In the movie Apollo 13, NASA engineers faced a horrendous and unanticipated crisis – how to return a severely damaged space capsule with three astronauts safely to earth. While one NASA leader declared it a worst disaster, another proclaimed that their response to this crisis will be “… our finest hour”. Educators are called to make teaching and learning in the Time of COVID one of education’s finest hours.
Causing learning is about moving educational needles. The needle is a proverbial measure of change from what one knew or could do before learning compared with what one knows and can do after learning. Good teaching positively causes learning needles to move positively. In the Time of COVID we need to be more constructive and attentive in how we move each child’s learning needle. Schooling, whether in-person or at-home, must move all needles this school year. This will be an Apollo 13-like endeavor and worthy of being called a “a finest hour”.
Take Away
Like Apollo 13, we are working in life and death times. 183,000-plus deaths in our nation and counting tells us that how we conduct school for children and staff can endanger the lives of people. This is a horrendous and unanticipated crisis. There is no single response regarding in-school and at-home learning but 130,930 responses – one for each of the individual school districts in the United States.
Some of our challenges in this crisis include the following.
- Lack of a close teacher-child relationship in teaching and learning. A teacher-child connection in school is a close relationship in all the right ways. Teachers are invested in a child’s personality and annual education. Children are innately attached to their teacher as a significant and caring adult. An everyday smile, back and forth, is all it takes for a teacher and child to want to do their best for each other. The loss of this relationship means we must find other ways to create this essential connection.
- Children without Internet or poor Internet lose interest. We are in yet another division of the haves and have nots in our society. Children with adequate Internet connection can engage in real time with their teachers. Children without Internet or a weak and inconsistent connection cannot engage in real time with their teachers. Real time connection matters. Seeing real faces everyday, even on a screen, matters. When a screen cannot connect in the morning or it constantly loses its connection, it is easy for a child to walk away from the screen and lose a day of learning. Days of no connection can grow into weeks.
- Paper and pencil children feel disconnected. A second class of studenthood is inadvertently created when we acknowledge children who have no Internet connection and often no adult at home during the school day and provide them with paper and pencil daily assignments. With every good intention, we create, deliver, collect and evaluate backpacked lessons. However, these children cannot see real faces anyday and this multiplies their loss of teaching and learning intimacy.
- It is a contentious time. Not only is there animus between those who perceive a high personal risk for the virus and those who reject their risk, advocates for expedient and cautious school openings, and “vaxxers” and “anti-vaxxers”, there is constant irritation between school and parents who must work, do not have available child care, and cannot be home to supervise at-home learning children. Parents, like children, with no Internet options feel like outsiders to Zooming schools.
What do we know?
Some things a school can address; some things it cannot. Human attitudes are what they are and often they are irrational and resistant to change. A person who believes in the wisdom of science-based information as well as a person who does not will hold to their convictions in spite of proof to the contrary. Schools should not engage in non-educational attitudinal struggles. It is a no-winner.
Lack of proximity makes teaching and learning more difficult but not impossible. Distanced teaching and learning is a hurdle more than an obstacle. And, it is not a new hurdle. Rural and sparsely populated areas historically have found ways to leap distances. Tele-teaching has its own skills sets that effectively have caused students to learn over time. We need to learn from educators in states like North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming who have conquered distanced learning.
“I care about your learning” is teaching magic. The key to teacher-child relations is that the teacher cares about the child’s learning. That feeling of care is potent and irreplaceable. Whether face-to-face or distanced, when a child has a teacher who demonstrates caring about her learning, they are connected. Children will go to great lengths to meet the teaching demands of a caring teacher.
Show me – personally. No matter if the adult is a teacher, coach, director, mentor or guide, when the adult asks a child to “show me”, learning becomes focused on personal results. In the Time of COVID, all teaching and learning must include “show me” moments. Show me your math work, your writing, how to play that note, how to draw that apple, how to say it in Spanish, how to mill it on a lathe. Show me personally what you have learned moves the learning needle.
We will talk again tomorrow. Every new learning needs the promise of tomorrow. Tomorrow, we will pick up where we ended today. Tomorrow, we will learn something new. Tomorrow, we will be together again. Tomorrow promises continuity as well as new starts. “Tomorrow, we …” brings people back to the task of teaching and learning.
These things we know and knowing them allows us to proceed.
Why is this thus?
This can be our finest hour, because educators have the talent and the will to meet the challenges of COVID.
Doom-sayers predict that children today will have significant and long-standing educational deficits. The concept of a “summer slide” turned into a “spring and summer slide” in 2020. The prediction is a generational loss. Educators love challenges. This is a challenge that best teaching practices in the Time of COVID can meet. If Apollo 13 can be brought safely to earth, we can cause our children to gain the educational outcomes they need and deserve. I have not yet met a teacher who is throwing in the towel of COVID defeat.
Schools are communities of always changing members invested in educating children. We are constantly restocking our faculty and resources as the community. Many school districts are investing in more and new staff and faculty to meet the challenge of educating all children. Difficult times require new and fresh resources. The talent we need will be present.
There has been no better time for the best of best educational practices. As school leaders lean upon science-based health data they can lean upon science-based pedagogy. These practices are not necessarily discipline-bound. Science-based reading practices fit PK-12 reading of language arts, social studies, math, science, social studies, art, and world language materials. Sound lesson planning designs fit every unit and daily lesson. The challenge can be met with best teaching practices practiced by every teacher.
To do
Every child every day. No matter if teaching and learning is in-person or school-to-home, each teacher has to connect with every child every day. Authors of yesteryear wrote about children who sat in classrooms day after day without engaging with a teacher. The child was present yet invisible. Today, every child must be engaged everyday with two simple questions: What you are learning? How do you feel about your learning? Asking and answering begins daily engagement.
Personal phone calls – talk. At-home and non-Internet children need a teacher’s phone call every day. If I cannot see you, I can talk with you. The sound of a teacher’s voice calling “me” continues the intimacy between teacher and student. The absence of that voice makes a child wonder “does my teacher still care?” It is easy to make a call – make it.
Show me personally. Show me virtually. There must be a “show time” in every lesson.
Faster feedback turn around. When children are spread between in-school and at-home, it is easy for response rates to straggle. Because of the lack of proximity, straggling can be contagious. The time between a child turning in a virtual assignment and getting feedback on that work is essential for keeping all children engaged. It is imperative that the feedback loop be quickened in order to keep all children in the loop. Do not tolerate straggling. Do not become a reason for straggling.
More virtual collaboration. At-home learners need not be isolated from each other. If teachers can Zoom into their homes, children can Zoom into each other’s homes. Set up chat rooms for children to collaborate on their school work. If critics tells us that the children are losing the value of socializing at school, create socializing away from school. Kids game with each other, so create opportunities for them to learn with each other.
Keep all appointments. I am told that we can adjust appointments on our calendars, just don’t “mess with my appointment with my hair stylist or barber. Those appointments are sacred.” Appointed times for school need to be just as sacred. Every appointment missed moves the due date for work completed backwards. Every backward movement means that children will not learn in the 2020-21 school year what they should learn.
The big duh!
Every educational endeavor is a leap of faith – we really don’t know how children use the things we taught and they learned until some in the future. We look at the Class of 2010 and observe how their education shaped life a decade after graduation. We will not know the effects of teaching and learning in the Time of COVID until time has passed. We need to land our Apollo 13 – our COVID-affected students – so that their future can become what they need it to be