Tag Archives: remote education

Personalized Education Plan as Antidote to Pandemic Education Losses

Posted on by
Reply

Those who believe that all children are resilient and submerging them in the normalcy of school will cure the significant direct and indirect losses they suffered during our pandemic education are looking for coins under their pillow left by the tooth fairy.  Their losses will not be made whole without a clear understanding of pandemic effects and explicit actions taken to remedy those effects.  Anything less will create a bruised generation of young adults we could and should have treated better.

I look at children getting off the morning bus at school and see children who look like any children of any pre-pandemic year.  Part of my observation, I know, is that I want to see children who are wholesome and happy and well in every sense of the word.  Then, I listen to teacher observations and examine the data of students’ returned-to-school learning and I see children who are not what they should be.  They exhibit attitudes and dispositions that are getting in the way of their successful school experiences.  They have gaps in their school skills and knowledge and culture that cause them undeserved yet solvable problems. 

It is inaccurate to ascribe these observations to all children.  However, it is accurate to ascribe one or more of these to each child.  And, that is where our necessary work begins.  Our pandemic mitigations were school- and grade-wide.  We closed school for all children, attempted to provide remote instruction to all children, quarantined classes and grade levels after their return to school, and restricted access to school life and its activities for the better parts of two years.  I attempt no fault finding; the work is not backwards but forwards.  How do we help all children now?

Primary strategy: Personalized Education Plan

The primary strategy for making all children educationally whole and sound from their pandemic effects needs to be an educational and developmental assessment of each child and from that assessment individualized, small group, and whole group remedial treatments. 

Begin the strategy with PEPs for all 4K-5 children, those whose dispositional and learning are most foundational and for whom small group and large group remediation will be most efficient and effective.  Assess and know the extent of learning and dispositional gaps for each child.

  • 5K and grade 1 children lacked 4k and 5K experiences to socialize them to school success. 
  • 4K-grade 5 children lack educational stamina; remote ed taught them turn off and disengage when assignments and experiences required more than they wanted to commit.  Or, when school failed to engage with them.
  • 4-grade 5 children learned to isolate from their pandemic experience; screen time provided their socialization and remains their go to escape when in-personal interactions are required.
  • 4K through grade 3 lacked explicit instruction in phonemic development, structured language and vocabulary acquisition, and progression in reading fluency.
  • Grade 3-5 children display gaps in numeracy arithmetic skills, especially in concepts and automaticity of multiplication, division, and conceptualization of fractions.
  • 4K-grade children lost second language development, musical literacy, and cooperative teaming in physical education.

Creating a PEP for each child demonstrates a school’s commitment to post-pandemic education.  I am not calling out schools who do not take such explicit actions, but I do place them in the tooth fairy believers category.  A PEP requires time and expense to develop, time and expense to implement, collaboration among educators and parents, and a mutual understanding that without explicit strategies children will not overcome the ill effects of their pandemic education.  A PEP is a statement regarding school commitment each child’s worth and well-being.

School-wide Post-Pandemic Plans

Parallel to PEPs for all 4K-5 is the need for school-wide implementation of student dispositional remediation, social-emotional and mental health servicing, and trauma-sensitivity training. 

On their return to school, middle level children advanced grade levels without developing the social and dispositional skills required for middle level and high school success.  Children who were in 5th grade in 2019-20 were 7th graders in 2021-22.  They leap-frogged from smaller, self-contained groupings of students, elementary-trained teachers, pre-adolescent social settings into a secondary schedule of changing classes, subject-trained teachers, academic-oriented instruction, and the milieu of middle level adolescence and puberty.  They went from Earth to Mars without climate orientation.  And, their current school work shows this ill-effect of the pandemic.

Secondary children, especially, demonstrate a turn-it-off disposition in their return to school regarding school procedures and classroom requirements.  Their

  • rates of tardiness and absenteeism,
  • defiance toward cell phone rules,
  • lack of assignment completion, and
  • non-compliance with teacher direction

 are off the chart compared with pre-pandemic secondary children.  These are pandemic effects and must be treated as effects that can and must be remediated.  Children were largely non-directed and independent while in remote education.  They learned habits that are not serving them now.

Administrators and teachers must carve the time and resources from the already packed school calendar and school budgets for individual, small group, and large group treatments.  We will not achieve social and emotional wellness without making new school-wide, annual processes and systems for teaching all children these dispositions.  And, creating improved systems for identifying children who are S-E stressed and mentally unhealthy. 

