Little is known about how the COVID-19 pandemic relates to child and parent functioning in a rural population. The present study investigated how disability status and parent factors related to resilience in a rural population before and after the shift to remote instruction. Parents of elementary-aged children in a rural area of the U.S. completed an online questionnaire, rating their own functioning and their child's academic, cognitive, and socioemotional functioning (1) retrospectively thinking back to a month before the pandemic, and (2) at the time of the survey, approximately four months after the onset of pandemic changes. Parents of children with disabilities perceived stronger child resilience through the pandemic transition than parents of children without disabilities. Additionally, parents who better maintained their work-life balance and support through the pandemic transition reported stronger resilience in their children. These results highlight the importance of supporting all children and parents during difficult transitions (e.g., providing additional resources so that parents can maintain similar levels of balance and support through the transition), including those students who have experienced less adversity pre-transition.

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Preparation of pre-service professionals to work in the field of special education requires explicitly taught approaches to collaboration as a part of a multidisciplinary team. The authors' faculty learning community provides a model to emanate the skills, knowledge, and dispositions of a high-functioning collaborative team expected from pre-service professionals through a mock individualized education program (IEP) team video series. Issues (origin story), solutions (video modeling), and areas of future research (mock interdisciplinary student teams) will be discussed. A description of Cox's (n.d.) 16 recommendations to frame a faculty learning community, video production, and other relevant topics for potential implementation will also be included. The faculty learning community and its video modeling products are presented as an exemplar for interdisciplinary, cross-departmental/institutional expertise to model a positive student-centered mock IEP team.