Looking back on 2020

This year has been a mix of challenges and opportunities, but because of our culture of flexibility, our team successfully pivoted to the work-from-home model without interruption to our clients.

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, this year brought a promising change to the industry, as publishers and ed tech companies are increasingly seeking to make their products more inclusive and culturally responsive. For the last several years, Westchester has been working to affect change within our one organization and within the industry. We are proud to draw upon that experience and to work as partners with many leading educational materials providers, providing reviews and revisions to their materials in order to make those materials more inclusive of all learners.

That work, as well as our experience in social-emotional learning and bilingual education, continues to infuse and influence the work our content and product teams do for our clients, embedding these principles into all of our subject area content. We look forward to 2021 and to finding new and more efficient ways to support students and teachers.
– Kevin J. Gray, President and Chief Content Officer

2020… What a year! We are so proud of the Westchester Education Services team and all of the amazing work that they have done this year. We have created intriguing and culturally inclusive materials in the areas of Social Studies and English/Language Arts, we have built amazing new Math programs for Texas and Florida, and we even worked on being part of the team to develop cutting-edge materials for the new national high school Science curriculum!

We have greatly expanded our offerings in English Language Teaching, Social-Emotional Learning, and Culturally Responsive Education to meet the ever-changing needs of our clients. We have done work for countries all over the world, from the UK and Canada, to China, and even Australia, New Zealand, and beyond. And all of this great work was done in the middle of a pandemic that has greatly changed how all of us work and play.

What is exciting is that we collaborate with content development teams who are native Spanish-speaking writers, editors, and project managers from Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Spain, and the United States. This lends a particularly unique and authentic voice to the content which really directly speaks to the students’ needs and interests. Furthermore, the project’s development teams are encouraged to use Spanish as their language of discourse and work. For me, this is an example of how Westchester Education Services demonstrates its commitment to diversity and inclusion.
– Walter Henderson, Jr., Senior Supervising Editor, ELT

My 2020 highlight was leading an expansive SEL (social-emotional learning) project that involved writing and producing passages, interactive lessons, games, videos, and self-assessment activities to help children approach SEL from a variety of interesting angles. It was rewarding to dive deeper into a subject I feel is especially relevant to children right now, and to help ensure the quality of instruction while doing so. The project gave me opportunities to collaborate with experts and further explore a subject I’ve been very interested in. I look forward to continuing the SEL journey in 2021.
– Megan Overman, Senior Editor

I was fortunate to work with a cross-functional team within Westchester to think about, and plan for, an innovative Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) program. We discussed many phenomenal topics in an effort to engage students with science practice and engineering solutions while also teaching fundamental core concepts. With Kevin Gray and David Bailis, we developed an authentic conceptual storyline for the program.
– Tim Yetzina, Senior Supervising Editor, STEM

2020 has been a challenging, but exciting year for us. The global pandemic has presented both personal and professional challenges, but there have been some exciting things that are worth highlighting:We’ve made a successful and practically seamless transition to a work from home model while we ride out the COVID19 storm. We’ve mastered many new tools and learned new ways to collaborate, but we are looking forward to the day where we can work together in person again.

We continued to grow and expand our resources and skillsets both internally and externally. One of the major goals for my team this year was to improve our ability to handle more creatively challenging projects, and I am so pleased to see a great improvement in that arena.

Looking back at the thousands (even tens of thousands) of pages we’ve produced up to this point fills me with a great deal of pride and I’m continually amazed at what our team can accomplish. We’ve seen quite a bit of repeat business this year as a result of the efforts we put in during our first couple of years together, and I’m looking forward to building on the customer relationships we’ve established, and I can’t wait to see what we can do next!
– Chris Herrfurth, Production Manager

The highlight for me this year was seeing how everyone came together in 2020 to navigate a new terrain in work-from-home collaboration. Colleagues and clients were champs!

I had the pleasure of managing projects that included writing/design/ production of fun and visually stunning Infographics, ELA Worksheets for young learners, and being a key partner in bringing a new SEL program to market.

I am grateful to be a part of this incredibly talented Westchester Education Services team.
– Rosemary Dannin, Project Manager

What really made an impression on me this year was the agile way that publishers and ed tech providers have explored and implemented innovative solutions to meet the urgent needs of students in these difficult times. I’ve seen everything from the re-imagining and retooling of existing products and delivery modalities to the development of entirely new ways to help students learn in a changing world. It’s been exciting for our team to have been a part of this – helping publishers help kids.
– Tim Cross, Business Development Manager