Remote Attention to Social-Emotional Needs

Social Media

DURING THE CLOSURE of his district’s buildings during the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert Zywicki took a multipronged approach as superintendent of the Mount Olive Township School District in Flanders, N.J. He used social media to build the social-emotional learning competencies of perseverance, teamwork and empathy.

During the pandemic, Zywicki has produced a daily blog to update members of his community on the evolving closure and remote learning. Each blog post concludes with hyperlinks to social media posts by his educators that promote effective practices of remote learning at each school. The northern New Jersey district has 4,600 students.

The blog is shared across the district’s social media accounts, which Zywicki says builds per-severance and a sense of teamwork among educators, students and parents.