About this Guide

What is this Guide?

This guide helps education leaders–state, district, intermediary, schools–to create the organizational conditions, culture, and climate to ensure student success in a remote or hybrid secondary school learning environment. When used strategically, it can help strengthen the factors that lead to meaningful student learning in these challenging instructional environments.

This guide is directly driven by the insights and experiences of educators in the field. Through surveys and focus groups, we collected data from middle and high school educators across the country and organized findings into five categories: structures and systems, teaching and learning, social emotional learning, professional development, and family engagement. These categories represent the sections of the guide. Each section contains unique subsections, but all include a hybrid learning subsection as strategy that contains elements likely to outlive the pandemic.

What the guide IS	What it ISN’T
Focused on district and/or intermediary support for school-based instructional leadership Focused on Black, Latinx, and low-income students Looking at both remote and hybrid learning A curated set of tools, protocols and other resources to help districts and school leaders keep their focus on equity priorities and outcomes, especially for their most vulnerable students	A resource on topics unrelated to instructional leadership A step-by-step manual An endorsement of any of the brands or companies referenced as examples A college and career readiness (CCR) handbook, although each section contains strategies and resources that contribute to CCR of students.

Who is it Meant for?

The primary audience of Connected and Engaged is district leaders and intermediaries who provide support and solutions for principals and other instructional leaders.

A secondary audience is the principals who are responsible for managing and monitoring the quality and methodology of instruction provided by their faculty and staff.

 Finally, the strategies, protocols, and tools can be used by teachers themselves, as they continue to modify their teaching techniques for this new educational environment.