While summer camp meetings are not required to be a certain length, some educators may choose to host extended live meetings lasting several hours. These longer classes allow you to dive deep into a class topic and interact with your learners in a meaningful way. To ensure that extended classroom time is productive and worry-free, we suggest reviewing the following Outschool policies and making sure you check every box in this list.

Camper check-in

First, we ask that all educators offering longer summer camp programs review and refresh their knowledge of Zoom features for teachers, including how to properly admit learners by cross-referencing each against the student roster (never hit “Admit all”), stop video, remove learners, disable chat, disable annotations, and more. Mastering these features is critical to keeping your classroom safe.

Never leave learners alone

Our current policy states that “a teacher must be present and supervising a meeting at all times” (in other words, learners should never be left alone). To help you comply with our policy, we’re sharing some guidance on how to monitor your classroom while it’s still live and you’re not on camera, such as during a scheduled break. We want classes to be fun and a comfortable learning environment for everyone, so we encourage scheduled breaks. But we also want to make sure that learners don’t interact with each other, unmonitored, during those times, for safety reasons.

Dos & don’ts

In addition to reviewing Zoom features, here are some pro tips to keep your protect learners in your virtual classroom during learning breaks:

• Turn off your live camera whenever you step away.
• Remember that Outschool allows no substitutes for individual educators or unsupervised guest speakers. If you host a guest speaker, it is you or your organization’s responsibility to contact Trust & Safety to ensure that the Zoom security links are reset. This step ensures that the guest cannot access the classroom again and confirms that your live meeting is secure.
• Turn off all learners’ live-video camera feeds when you step away.
• Remind learners that they may not share any personal information, including personal emails, addresses, phone numbers, gaming handles etc.
• Disable all chat functions when you step away.
• Be sure to verify each learner briefly on camera after each break; that means asking each learner to turn their video on at the beginning of your next session.
• Monitor classroom walls and discussion at regular intervals after you’ve been away.
• Be mindful of safety issues and proactive in safeguarding your classroom.
• Feel free to contact support or our safety team with any questions at any time.

To actively avoid policy violations and issues between learners…

• DO NOT allow learners to remain on camera or become a meeting host while you are not on camera.
• DO NOT assign a learner to host the meeting at any time.
• DO NOT allow learners to share any personal contact information.
• DO NOT allow learners to message through live chat without you around to monitor.
• DO NOT assign learners to unmonitored break rooms during a teacher’s absence.
• DO NOT forget to verify all learners briefly on camera when rejoining after a break.
• DO NOT allow learners to hang out unsupervised during breaks or after class.

Special case for camps longer than three hours

If you would like access to your full camp class recording and your camp is scheduled to run for over three hours, keep in mind that you will need to end your live meeting and start a new one at the three-hour mark. You’ll then see more than one class recording in your classroom for each meeting. While the Outschool team can always access full-length class recordings, software limitations prevent us from sharing extra-long recordings through the platform with educators or families.

For a quick refresher on all of the safety policies that apply to Outschool classes, please review our Learner Safety & Privacy for Educators, Community Standards, Learner Content Moderation Policy, and kid-friendly Safety Video.