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The School That Will Be Cannot Be The School That Was

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The compelling push to return children to school assumes that the school they left is the school they return to.  It is not.  The push also assumes that school is the preferred place for children to be learners.   This assumption also is not fully valid.  Now, what?  The answer is our understanding that the school that is now is not the school that was last March and the school that will be this spring and next fall must reflect what pandemic education is teaching us.

A school day last March was a lot like every school day for the years before.  From every corner of the schoolhouse, one could hear voices of children and see active children.  Singing and playing instruments in the music rooms.  Running, jumping, throwing, and catching, and loud voices in the gym.  Groups sitting and talking at tables in the media center and sitting and eating in the cafeteria.  Children walking, mingling, talking, and laughing in the hallways.  Children in classes receiving teacher-provided instruction.  Children grouped everywhere.  Only the first sentence in this paragraph about school last March lives in our school this January.  The school our children are returning to is so much unlike the school they left. 

So, what.  In truth, there is a lot of “what”.  Our pandemic schools provide parents the choice to have their children attend school or be at-home learners.  The “what” is that almost 50% of children in our schools do NOT want to return to a school deep into pandemic protocols.  The school that is today is not the school children left and children may not choose to be back until their school is like the school they want to attend. 

It is more than a requirement that everyone must wear masks at school.  Class desks are socially distanced.  There is no small group work.  A teacher will not come to your desk to give personal attention and help.  Kids can’t use their lockers or see their friends in the hallway.  Lunch is served in bags in classrooms.  No choral singing, no plays on stage, and no band or orchestra concerts.  No large groups at recess.  To diminish contact between children and teachers, some classes that were 50 minutes are now three hours long and a child only attends two very long classes each day.  No thanks, some children say.

A second understanding about then and now informs us that some children never were happy attending the school that was.  Our historic model of school wants children to be extroverts, sharers, talkers, socializers, and willing to be around and with classmates five days a week for 180 school days.  Our academic, activity, arts, and athletics life in school constantly requires children to be with other children.  Collaboration and group participation are indirectly part of our educational evaluation processes.  Children who do not mix well often did not prosper in the school that was.  Consider a child you knew to be highly introverted and how well that child prospered in the school that was.  Do you see that child today in the school that is?  Not with pandemic choice.  The option to be an at-home learner has become the schooling of choice for a significant number of children.  They no longer are stressed by the demands to socialize and cooperate and collaborate.  These children are prospering as at-home learning because they are happier at home than at school. 

On the other hand, the need for personal and private time does not resonate with all children.  Just as many children prefer and require the social life of school.  Our new understanding is this: if our real interest is meeting the educational needs of all children, then at-home learning is how we should meet the needs of some children in the school that will be.  Not all, but some require a  choice of where to learn.

This should be no surprise to adults.  Consider how many of us are now working from home.  Note the use of words.  Learning at home and working from home.  Interesting.  The office no longer is required for every kind of work and working from home is now and will continue to be a way of life in many businesses.  The business model changed and adults learned to prosper in this way of doing their work.  If it is good for some adults, why wouldn’t it be good for some students?

The school that will be should not be like the school that was.  The pandemic has wrung out a number of our prior assumptions about schooling and beliefs of what is best schooling for all children.  The school that we provide and ask children to attend today, the school that is, will and must further evolve into the school that will be.  If that future school reflects all that we have learned in the Time of COVID, it will not be the school that was.

What Did We Learn? Lesson #7: At-Home Learning Workshops

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As the classroom has become an instructional studio, the place where each child does her schoolwork remotely has become an at-home learning workshop.  This is not Grampa’s workshop with a thick-topped wooden workbench and wall of hanging hand tools.  A school child’s workshop is a table top where a pad of paper and pencil, or laptop, chromebook or tablet lay.  Some days, it is a child’s lap as she sits on the sofa or is propped on her bed.  Every at-home learner has a learning workshop place.  This is a COVID-effect.  It is a reality that we need to understand, support, enhance, and appreciate.

