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Teach Less Well In the Time of COVID

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Panic sets in easily in the Time of COVID.  Or, the denial of panic.  They almost are interchangeable when pandemic causes extreme anxieties.  In the schoolhouse, a rising panic concerns the availability of enough direct instructional time and opportunity for all children to make the academic growth in the 2020-21 school they need to make for their educational future.  We acknowledge that a solid academic education requires direct instruction, professional monitoring and adjustment of instruction, strategic assessment leading to corrected learning, and enough time for guided and independent practice for learning to be mastered and ingrained.  Panic can be separated into mini-panics.  A first panic is a belief that school closures last spring prevented children from completing that full academic year.  They begin 2020-21 behind in their learning.  The second panic, with children either learning at-home or in hybrids of in-person and at-home learning, is a belief that all children will not or cannot achieve a full academic year this year.  The mix of in-person and at-home is the prohibitive factor.  Finally, the third panic is an aggregated panic that this generation of children in school will not be adequately prepared over time for their futures in a higher education and careers.  The pandemic has robbed them of their time to learn.  Hence, what will we, what can we do about it!

As an aside, it is about time that people in and out of education are panicked regarding children who do not achieve a full year of academic growth.  For too long, our culture accepted a sub-class of studenthood, those who gradually and steadily underachieve.  Perhaps, COVID will shake this antipathy loose.

Are there work arounds that can improve academic achievement when instruction for children is disrupted by something as significant as the pandemic?  You bet there are.

Take Away

The science of teaching gives us many tools that are not time- or condition-bound.  They are time- and condition-tested.  They work effectively in the best and worst of times, in- school and out-of-school.  As often is the case, panic causes people to lose a grip on what they know and seemingly re-invent or re-tool what they think they need in the moments of panic.  The key here is – don’t panic.  The science of teaching will cause children to learn, even now.

Teaching is teaching whether it is in-person with children in the classroom or remote from the classroom to children learning at-home.  Best teaching practices don’t change because a teacher is in front of a camera instead of in front of a classroom of child faces.  And, teacher-child relationships do not change because of distance.  A caring and nurturing teacher can be just as effective without proximity. 

Our task is to provide each child with a full academic year of instruction and apply all that we know about good teaching to that instruction.  Children will learn. 

Worry scatters thoughts and thinking.  Don’t let that happen.  Focus on essential learning and get after it.

What do we know?

Teach less well.  Take that apart.  Our curricular shelves are heavy with stuff.  We do not need to teach every thing in the collection.  Publishers and vendors provide more and more each year.  Teach less.  Teach what have been labeled “enduring” or “mastery” content, concepts, skills, and disposition.  Then, teach what you teach so that every child learns what you teach.

Teach less.  Time is not on our side this year.  180 days of 7 hours per day exist on a paper calendar but they do not exist in real time.  Real time is contact time when a teacher and children are actively engaged.  Today, real time is three to four hours per day and often less.  Real time is when the Internet connections are working.  Real time is when no one, teacher or child, is ill or no one in the home where the child is learning is ill.  Real time is when children at home have adult assistance.  Real time forces us to teach less this year than we usually would teach if everyone was in the classroom.  We need to teach less stuff because we have less real time to teach.

Teach well.  Best teaching practices always, please.  Take enough time in every lesson to assure student mastery of the content, skills and dispositions.  Set a clear lesson objective.  Attach the new learning to what children already know.  Provide impactful initial instruction.  Model and clarify the new learning with strong examples.  Check EACH child’s understanding of what is being learned.  Give enough time for guided and independent practice of the new learning.  Assess.  If necessary, unteach what is wrong in what children learned and research so that all children get it right.  There always is enough time for best teaching practices.

The basics of teaching well sound and feel like Education 101, because they are.  They focus on effectiveness and efficiency.  Good and compact units of instruction.  Good and compact daily instruction.  Good and precise assessment.  Good and necessary reteaching to ensure all children learn.  Good to go to next.

Teach less well.  Huh?  Read it again but read it like this.  If you are going to teach children, teach then what they need to know, teach them so that they learn it and remember it, and teach it so they can use it for further learning.  The Time of COVID is not a time to worry about quantity of learning and covering every topic a child might learn in the best of times.  The Time is a time to assure that everything a child learns is purposeful and is taught so well that what is taught is solidly learned.

