
Resources and References:
- In this article, a standard classroom size was reference from article “Minimum Classroom Size and Number of Students per Classroom”.
- According to the CDC’s recommendation: “Do I need to wear a mask and avoid close contact with others if I have gotten 2 doses of the vaccine?” People who have been fully vaccinated still need to wear masks, keep social distancing, avoid crowds and avoid poorly ventilated spaces.
- If you are interested in reading more references or illustrations in this related article, check out here.
