Regardless of the class setting, Brown said, “the UDL principles are the same. We just need to give educators the means to apply them.”   

Said Fry, “We’re just trying to add more tools to teachers’ toolboxes, because you never know when [one] might work for a student.”   

Knotts attended the webinars to find online tools “so that I can reach my students now and when we get back to school,” she said. She discovered new resources like Flipgrid, a video discussion platform, and Thinglink, which allows educators to make images into interactive graphics.    

She also found that there was more to software she was already using, like Read&Write for Google. “I didn’t realize all of the tools that were in that particular app,” she said of the text-to-speech and speech-to-text G-suite add-on. “As we move forward that will be really big for my students trying to memorize vocabulary.”   

Davis was looking for ways her teachers could keep students concentrating on reading for comprehension — difficult enough in normal times, she said, let alone during a pandemic. In one webinar, she learned about Edpuzzle, a platform that enables educators to make interactive video lessons. A teacher could record herself reading a text, then insert stopping points with questions for students to answer before they could continue listening.     

“Bingo,” said Davis. “That’s the sort of engagement we’re looking for.” 

In the fall   

Brown said the upcoming training series will feature several new resources, including tools for teachers working with pre-kindergarten students and students with disabilities.   

She and Fry will also “infuse discussion around equity” in each webinar, she said, focusing educators on the “many environmental factors that [can’t be] controlled” — everything from students’ access to technology and high-speed internet to their feeling of safety — when instruction happens outside a school building.     

One such variable is how students regulate their emotions and behaviors. In physical classrooms, teachers often have calm-down corners or other spaces for students feeling frustrated or overwhelmed. When students are attending class from their own living rooms, however, there is no obvious alternative.   

After participating in UDL coaching with Brown and Fry the previous year, Micheala Junkins of The Bancroft School in Wilmington created an alternative herself. Junkins, a first-grade teacher, will share her digital calm-down corner as a guest presenter during one of the fall webinars. She used Bitmoji, an app that allows users to create personalized digital avatars, to build a virtual room linking students to breathing exercises, yoga instructions, online coloring and other relaxing activities.   

Junkins said she was initially skeptical of UDL because “it seemed like a lot of extra work.” That was then. Now, she said analyzing her upcoming lessons, anticipating challenges her students might face and brainstorming ways around them “just comes so naturally.     

“It’s a part of what teaching is anyway,” she said, “because you want what’s best for your students.”   

Educators interested in attending the live training series can find registration information on the Teaching Remotely with UDL informational flyer.   

Recordings of the spring training series are available to educators on Schoology.