In Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove”, Augustus McCrae says, “Yesterday is gone and there is no getting it back”. Gus was talking about the tragedies of life on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. In our contemporary world, we can mirror Gus and say, “COVID is changing the way we cause children to learn and when it is over there will be no going back to school exactly the way it was. Yesterday is gone.” It is hard to find a similar event in our recent national or state histories that shuttered school houses like COVID has. Hopefully, COVID is a one and done. Regardless, COVID will make things different in our future schools.
Yesterday
Two months ago, virtual or remote teaching and learning was the exception to regular school. Remote learning was the venue of the Khan Academy and home schoolers. For twenty years, synchronous instructional television (ITV) connected in-school students to curricula they could not receive in regular classrooms. Students enrolled in AP courses, college colleges, and rich elective courses. Almost every new curricular product on the school market came with digital features, many of which were accessed by teacher and students anywhere and anytime. Forward-leaning teachers captured their initial instruction on digitized formats and students accessed these when they are absent from school or need a review of what the teacher said, demonstrated and clarified. In almost every application thus far, virtual or remote teaching and learning has been an adjunct to regular, daily, classroom-based teaching and learning. COVID makes an abrupt change to past practice and is forcing new practices. Today, there is no in-school teaching and learning; everything is remote.
Break and Make
In mid-March, many districts made the decision to close all school programming for several weeks to a month. Luckily for some, this coincided with their calendared spring break, so the cancellation seemed to fit into place. Some state governors simultaneously declared all public schools in their state closed for a month. The general idea of school boards and governors was that closure would allow for a deep cleaning at school and for the influenza to pass. Remote learning was quickly designed as a practicing of recent instruction or a brief enrichment opportunity. COVID did not agree.
The first month of remote education divided school districts into yet another division of haves and have nots. Some districts have extraordinary technology capacity, meaning one digital device per student, and others have little to no capacity. Some districts have explored e-learning as a school option for snow days and begun training teachers and students for out-of-school education and other districts have no pre-COVID conversation about remote education. Finally, some school districts have the leadership capacity to make a dramatic sea change toward remote education and other districts will follow later.
Education in the Time of COVID
Today, we are considering the probability that the 2019-20 school year will end with schools closed. Today, we are considering how to provide two-plus months of school remotely. Instead of practice exercises of what children learned in February and early March, we are moving into ew and initial instruction provided to all students remotely. That means all school instruction to all students remotely. Special education modifications remotely. Assessments of learning remotely. Elementary reading groups remotely. Virtual chemistry labs remotely. All academics remotely. Yesterday is gone. Today and tomorrow are very different.
Past Models of Lasting Change
I consider how we adapted to life with personal computers in the 80s and what that means for life with remote schooling today. In the 80s, some of us were pioneers looking at the first Compaq, Commodore, Toshiba, Texas Instrument, IBM PCs, and Apple 1 machinery and marveling at what we could do at our desk sites. Each year provided a new iteration and as we moved to new hard- and software, the technology mainstream followed along. The first Motorola mobile phones were amazing! And, every year provided a new amazing! In the early 90s, the yesterday of no technology was gone and there was no interest in getting it back. Mobile technology changed the world.
Remote schooling will mirror innovations in technology and just as we don’t want to return to our first Commodore or Motorola StarTac, we will not want school to be exactly as it was before remote learning.
After one week of remote schooling, my 7th grade grand daughter sits on the sofa with her PC on her lap, I-Phone propped to her right so she can read her e-mails and texts and several printed pages on her left so she is reminded of a lesson’s directions. She splits her screen so she can read citations and write her essay. When her screen blips, she opens Zoom and immediately sees her friends/classmates for a scheduled collaboration on a math assignment. When a question arises that the group cannot answer, she uses her phone to text her teacher and five minutes later shares what he said with the group.
She says to me, “Gramps, I get more schoolwork done in less time doing it this way. I don’t know how I will do on the tests, but I am reading and re-reading and editing what I write much more than I would at school. But, I miss being at school with my friends. I miss the structure of a school day.”
An hour later, she complained, “Why doesn’t my teacher get back to me quicker. I need his help now!”.
On FaceTime I talk with grandchildren in two other school districts each in a different state. In one district, children are waiting for their next week’s assignments to arrive via US Postal Service. In the other district, children received batches of e-mailed assignments with scant directions. “I am not a teacher”, my daughter-in-law lamented. “I need directions that I can understand so that I can help my children.”
In the immediacy of education in the time of COVID, we are all over the landscape. If there is disconnect between the federal government and state governments regarding medical supplies, it is even greater between schools and homes regarding ongoing education.
And, therein lies the challenge for tomorrow. Remote education done well will provide some children with powerful new learning tools and strategies, new environments within which to learn, and more collaborative tools to use with teachers and fellow students. Some children will thrive in remote schooling and be loathe to return to regular school. Remote education not done well will leave too many children one-half to a year behind in their educational progress. Those children will not thrive, but will languish.
My discussion with area school districts includes the following:
- If you are not a pioneer in remote education, be a good and high-quality follower. Schools need not invent their way through out-of-school education in the time of COVID. Find a credible and similar school district that is moving forward and replicate their movement. It is impossible to overcome past capacity needs in the immediacy and there are more important daily needs to be met.
- Achieve learning equity for all children. If you are mailing out assignments, make all assignments quality learning. If you are on a learning management system, assure that all children are getting quality instruction and learning opportunities. Quality over quantity.
- Do not try to replicate a day in school in your remote education design. Instead of seven hours of class time, strive for three to four hours of student engagement.
- Create teacher accessibility. Children will have more questions in remote education than they do in-school. While a parent may be in the room at home, children want to talk with their teacher. Telephone. E-mail. FaceTime. Once lessons are in the hands of children, teachers need to be accessible.
- Make everything parent friendly. For each new and initial chunk of instruction, provide parent instructions to assist them to assist their children. Creating parent instructions takes time, but without good parent instructions, we lose whole families to the frustration of “We cannot do this!!”.
- Use teacher strengths. Within a grade level or subject area team, let the teacher with the most expertise create remote education assignments. It is not necessary that every teacher creates lessons, because some are not as adept at remote teaching and learning. This is a fact. Let the creative create and others do the daily contact with children to assist their learning. Let teachers who are really good at group work meet with children face-to-face virtually. Let teachers who are good at differentiation and lesson modification connect with children who need personal assistance. Differentiate the roles of teaching.
- Use all instructional personnel. School closure does not mean furloughing teacher aides and paraprofessionals. Each child who benefited from their instructional assistance yesterday will need their assistance tomorrow.
- Educate all children. Children with special education needs need more and different assistance in remote education. A school’s responsibilities for an IEP does not stop if a school engages in remote education. Children with needs for enrichment need attention in remote education. Special needs are magnified in remote education.
Next Tomorrows
When COVID 19 leaves us three realities (or more) will confront us.
- Most people will want to re-stabilize life by returning to pre-COVID. We will re-open schools next fall and many students and parents will expect the normalcy they lost. While we look backward at that old normalcy, we need to be cognizant of what we learned using remote education.
- COVID and remote teaching and learning will cause us to re-evaluate what is essential in 4K-12 education. Some pre-COVID school functions and roles may not seem as essential after COVID. The advantages of remote instructional delivery for some children and some curricula will need to be integrated into the new normal. Education will have evolved and we will need to recognize its new forms.
- And, sadly, there may well be a COVID X and we will return to remote education. We need to consider what we have learned from COVID 19, make plans for a new and improved remote education, and be ready for our unknown future.