New concept:  Every remote learner has an at-home place or places for doing schoolwork and these places are her learning workshop.  Think about a writer’s workshop that is a place for thinking, writing, editing, and rewriting.  A writer’s workshop is about the writing process not the place.  A learning workshop is the place where an at-home learner engages in the processes of learning.

Remote education put an end to classroom fussiness about how a student sits at a desk during class time.  A teacher who once harped “Now, sit up straight”, no longer has a concern for posture.  An at-home learner will not hear “Both feet on the floor, please”.  And, about those neatnik comments.  A teacher who frowned at a student’s desk that was a mess and dissed a child saying, “No wonder you can’t find your assignment!”, need not be concerned.  A child’s at-home desk or schoolwork area is that child’s domain.  And, no one need say, “No hats in this classroom, please”.  At-home children set their own standards for how and where they work and how they sit and what they wear while doing schoolwork.  “Clothing, please, when on camera” is all we ask.

“Oh, and be kind to and respectful of each other”.  Cannot forget this in our on-line environment.

This is great!  It says for a first time that all we are interested in during class time today is what a child thinks, says, learns, can show in writing or media, and how she feels about her learning.  The absence of school-centered demands allows us to shift most appropriately to learning demands. 

“Show me or talk to me about your work and let me see your smile.”  And, I will show you my smile as we talk about your learning.

This is the essence of a remote education connection called “class”.  This statement tells us that we are approaching a real performance-based education.  All the other insignificant yet enforced regimens of classroom behavior are suspended for at-home learners. 

In-school teaching can enhance a child’s at-home workshop.  As we provide children with digital devices and Internet hook-ups, we cannot forget all the other provisions a learner needs no matter her location.  She still needs books and workbooks in print form, pencils and pens and paper, and art and mechanical supplies that would not be available in kitchen drawers in most homes.  A paint brush for home walls and halls will not do for a child’s watercolor painting.  Advanced math learners need their upper-end calculators.  Chemistry and other science students need “safe” materials for home-based lab work.  We will not be sending band saws, drill presses, and lathes home for tech learners, however.  As we push at-home learners further and further into a full school curriculum, we must supply at-home learners with required materials for their at-home workshops.

High quality teaching and learning continue throughout the pandemic.  This is what we are called to do.  Our new understanding of a child’s at-home learning workshop helps us to foresee and prepare all children to be successful learners in the Time of COVID.

What Did We Learn? Lesson #6: Teachers And Classrooms Have Come A Long Way, Baby!

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These are accoutrements of a school classroom which we are familiar.  Slate chalkboard and chalk. Green chalkboard and colored chalk.   Roll of butcher paper.  Flip charts on an easel.  White board.  Smart board.  Interactive digital board.  Laptop with camera.  Video camera with large video screen.  Multiple cameras and multiple video screens.  Studio classroom for teaching in-school and at-home students.  To paraphrase a commercial from the last century, “Classrooms, you’ve come a long way, baby!”.

As I stand in a pandemic-mode school hallway looking into a classroom, it is impossible not to have an “oh, my!” moment. 

First, due to our school’s mitigation protocols that limit who can enter a classroom, I must stand outside and look in.  The school created and maintains a low incidence virus environment and protocols are enforced.  This is good.

Second, there are six children where there normally would be fourteen in this classroom.  Our school is staffed for small sizes, but due to the pandemic eight children are at-home learners.  The six in-school learners are masked and distanced and seated on either side of a digital camera on a tall tripod. 

Third, the teacher stands in front of the classroom’s large, interactive digital screen where the faces of her at-home learners are displayed in checkerboard fashion.  Each at-home learner has a school-provided chromebook and the camera on the chromebook ties that student to the classroom.  This allows in-school learners to see and hear their at-home classmates.

Fourth, a classroom camera is displaying the teacher and her teaching in real time for at-home learners.  That display is on the other half of the classroom screen.  This camera allows at-home learners to see and hear the teacher and their in-school classmates during class time.  Wow!

These four “oh, mys” mean that everyone in the class, the teacher and all students, regardless of location, are in real time with each other.  The teacher in front of the classroom, students at their desks, and children at their kitchen tables are in “school” for teaching and learning today.