Why is this thus?

There is truth in what we fear.  Teaching and learning take time and we did not have adequate real time in the spring of 2020 to complete that academic year.  Remote education was an emergency process and less than adequate.  Now, unless we teach differently in 2020-21, we will not have enough real time to completely teach this academic year’s curricula.  If we don’t work differently, children will fall significantly in their academic learning.

We will not get a “do over”.  Children will not repeat last year’s incomplete curricula this year and they will not repeat this year’s incomplete curricular next year.  Children will not be held back in their grade levels or be prevented from graduating.  There are no “school do overs” in education.  (Hypocrisy – we retain children for not performing, but we do not retain promotions when schools do not perform.)

We will not do an industrial recall.  If education was a manufacturing industry, we would issue a recall of 2019-20 and 2020-21 learning, retool it, make it better, and then release it as an improved model.  There are no recalls in education.

We are called to make all children complete in their 2020-21 academic year of learning.  To do this, we need to teach less well.

To do

Modify assessments of learning to match modified curricular instruction.  Administrators and teachers must be on the same page regarding what will will be taught and what will be measured.  Everyone in school must be telling the same story.  It does make sense to maintain full curricular assessments when children will not receive full curricular instruction.  Align teaching less with measuring less.

Pace lessons by teaching them well.  Don’t pile on lessons.  Don’t hammer children with so much work that they become panicked or angry.  When we teach less, we have enough time to teach it well and well takes the time we have.  This reinforces our need to cull out the non-essential stuff of our curricula.  Learning takes time.  We have enough time for children to learn by pacing what we teach well.

Differentiate who delivers instruction and who supports learning.  Now, more than ever, the delivery of initial instruction is essential for teaching well.  If a grade level or departmental team recognizes that one teacher has more expertise in teaching a unit or lesson, let that teacher become the “face” of that instruction and other teachers the supporters of that learning.  This applies well to in-person as well as at-home learning.  Take the pressure from some teacher of daily presentations in front of the camera and replace it with chat groups for precise modeling, checking for understanding, guided practice and formative assessments.

Synchronous and asynchronous on-line teaching allows us to capture an “expert” delivery and provide it to all children.  A child who misses the beginning of the lesson can view it when ready.  A child who does not understand the initial teaching can see it again and again.  With one teacher only giving the initial instruction, a grade level or subject team assures that every on-line segment is highest quality instruction.

Constantly monitor student engagement – all of the time.  Understand that engagement for at-home learners looks different than engagement for in-school learners.  Know the differences.  Monitoring is not browbeating; it just means knowing.  Monitoring will show some children who are engaged in-person or at-home all the time and doing well.  It will show children who look to as if they are engaged all the time but not doing well.  Likewise, some children may not look engaged but will do very well in demonstrating their learning.  And, monitoring will highlight children who are not engaged when they should be.  Use the monitoring information to shape a child’s attention and attention span.  Each child can find an effective and efficient use of in-person and at-home time.

Manipulate the logistics of immediate and precise feedback.  Instead of kneeling next to a child’s desk, make a telephone call.  Most at-home learners will have a cell phone near their screen.  A private phone call treats the child with respect yet is directly to the point. 

Constant contact.  Every child every day.  Sadly, we know that some children in-school in normal times pass through a school day without a single personalized contact with a teacher.  In the Time of COVID, every child needs a personal contact – called in a zoom lesson, talked with in a zoom chat, shared e-mail, or a phone call – everyday.

If parents are able to create earning pods of supervised children, make the most of these small groups.  Regardless of the parents’ reason for forming a pod, grouped children give a teacher renewed opportunities for small group work, collaborative projects, peer editing, and socializing for children.  Done safely, pods are a great way for groups of families to provide supervised learning when individual families cannot.

The big duh!

Don’t panic even though there are many reasons for panicking.  The science of teaching, best practices, culling the curricula and teaching less well will cause children to complete a full academic year in 2020-21.

Virtual Learning Is a Misnomer

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But, learning virtually is real.

