California’s Simi Valley Unified School District first tested Lightspeed’s Topcat instructional audio system at an elementary school serving deaf and hearing-impaired students, but quickly realized the system had much broader impact. 

Kristin Ortiz is a second-grade teacher at Dora L. Small Elementary School in South Portland, Maine. When she first starting using Lightspeed’s Topcat instructional audio system, she thought it was just a way to help project her voice so that students could hear clearly throughout the classroom. She quickly found it was a way to better connect with students, something that is crucial to learning.

Even before the COVID-19 era, getting children outdoors on a regular basis was recognized as contributing to the students’ mental health, happiness and overall well-being, in addition to high student engagement and test scores, especially as more people live in urban communities.

Educators, school administrators and others providing services in schools face new challenges as schools plan for classrooms that can pivot between remote and in-person learning, as well as hybrid models to keep classroom populations low. Likely measures, including masks worn by both educators and students and physical distancing minimize the risks of COVID-19 transmission, but pose additional barriers to learning.