The teacher uses a presentation camera connected to her laptop to present information to all children.  It may be the display of a math problem she hand writes out, a word processed list of vocabulary words, a page of the book children are reading, a clipped video of a news story – everything the teacher would write on a chalkboard, hold up in her hands to show or display, or want all children to observe can be seen on the in-classroom big screen or on the at-home chromebooks.  No matter of location, all children are part of the classroom. 

This is studio teaching.  This is a very big “oh, my!” in our adaptation to the COVID-effect upon teaching and learning.  Teachers and children are in a studio not a classroom.  There is little difference between how Lester Holt works on NBC’s “Nightly News” and how a classroom teacher works in her classroom/studio.  And, we will have studios for classrooms for the foreseeable future.

Add a fifth “oh, my” to this list.  This is the most significant “oh, my”, I believe.  A teacher in a studio is a combination of instructor, stage manager, coach/cheerleader, and producer. 

  • At the heart of what I see looking into a studio is instruction of the grade level or course curriculum.  This lesson is being taught with fidelity to its unit design and with an accountability to ensure all children will learn the lesson.  Good teaching practices always! 
  • Simultaneously, I see a teacher managing the studio of in-school and at-home learners.  Her eyes go from children at desks to children at kitchen tables and back again.  She scans all faces as if they were in their pre-pandemic classroom desks.  It is easy for a child in a studio environment to wander off.  The teacher as stage manager keeps all players in play.
  • The teacher is coach/cheerleader with personal, individualized attention to each child.  Remote education can quickly evolve into perceiving children as only “talking heads or faces”.  On the checkerboard screen is the face of an at-home learner but within that face is the social, psychological, and personal development of a unique child.  Some children need coaching from their teacher; some need cheerleading – all need their teacher’s attention.
  • From slate and chalk to cameras and screens, classrooms have become studios that require the teacher to be an educational producer.  She converts instructional materials and lesson plans into media that can be shared through technology.  She sets up cameras and screens.  She ensures that camera angles allow all children to be active participants.  She connects with school tech specialists when the studio equipment needs service.  She is a real time educational producer of daily teaching and learning.

Each walk down the school hallways increases my understanding of how our schools are changing in the Time of COVID.  Without exception, I greatly appreciate how our teachers have grasped the dramatic changes required of teaching to in-school and at-home children.  A year ago, a teacher taught in a classroom.  Today and tomorrow, teaching is in a studio.  Teachers and classrooms have come a long way, baby!

What Did We Learn? Lesson #5 – Teaching Today Requires A Rethought Teacher Prep

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Close your eyes and remember your favorite teacher.  Picture her or him teaching you.  Now, blink twice.  Whatever your memory calls to mind is out of date for contemporary teaching!  That image does not appear in a classroom today.  This begs the question – Are we preparing teachers to look like our memory of what a teacher used to be or are we preparing teachers for what they need to be?  In fact, teacher prep programs, like our memories, are stuck in time and need to change.

Teacher preparation programs in colleges, universities and educator preparation centers are fundamentally of the last century.  The template for teacher education is universal across institutions and all states.  An undergraduate completes the institutional liberal arts requirements during the freshman and sophomore years.  In the junior year and half of the senior year, the prospective teacher completes courses prescribed for the chosen major and minor  baccalaureate emphases, pedagogical courses, and pre-student teaching experiences.  One semester of clinical student teaching is completed in the senior year.  This produces a DPI-issued teaching license.  Is this preparation an adequate preparation for a pandemic and post-pandemic teacher.  I think not. 

Let’s look more deeply in to the three semesters of the junior and senior year reserved for teacher preparation.  A college student completes an average of five courses (15 credits per semester) or 15 courses (45 credits) in the junior and senior year prior to student teaching.  In our state, at least three courses are required to meet the statutory requirements for minority relations, conflict resolution, responsibilities of teachers for special education, ethical responsibilities of teachers, and environmental education (9 credits).  Twelve courses remaining.  In almost every topic essential to teacher prep, one course leads to introduction and a broad view coverage.  It takes two courses to move from “I know about that” to “I know that”.  We need teachers who “know that”.