When was the last time you virtually learned something?  Really?  If you virtually learned something, by definition, you really didn’t learn it.  You simulated its learning or learned something that is hypothetically close to learning it, but because you virtually learned it, you might not have learned it at all.  Or, you got very close to learning it, but because your learning was virtual it was not fully successful – just virtually successful.  Or, your learning may have been in a virtual dimension, one that is fabricated to be like the real thing but not flesh and blood real – virtually real.  These are virtually true statements.  Really.  Not virtually.

Take Away

Words do not always mean what we think they mean.  We use a word in our everyday speech in ways that conform to how we hear the word being used.  The word is defined by its use and not necessarily by its meaning.  This is the case with “virtual.”

Our school dictionary says that virtual is an adjective meaning

  1. Being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted.
  2. Being on or simulated on a computer of computer network.
  3. Of, relating to, or using virtual memory.
  4. Of, relating to, or being a hypothetical particle whose existence is inferred from indirect evidence.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/virtual

A thesaurus tells us that the most relevant antonyms for virtual are –

  • Actual
  • Authentic
  • Real

https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/virtual

Change the word to virtually and we have an adverb that means

  1. Nearly, almost entirely
  2. For all practical purposes

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/virtually

By definition, to virtually learn is to not to actually or really learn but to come close to learning, perhaps as close as your learning needs to be.

Back to everyday speech.  To learn something virtually in our non-dictionary parlance means to learn it via a simulation, a computer or through indirect evidence.  Learning virtually, as in virtual shopping, is to shop but not be in the shop shopping.  Learning virtually is to be taught but not be in physically present as a learner when you are being taught. 

In pre-COVID times, virtual education was the domain of on-line learning for home schooled children.  Entire curricula was presented via computer-based instruction, transported paper and pencil materials, and voice and face-time communication between teachers and children.  Virtual education was outside the traditional classroom and usual teaching and learning environment.  Teaching and learning were asynchronous; taking place in different places and at different times.  Hence, it was virtual by definition.  And, it worked.  However, virtual educators may want to pay attention to the meaning of virtual and whether they use it as an adjective or an adverb.

In the Time of COVID, virtual learning takes on a new meaning.  Live streaming allows teachers and children to be synchronous in their teaching and learning.  In real time, a child sees a teacher’s face and hears a teacher speak and a teacher sees a child’s face and hears a child speak.  This is virtual in the sense that it is transmitted via technology and it is real because it is synchronous.  “As if” in the classroom together, a teacher and a class of children engage in real time teaching and learning.

New words now replace virtual education.  Distance education.  Remote education.  These two terms do not include the concept of virtual, meaning “nearly or almost”, because they can be in real time.  They retain the property of learning virtually because remote and distanced teaching and learning, even though in real time, are possible only through technology.

So, what?  Words matter.  At least to those who listen carefully.  If you mean to say that education or teaching and learning are almost the same as real education and that one who is virtually educated is almost but not completely educated, keep using the terms virtual education.  If you mean to say that teaching and learning are occurring in real time “as if” a teacher and children are in the same place and time, then describe it as learning virtually.  If you want to stay clear of the potential or virtual misunderstanding, say remote or distance education.

Really.

Fear-driven Policy in the Time of COVID

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“What is your biggest fear?”, is a powerful question to ask public policy makers in the Time of COVID.  Their responses give insight into the decision-making processes and policies that are informing how we go about our lives in this pandemic.  Fear-based decisions abound, but are they leading us properly?  Life tells us that we will not know the effects of our 2020-21 policies until time has passed.  Perhaps that is our biggest fear?  Did we choose wisely?

Pandemic policies for schools are flowing in two streams:  Fear of the health risks – our decisions will endanger the health and lives of children and school employees and family at home, and, Fear of educational damage – our decisions will endanger the intellectual, social, and emotional development of children. 

From outside the school board room, multiple other fears are afoot.  Fear of endangering the economic viability of our community and school parents.  Fear of community spread that could overrun a school.  Fear of the electorate who will not be happy with policy decisions and their effects.  Fear of public demonstration at a board meeting.  Oh, the list is long.  The biggest fear of all is the fear that time will tell everyone we made the wrong decision.

