DRAWING / DZ-01.06Shipped / shippedREV. 2021-12

Gates Foundation: U.S. K-12

What do educators need now when the normal publishing cycle is already too late?

Led a team of five educators to ship 100 practical resources for the U.S. K-12 crisis response in the first 90 days of nationwide pandemic school closures. Used by 1,000 districts, state education departments, and Teach For America.

shippedISSUED. Drafting status: ISSUED.
Part01.06GroupShippedBuilt byCrisis ResponseFirst built2020Figures2021-12
Open the work →https://www.marshall.org/covid/
Figures as of 2021-12. Analysis, not investment advice.

Ship while the conditions are still changing

Nationwide school closures created the same questions in thousands of places at once: how to run an accessible virtual class, distribute devices, hold an IEP meeting, monitor progress, support grief, and help families build a workable day at home.

Within the first 90 days, a five-educator crisis-response team assembled 100 practical resources. The work reached 1,000 school districts, state departments of education, and Teach For America.

Build a publishing system, not a content pile

Speed made selection more important. The operating work was to listen for questions repeating across the field, distinguish urgent patterns from local exceptions, find practitioners with credible answers, and turn those answers into something another school could use immediately.

The toolkit was organized around the work educators and families were trying to do - not the internal structure of the institutions publishing it. Accessibility, instruction, student support, family engagement, and planning became the parts list.

What shipped

The collection included guidance for virtual IEP meetings, device and broadband access, student engagement, special education, checks for understanding, family routines, grief and loss, and the first uncertain return to school.

Open the working files

COVID-19 Educator Toolkit - the live collection of tools, tips, and resources assembled during the immediate response.

Marshall Street Impact Report: Year 1 - the wider first-year operating record: 75,000 students served, 1,900 school leaders connected, and one million parents reached.