Why is there a distance between “I know about that” and “I know that” in teacher preparation.  It is because we historically have viewed a first year teacher as an apprentice becoming a journeyman.  We immediately assign a mentor teacher to each newly hired teacher and the mentor continues the college training with on-the-job training.  We assume that professional development and required continuing education will fill out the remaining needs of teacher preparation.  Lastly, most teacher contracts treat first to third year teachers as probationaries.  The assumption is that some probationaries will not be successful and resign or be terminated.  Please consider what this says to children being taught every day by an apprentice/journeyman/may-not-make-it teacher.  It says we accept less than fully polished teaching.  Bad practice!

Some of our deficits in teacher prep are made apparent by the pandemic and other deficits have been brewing and erupted parallel to the pandemic.  I will speak to four of these deficits.  When I examine more than a dozen colleges of education and teacher education programs in our state, I find a woeful lack of teacher preparation in these four areas of study.  At best, some teachers can say “I know about that”.  Few programs create teachers as the solid practitioner a teacher needs to be entering her first job. 

Child psychology.  Undergraduates study the theories of psychological development of infants through teens in an “introduction to psychology” course.  That’s it – a one semester course to prepare a career teacher to understand and successfully teach children through their most difficult years of intellectural and personality development.  If nothing else, the range of generational characteristics and values that lives in schools and affects how children relate to parents, teachers, peers, and society at large demands more in-depth work in behavioral, cognitive, social, and biological psychology.  Teachers are not psychologists,  but children today are so complex that teachers must have a psychologist’s lens for viewing children. Our Gen X and Millenial teachers, each with their own distinct set of characteristics, are instructing as-yet undefined Gen Z children, the most diverse generation, yet.  Atop their generational traits, Gen Z now is the pandemic generation.  Never before have we needed more understanding of psychological development to shape our teaching.

Clinical teaching.  Student teaching for most teaching licenses prepares a teacher for whole group instruction.  We quickly learned in the pandemic that remote teaching and learning requires very purposeful, strategized and consistent teaching to the individual learning needs of every child.  A general announcement made in class of “turn to page 68 and read the first paragraph” goes nowhere in remote education.  In class, a teacher scans to see children lift their book, turn the pages, and begin their reading.  On screen, a teacher cannot scan but needs to see each child perform this.  A usual “Are there any questions?”, may allow a teacher to move on in an in-class lesson.  On screen, a teacher needs to focus on the screen shot of each child, especially children with learning needs, to assure that child is ready to move on.  Whole group assumptions do not translate to remote teaching and learning.

When a teacher sits with an individual child for personalized, individualized or prescribed instruction, proximity is a good thing.  Using all her senses, the teacher knows and perceives how the teaching is being learned.  On screen, there is no proximity.  The knowing and perception must be created through clinical questioning and listening to the totality of a child’s response and reaction to teaching.  Individualized instruction on-screen is very doable, but it requires a clinical planning, strategizing and implementation to ensure learning.  Teacher preparation must teach teachers how to prepare, strategize and deliver clinical teaching to individual children. 

The major flaw we see today arises when a teacher must deliver reteaching interventions to individual children.  This is where clinical teaching lives and the need is greatest.

Phonics-based reading instruction.  Parallel to the onset of the pandemic, the science of reading is impacting reading instructional practices.  The science is teaching us that all children can be taught to be readers and allowing children to self-develop as readers is not acceptable, because too many children do not.  Setting aside the history of the so-called reading wars, statutory and DPI rules now require a stronger preparation in phonics-based reading, but their language leaves it to the college to determine the quantity and quality of that preparation. 

An “I know about it” preparation about the science of reading will not do.  Teacher prep requires in-depth, laboratory-based preparation that causes a first year teacher to be a strong teacher of reading for every child.