Take Away

What are we afraid of?  Are your afraid of “fear itself”, as President Roosevelt declared.  Perhaps not.

“Fear is hardwired in your brain, and for good reason.  Neuroscientists have identified distinct networks that run from the depths of the lambic system all the way to the prefrontal cortex and back.  The capacity to be afraid is part of normal brain function.  In fact, a lack of fear may be a sign of serious brain damage.”  What does that mean?  Fear is a natural emotion in humans.  Fear happens!

“Fear dictates the actions you take.  Actions by fear fall into four types – freeze, fight, flight, or fright.”  What does this mean?  These categories accurately portray how we respond to our fears.  We also have dominant or usual responses to fear.    

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smashing-the-brainblocks/201511/7-things-you-need-know-about-fear

Just as we recognize that COVID is real, it is not a hoax, we realize that fear is real and human and not an emotion of shame.  Hence, policy makers need to put their fears up front by stating “…this is what I fear will happen, or, because I am fearful that this will happen, our decision is to …”.  Then, we can understand the context and purpose of policy decisions.

What do we know?

From March through August, children attending school in-person was an abstraction in the daily COVID news.  Children learned at-home.  Frontline health care workers and their risk of infection headlined our concerns.  We followed the surge stories of the virus in assisted living centers, among meat packing workers, within professional sports teams and their summer practices, and at political rallies.  Then, attention focused on the surges following Memorial Day, July 4th gatherings, partying at bars and resorts, and Sturgis, SD.  In each of these stories a large number of people gathered, worked or partied.  Large groups of people begat large numbers of positive cases, hospitalizations and numbers of deaths.  While we fretted these events, schools, the largest collection of children in any community, were in summer recess and were not gathering people together.  But, September was coming and with planning for school openings loomed the fear that large gatherings of children and teachers will beges positive tests for COVID.  Our fear became personified.

We fear health risks to people.  We fear risking our personal health as well as the health of family and friends.  We fear risking the safe health of those who are medically fragile and elderly.  We fear risking the health of children by opening school and gathering hundreds if not thousands of people, children and adults, together in proximity.

We fear that closed schools will cause damage to the education of children.  In the best of times, we constantly read that too many children do not successfully achieve in school.  What will happen to the quality of their learning in the worst of times?  If not academic loss, then losses in social and emotional development, personal development in arts, activities and athletics, losses in college and career preparation, and losses in the potentiality of an entire generation of children.  We fear the risks of the pandemic to the future of our children.

We fear that closed schools and open schools will cause damage to families in our community.  Many parents need to work and do not have access to or can afford the cost of day care when schools are closed.  Working parents are not available Monday through Friday to assist their children with remote education.  On the other hand, if a parent stays home with children when schools are closed, a parent will lose income and may lose employment.  Parents face problems regardless of their decisions.

Quickly we get back to the other hand.  If we return children to school, we fear that children in school will become carriers of the virus and will infect parents and family members at home.  Teachers and staff may become infected and in turn infect others in their homes.

Our dilemma is this – which course of action do we choose – freeze, fight, flight, or fright?  Our decisions and policies will fit one or more of these.

Why Is This Thus?

Reality can be crass and harsh.  In a pandemic there will be illness, death, long-term health damage, educational loss, economic loss, and damage to families and the community.  And, by definition, the virus of a pandemic will be with us for several years in the future.  Regardless of our fears and with the best decisions, these will happen.

During and because of the pandemic there will be –

  • Lost school days
  • Inequity in access to virtual education/Internet
  • Lost academic achievement
  • Lost 4A opportunities – academics, activities, arts and athletics
  • Lost educational revenue
  • Falling behind on long-range goals
  • Children with COVID
  • Staff and teachers with COVID
  • Families with COVID
  • Increased unemployment
  • Businesses and families that lose income
  • Businesses that close
  • Individual and personal angst

School boards must choose how to best manage their real and potential losses.  This is not where any board wants to be, but it is where every school board is.

To do

Be responsible for good governance.  School board members are elected officials and at all times responsible for good and proper governance.  This does not always mean giving an individual constituent what that person demands.  It means giving that constituent access to the governing body, opportunity to be heard, and to receive a response to his concerns.  It means adhering to the rules of governance and the procedures for decision-making.  It means compliance with open meetings and open records statutes.  It means civil discourse.  The need for good governance is non-debatable.

