This week, we take the opportunity to highlight our long standing partnership with Cox Academy, a school dedicated to “empowering every student to go out and change the world!”
Cox Academy is in the Elmhurst neighborhood of East Oakland and serves grades Pre-K - 5th grade by providing rigorous instruction along with critical thinking and problem-solving skills to set the foundation for success in higher educational settings. With a heavy focus on the whole child, Cox has strived to develop a robust multi-tiered system of support and interventions to not only engage students, but their family and ecological systems as well. This is where our partnership thrives!
Recently, Cox Academy has welcomed their new principal, Omar Currie. Omar joined Cox after a year living abroad in Mexico City, Mexico, and he brings quite a bit of experience teaching and leading in schools from North Carolina, to Washington DC, to the Bay (YAY Area). He is a huge college sports fan, and in his free time he enjoys basketball, reading, and dancing. Omar lives in San Francisco with his partner, Ryan.
Although the world has been forced to shift learning practices and teaching skills online, Team Cox and the entire MTSS Team have collaborated to provide relevant and meaningful ways to do this thing called “Distance Learning.” This impacts so many extraordinary kids, considering special education at Cox is based on a full inclusion model (meaning, students with specific and/or specialized needs spend the majority of their time in general education classroom settings), which ultimately result in secondary benefit in general education classrooms. Through tons of teamwork and collaboration Team Cox has been successful in implemented the following IEP accommodations, which result in supporting the entire classroom:
- Co-hosted zoom classroom (with para support) to provide a virtual co-teaching model
- Visual schedule links for easy access and visual support
- Visual prompts with zoom button images (shared with all team members) for non-verbal cues
- Use of breakout rooms to replicate break spaces (as much as possible) for students to take breaks (structured and unstructured) inside classrooms
- Use of breakout rooms for teacher or para check-in’s
- Use of breakout rooms for movement and space breaks
- Use of breakout rooms to provide incentives, reminders and/or redirections
- They have also been creative in how they provide socializing opportunities for peer to peer interactions and created “Friday Social Block”. Friday social block is a block of time added to all student schedules where each grade level, facilitated by a member of the SSA team, just gets to have fun. They watch videos, socialize about how they are doing, play Kahoot!, and spend time virtually hanging out together.
Blog Post Written By: Toshia Mears, Director of School Partnerships
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