Meta cognitive development of mathematics.  The current critique of student learning during the pandemic is that academic achievement will be significantly less than annually anticipated for most children and math achievement will slide down more than reading achievement.  Aside from the teaching/learning downside of remote education is the fact that most teachers of mathematics are good mathematicians but not as good in understanding and teaching mathematical thinking.  Simply stated, a math teacher was a good math student and able to answer questions correctly.  However, the ability to solve math problems is not the same as understanding the thinking processes, sequences, and mental gymnastics required to teach another person to solve math problems.  Too much of math teaching is “do it like this” rather than “think about the thinking necessary to solve the problem”.  We observe this in “show me your work”, an observation made more difficult due to the pandemic and to the perfunctory nature of “show me your work”.  Instead, it should be “talk to me about your thinking in solving this problem”.  Too few teachers are prepared for this conversation.  Every elementary teacher must be taught how to think mathematically and teach mathematical thinking.

Studio teaching.  Pre-pandemic, almost all teachers were users of usual school technologies – laptops/desktops, tablets, smartphones.  They taught using tech knowing that their daily work was in-person.  The scenario shifted to this:  how will you teach students living on Mars if you and your school are on Earth?  That is a fair description of remote teaching.  Few teachers were ready for the totality of on-screen teaching and learning.  Studio teaching is when a teacher uses cameras and video screens   When a teacher is teaching via a camera and screen, especially multiple screens, it is studio teaching.  Studio teaching doubles in complexity with in-school children are in the classroom.

Teaching and learning with technology is more psychological, personal and preferential than we thought.  The task of assembling the necessary cameras and screens and setting up a classroom as studio is easy.  Creating the emotional and personal commitment to studio teaching is much more difficult.  Veteran teachers said, “This is not teaching” or “This is not the way I teach”.  And, they were right.  They were not prepared for studio teaching.  Teacher prep must train teachers for studio teaching. 

What have we learned?

The Time of COVID is teaching us to reconsider how we prepare teachers.  To quote a song, the times not only are “… a-changing…”, they have changed and our conventions for educating teachers have not kept pace.  Our children need teachers who are ready for today’s and tomorrow’s classrooms not last century’s.

What Did We Learn? Lesson #4 – The Value, Cost and Worth of an Education

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The worth of something can be measured by what a person is willing to give to obtain or to provide something of interest.  Sometimes, we refer to the cost or value of what we are considering, but at the end of the day the real issue is worth.  “What is an education worth?”, I ask.

Value, cost, and worth are different concepts and are understood differently and deferentially.  We use the terms interchangeably, but they are not. 

Value is a fleeting quality.  We do not know the value of a child’s education until years have passed.  This was true in pre-pandemic times and it will be even more true in post-pandemic times.  The real value of an education is the manner and extent to which the education is used by a graduate in later life.  Some values are expressed early on, as in how a college or university or trade school or employer values a high school student’s transcript.  Value is expressed in terms of scholarships and financial incentives given to the graduate to matriculate to her next level of life.  Value also is given by initial employers who observe that higher achievement in school attaches to higher performance on the job.  The value of an education is perceptual.

Values of an education slowly unfold in later life, as in a graduate’s interest in continued learning, unfolding of latent skill sets that support developing mid-life interests, and appreciation for broader, esoteric concepts.  A graduate who later in adult life takes piano lessons may draw a line from her piano bench directly back to learning to read music in elementary school.  Or, who starts a woodworking or plein air painting hobby or learns a second or third language.  Values derived from learning and how to learn are lifelong.

We may value our personal education differently at different times and at different phases in our life.  On the last day of summer vacation, our value of the next nine months is different than it will be next June when the school year is over.  Value is transitive.  Our sense of value is different at midnight when cramming for a final or crazy-stressed with a project due in the morning.  Value is sweaty.  We wonder in August anticipating a semester of English Literature how these dusty writings will benefit our interest in being a restauranteur or being a potter.  Value is speculative.  Value is relative to the moment.

Value also is very real.  We value the skills and knowledge of our physician or surgeon when we require their care.  We value the skills and knowledge of our auto mechanic when our vehicle won’t run.  We value the artistry of composers, conductors, and musicians when we attend concerts.  We value expertise and artistry, no matter the field, that is the result of personal commitment and learning. 