Schools do not have and are not authorized to have full mental health services.  Yet, in rural school communities, especially, distances between homes and services make school new mental health centers.  We need collaboration with county health services and private mental health providers if we are to create necessary post-pandemic treatments for children.

Imagine how these children will fare in their post-secondary world if they persist in behaviors caused by the ill effects of the pandemic.  They and our community deserve our commitment to remediating the ill  effects of their pandemic education or our community and nation will be feeling these ill-effects for decades to come.

What to do?

Start with PEPs for each 4k-5 child.  Start with individual, small group, and large group strategies of remediate the pandemic effects that your assessments reveal.  Start with a commitment and investment in direct and explicit actions that will make all children educationally and developmentally better.  Start with whole school training so that all faculty and staff are attuned to how today’s children are different than yesterday’s.  Do not believe tooth fairies will make all your wishes come true.

Yoda, the Dark Path, and the High Ground of Education

Posted on by
Reply

It is hard not to like Yoda quotes. The reversal of sentence order captures your attention as much as the pinched voice of the pointy-eared, green-toned little Jedi.  More importantly, the wisdom of Yoda cuts through much of the blather of oblong thinking. 

Yoda said, “If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.  Consume you, it will…”.  And, with those words, the threat the pandemic and pandemic politics poses for the future of public education is called out for what it is – a dark path.

While Yoda struggled against a dark path that led to an evil galactic empire, we struggle against a dark path that erodes our optimism and belief in a better future.  There is a narcissism down our threatening  dark path.  Its use of manipulation, distortion of information, and denial of criticism is anathema to public education.

The dark side is doom-sided thinking of negativity characterized by the following statements.

  • The future is bleak and will not be as good as the past.
  • Some people get all the breaks and some people get none.
  • Anger trumps all emotions and arguments.
  • Leaders at all levels fail to understand and meet the needs of the public.
  • All data but my data is suspect.
  • Self-interest is the only interest that matters.
  • Rules only are important when you want them to be.

As educators, our schools are at ground zero of much of the angst.  School boards are under attack for closing or opening schools for in-person learning, providing a remote learning that appeals to some children and is rejected by others, and masking or unmasking of students and staff in school.  On each of these three topics, boards face angry parents and community no matter what the board decides.  Adding to the difficulty of having any kind of school day, student achievement across all grades and subjects displays pandemic gapping.  Academic achievement has fallen.  Fine arts programs that require personal, in-person teaching are stymied by remote education, quarantining, and masking.  Theater and concerts are performed to empty houses and shared virtually.  Athletics are constantly interrupted by quarantines, positive tests of players and coaches, and cancelled contests.  Two years of pandemic and counting and the difficulty faced by teachers and school leaders only grows. 

The high ground of school that keeps the dark path at bay was, is, and will continue to be built upon the aggregate of these statements. 

  • Education is a human necessity.
  • Public education is a community’s obligation to its children.
  • Education opens opportunities and reveals future options.
  • Content knowledge, academic skills, critical thinking, collaboration, socialization, and intellectual curiosity are the six enduring outcomes of public education.
  • Teaching changes lives.
  • Public schools require the trust of parents and conversely parents require the stability of public schools.
  • Public education is the pillar of our society that stands the test of time.  When it fails, our society will fail.

The brightest image of our high ground is the face of a child.  Innately, children want to learn.  Every child has a curiosity to understand the sounds and sights of their world.  A brain never stops processing what a child experiences and school learning provides tools for understanding.  I once cringed at the person in a school meeting years ago who would throw down the conversation-ending line, “Well, I am here for the children.”  As if to say, no one else stood on the side of children.  Today, “I am here for the children, and we provide each and every child with an education for their future” are words we need to say over and over again.  These words do not end conversation.  They open discussion of new possibilities and future options.  I am here for the education of children is a high ground that defeats the adult-centered dark path. 

We Are Known By What We Prioritize

Posted on by
Reply

Not one.  As a school board member, I have not received one letter asking what can be done regarding depressed student proficiency scores displayed in the fall 2021 assessments.  Not one letter or phone call asking what actions our school will take to teach children the content and skills they missed while in remote education or reteach what children forgot while disconnected from instruction.  Not one person pointing at the increase of students whose assessment results fall into the significantly below proficient category this fall.

