The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most dramatic and far-reaching events to impact education in recent years. At the onset of this global crisis, schools were required to pivot, with little warning or planning, to educate the more than 50 million school-aged children in the United States through some form of nontraditional instruction (NTI), which often involved technology-based distance education. While shifts to NTI for short time periods may be feasible for many students, the potential impact of long-term NTI on students with extensive support needs (ESNs) and their families, especially in rural areas, may be particularly acute. In this article, we discuss specific strategies that address and incorporate what we know about extended NTI in rural school districts, including both lessons learned and areas of concern, with particular attention to the role and importance of caregivers. We outline ways that caregivers can be supported and how natural environment teaching provides one useful framework for efforts to reduce skill regression and to increase the overall potential for skill generalization when traditional schooling is interrupted.

COVID-19 大流行是近年来影响教育的最引人注目、影响最深远的事件之一。在这场全球危机开始时，学校被要求在几乎没有警告或计划的情况下，通过某种形式的非传统教学 (NTI) 来教育美国超过 5000 万学龄儿童，这通常涉及技术——基于远程教育。虽然对许多学生来说，短期转向 NTI 可能是可行的，但长期 NTI 对有广泛支持需求 (ESN) 的学生及其家庭的潜在影响可能特别严重，尤其是在农村地区。在本文中，我们讨论了解决和整合我们对农村学区扩展 NTI 的了解的具体策略，包括经验教训和关注领域，尤其要注意看护者的作用和重要性。我们概述了可以支持看护者的方式，以及自然环境教学如何提供一个有用的框架，以减少技能退化，并在传统学校教育中断时增加技能泛化的整体潜力。