Provide maximum support to achieve your primary mission.  A school board is not a state government, a county board, or a municipal or town council.  Those governmental bodies have their own missions and jurisdictions.  School boards are authorized by the state constitution for a specific purpose.  Stick to that purpose – the public education of children.  Provide a maximum of support to achieve the education of all children.  Push the envelope of allowable options for educating all children.  Provide all of the ancillary services that a public education now includes, like breakfast and lunch programs.  Make and continue to make every required and needed modification of teaching and learning to achieve an education for every child.  Be fiduciary in aligning all expenditures with your mission.   

Make the decisions and policies that assure an equitable and equal education for all children.  A pandemic may make things difficult, but it does not remove or reduce the responsibility of these essential words – equitable and equal.

Provide flexibility for individuals to choose among options.  Choice is now a standard in public education – parents expect and demand choices in how and where they will educate their children.  Expect that more parents will choose homeschooling and virtual school options during the pandemic.  Additionally, parents and children are accustomed to options and choices in schools.  Elective courses, arts, activities and athletics that can be implemented within pandemic low risk guidelines.   Maintain as many choices as possible to satisfy a parent’s primary mission – a best school year for my child.

Personalize your listening but do not personalize the response to your decisions.  Regardless of a board’s decision for in-person or at-home learning, some parents will applaud and some parents will boo.  Even the Solomon-like decision to provide parent choice – in-school or at-home – will have dissenters.  Until the pandemic no longer threatens our health, board members will face pandemic decision derision.  Please consider, when did a board decision please 100% of the public? 

The big duh!

A board’s biggest fears regarding the pandemic will color its decisions and policies.  Know your fears.  Validate or defeat your fears with facts.  Know that others may not agree with your fears, your facts, your decisions or policies.  Maintain the best of governmental practices.  Protect the education of disadvantaged children.  Then, make your decisions and let the future determine your wisdom.  This is what a board is elected to do.

Starting A School Year Is One Thing; Teaching An Entire School Year Is Another

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The months of July and August were committed to dialogues about how to start the 2020-21 school year in the Time of COVID.  Every informed and uninformed person weighed in on whether children should be in-school or at-home.  Arguments were made and few were won as counter arguments roared back.  The first day of the school year became a “line in the sand” and school boards everywhere made the hard decision: children in-school for five days per week, children in hybrids of in-school and at-home schedules, or children at-home for five days per week.  Decision made – get on with it!

Take Away

A summer of argument, debate, consideration and decision-making led to a local plan for opening school.  Parents made decisions regarding school choice.  Some parents cheered the local board’s decision, depending upon preference and decision.  Children in-school or children at-home.

Some parents decided that a local school could not guarantee a child’s safety and chose home schooling.  Some of these parents formed local home-schooling pods where a handful of children could “school” together. 

Some parents chose to enroll their children in another school district, usually a school district that would provide five days per week in-school instruction.  Among these, some parents could not be home due to employment and could not supervise at-home learning and needed children to be in-school.  Some homes do not have Internet or adequate Internet and parents chose in-school rather than paper and pencil instruction.  Some parents were just angry with local decision-makers and chose a different school district as sign of their displeasure.

The first calendared day of school is a local decision.  Whether in August or on September 1 or on the Tuesday after Labor Day, children began their school year.  (A few school districts are delaying their first day until mid- or late-September due to labor decisions.).  And, so the 2020-21 school year began.

Not so fast!  It is one thing to begin the school year in a pandemic and it is totally another thing to teach children for an entire school year during a pandemic.

What do we know?

Military analysts tell us that “…Once the fighting starts, all battle plans are scrapped and each new battle situation requires new thinking.  The war goes on with real time battle planning in the immediacy of the moment”. 

Once the school year starts, every school needs multiple plans for continuing the teaching of children for the entirety of the school year.  No start-of-the-year plan will last 180 school days.  In-school teaching and in-school learning.  In-school teaching and at-home learning.  At-home teaching and at-home learning.  Backpack (pencil and paper) assignments for children without Internet or with inadequate Internet access.      Opening day plans will give way to the new plans in the immediacy of the educational moment.