Value is confused with cost. 

A quick Google will disclose the monetary cost of one year in the education of a student.  Each state  publishes the cost per pupil as a state average and by local school district.  For the 2020 school year, New York spends the most per pupil ($23,091) and Utah spends the least ($7,179).  Individual school districts in a state push these averages to higher and lower extremes.  The Wisconsin average is $11,968.  Is the education of a child schooled in New York better than the education of a child in Utah based upon cost?  Spending on education is more influenced by local politics and culture than the real cost of teaching and learning. 

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/per-pupil-spending-by-state

Education is expensive, if we consider dollars spent.  In Wisconsin, a K-12 education for one child costs the public taxpayers $155,584.  Add, another $80 – 100,000 if the student attends a UW school.  One-quarter of a million dollars is the cost of an average college degree, Kindergarten to baccalaureate, in Wisconsin.  Money is a cold but real estimate of the value of an education and one that taxpayers use and understand.

The worth of an education brings a different twist in our understanding.  The worth of an education is comparative and a matter of priorities. 

For many and most families, parents constantly consider how much of their weekly paychecks will be committed to educating their children.  Parents prioritize the number of dollars paid out for school clothes, books and supplies, school fees, and music lessons against all other family expenses.  Will a child have a hot lunch or bagged lunch?  The cost includes the price of gas for every car drive from home to school and back, bus tokens, and travels to away games.  Education is a real, dollars out-of-the-pocket matter at the family level.  It is a constant “what is it worth” computation.

Worth is what a person is willing to pay or give in exchange for an education.  Worth includes but is not limited to money.  Worth can be what a person is willing to do to earn the money that is paid for an education.  Family savings, student savings, working extra jobs or shifts – each is a strategy for creating a sum of money to exchange for an education.  Worth is visceral.

Most high school students today consider the amount of student debt they are willing to undertake in order to pay for their education.  And, for some, the worry and stress of debt causes closes doors to their education.  Worth-debt lasts for years if not decades.

At a personal interpretation of worth, my baccalaureate diploma was paid for by a local meat packing slaughterhouse.  The costs of annual tuition, room, and board were paid from weekly paychecks earned in the hog kill, beef offal, and hide cellar.  Four years of meat packing paid for a BA.  It also provided an education unto itself.  There are millions of such stories.  The worth of an education is what you are willing to do to obtain it.

Worth is risk.  In the pandemic, the worth of an education is expanded well beyond the normal.  Teaching and learning have taken on issues of personal risk.  To what extent does teaching and learning expose a student or teacher or their families to the virus?  What are the health risks of catching the virus?  Are these risks worth engaging in continuing teaching and learning?  Some teachers on the cusp of retirement retired rather than risk their exposure to the virus.  Some teachers resigned.  Teachers with underlying health conditions teach from-home.  Many families disenrolled their children from public school seeking safer home schooling options.  Schools that offer the choice of in-school and at-home learning are finding parents who will keep children at-home long after community vaccination and decline in local positive tests.  Worth is a matter of very real personal risk.

In the pandemic, schools have bought heavily into remote learning platforms, like Zoom – a trade name that has become a verb.  It is easy for school district to spend $1,000,000 or more on pandemic technology and still be under-teched.  Is it worth spending $2,000,000?

Worth is learning new skills and strategies that are necessary to educate and be educated.  Standing in front of a classroom is an assumed strategy, but being a face on a screen in a distant home, a face constantly displayed by a camera, seeing no more of your students than their faces on your screens in your home office or classroom – this is a new strategy that must be learned.  What is is worth to become a screen personality?  What part of being a teacher is traded for this tech persona?  Worth brings us back to what we value about teaching and about ourselves.

Worth is demonstrated every morning in classrooms and homes during the pandemic by this simple question – “Will I push the on button?” 

Five years hence, we will know much more about the worth, value and cost of a pandemic education.  Until that enlightening, we will spend money we don’t have, extend ourselves in unimagined ways, learn new strategies that allow us to teach and learn, make compromises in our worth equations, and hope that the value of an education will surface.  Was it all worth it?