Why is this thus?

In our state in the first week of school, teachers and children in numerous schools that began with in-school learning showed COVID symptoms and received positive tests after the first days of instruction.  In one school, the principal and assistant principal both had positive tests.  Contact tracing showed children and faculty were exposed to initial persons with positive tests.  Schools or parts of schools closed for periods of quarantining.  Several schools did not have enough “non-exposed” teachers to remain open for in-school learning.  Positive tests affected schools that began the year with children in-school and as well as children in-hybrid.  Positive tests did not occur in every school that opened, but it occurred in enough schools to raise this question:  What will we do when positive tests occur here? What’s the next plan?

Prior to opening, a few schools required parents to choose between in-school or at-home learning – a decision for the entire school year.  Their administrations determined the highest number of children that could be distanced from each other in school classrooms and that set the in-school choice capacity.  Interestingly, parents who chose at-home cannot migrate to in-school regardless of the local health data. 

In most schools, there is a recognition of the parents’ right to migrate their children from in-school to at-home and from at-home to in-school.  Health conditions will change and parents need flexibility in doing what they believe is best for their children.

Our local school began on the Tuesday after Labor Day.  We started all children with at-home learning.  This scheme allowed our teachers and students to use the technologies we added to every classroom for teachers to match at-home learning with in-school learning.  Remote education is delivered with new in-classroom cameras, digital whiteboards, teacher laptops, and student digital devices.  We expanded our platforms.  Our pandemic education plan says that all teachers and students need to be prepared for remote education – it will be required.  On the first Monday of the new school year, children will have the option for in-school or at-home learning.  Children can migrate from at-home to in-school after giving school one-week to adjust school bus routes.  The bottom line of our pandemic plan is that all children will be taught our school’s 2020-21 curriculum regardless of where they learn.

To do

Every school needs multiple pandemic education plans that will accommodate these conditions.

  • Everybody at-home – at-home teaching and at-home learning.  Classrooms may be closed due to a high level of community spread, widespread infection/exposure in the school, or too many faculty compromised with infection/exposure to continue in-school teaching.  Teachers and children will be at-home.
  • Some in-school teaching and some at-home teaching and some children learning in-school and some children learning at-home.  Due to a small number of classrooms with  infection and exposure, some but not all teachers can teach in-school and some children can learn in-school, but all teachers and children.
  • Teaching in-school and children learning at-home.  Due to high community spread, classrooms are closed to children but not to teachers.  This is the most common scenario with high levels community spread but with schools that are properly sanitized.
  • Teaching in-school and all children invited to learn in-school; some may not choose in-school.  Due to very low community spread, no teachers and no children or staff infected or exposed, in-school teaching and in-school learning are an option for parents.  Some parents still may choose at-home learning.
  • Teaching in-school and children learning in in-school hybrids.  Due to very low community spread, no teachers and no children or staff infected or exposed, in-school teaching and in-school learning are an option for parents, although not all at the same time due to the school’s limited capacity for social distancing.  Some parents still may choose at-home learning.
  • Homeschooled children migrating to in-school learning.  When health conditions improve, some resident parents who chose homeschooling will want to migrate to in-school learning.
  • At-home children without Internet or inadequate Internet migrating to in-school learning.  As soon as they can, most parents of children with no Internet or inadequate Internet will migrate their children to in-school learning.  They will be hard-pressed in school districts that do not allow migration this school year.
  • At-home children without Internet or inadequate Internet choosing pods for homeschooling.  If classrooms do not open in-school learning for these children, their parents may organize homeschooling pods with other parents.  One parent in the group will serve as the pod teacher.  This will be their one room school in the Time of COVID.

The big duh!

Having multiple plans ready to go means that schooling, although interrupted by health data and human conditions, will not stop.  Teaching and learning can shift from one delivery scenario to another and back again or to a third and yet a fourth scenario as real-time “battle plans” change.  A school without multiple plans will falter and teaching and learning will start, stop, start and stop.  And, 2020-21 will not be the school year it could have been.

Teaching in the Time of COVID – One Of Our Finest Hours

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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