Beyond reading, ELA and math, not one communication regarding a child’s loss of learning in art, music, or foreign language.  Not a word about a child’s stagnant growth in business education, marketing, and computer science.  Learning in every school curriculum has been stymied by the pandemic, yet there is scant discussion regarding lost learning experiences.

Not one inquiry about how diminished proficiencies affect our junior and senior students’ preparation for post-secondary education, work, and military endeavors.  Without doubt, a graduate’s transcript and activity resume’ will be different in 2022 than a pre-pandemic resume’.

I grant that many children profited from their instruction in remote education.  They benefited from an optional return to in-person instruction in 2020-21 and a more complete return to in-person instruction in 2021-22.  We owe much to our teachers who labored through virtual and hybrid venues to teach their students.  Yet, every curriculum no matter how it was instructed remains behind its times in the winter of 2021.

Instead, letters, phone calls, texts and parent attendance at school board meetings demonstrating anger about masking protocols.  The demand for parental rights to choose whether a child will wear a mask overwhelms discussion of a child’s educational progress.  Am I dismayed?  No but yes. 

This observation informs us about the evolution of our culture and what we value.  We should not generalize any conclusions to the population of all parents but only to the sub-set of vocal parents.  We should not diminish our educator’s work on closing instructional and learning chasms but understand that this work is done because we, educators, know that it is the most important work before us.  It would be better if parents and school boards and teachers were all on the same page about how to repair student learning at this time of the pandemic, but we are not.

The issue of masks will resolve itself either when all school-age children have had access to the protection of vaccination or when school leaders acquiesce to the loudest voices in their community.  At that time, viral mitigation protocols will not be generalized across school districts, schools, and grade levels but will be responsive to breakouts as we ordinarily treat influenza and measles in schools.  These events will happen, and the response will be very local to those in contact with the outbreak.

The purpose of this writing is not to encourage parents to become enflamed about the status of their child’s educational progress, but to independently review what really matters and consider if their attention aligns with those matters.  For this writer, causing all children to learn with special regard for our most challenged learners is what matters.  Their challenges are not only intellectual but include all concerns that affect their total education and wellbeing.  Children today demonstrate varieties of gaps in their 4K-12 education, gaps we can close if we are able to give this teaching and learning our focused attention. We will be known by what we prioritize and how we meet our priorities.

Remote Education Is An Emergency Response Not A New Parent Choice Option

Posted on by
Reply

As public schools emerge from the pandemic and teachers and children return to their schoolhouses for in-person teaching and learning, a huge question emerges for public educators.  Are schools required to retain remote education as a new parent choice option?  Get to the answer quickly.  No!

This is “a bridge too far”, to paraphrase a military strategy of World War Two that looked good on paper but was not successful in action.  Today, remote education as a continuing, school district-dependent delivery system parallel to in-person learning is entirely “a bridge too far”.

At first, I thought, “Why not?”.  We are educators and we rise to every occasion.  During the height of the pandemic, teachers learned to teach from home to children at home.  They learned to teach from their classrooms to children at home.  Most recently, they learned to to teach in the hybrid model of some children in-person in the classroom and other children on-screen learning at home.  Teachers made the emergency strategy for remote education work.  Teachers pushed the veritable envelope to new dimensions.  But, there is an enormous difference between what we are called to do in an emergency and what we do as sustainable best practice.  There is no reason to keep the envelope pushed to its extremities in the post-pandemic.

Why is this thus?

The public concept of remote education is viewed entirely from the child’s perspective.  There is nothing wrong with a client-perspective, especially a child/student, but theirs is not the only perspective.  As a learner, synchronous virtual instruction satisfies those who prefer to learn away from school or children whose exceptionalities make home learning less of a conflicting challenge.  Accepted.  From the teaching perspective, synchronous virtual education is a perfect recipe for teacher burn out and failure.  Given the usual assignment of one teacher to a class schedule of children every day for a full school year, simultaneous teaching for children in the classroom and children on-screen is a severe conflicting challenge.  It requires one teacher to teach and cause high learner achievement in two distinct classrooms simultaneously.  This cannot be be accepted – it is not reasonably sustainable.

Remote education in the Time of COVID was education’s emergency program responding to our state constitution’s mandate that every eligible child will have access to public schooling.  Education did not stop; it just changed delivery systems.  As an emergency response,  remote education was a detour on a road under construction.  The detour got us to the destination we wanted to achieve only using different roads.  Better yet, remote education was staying with your relatives when your home is under renovation.  As soon as the renovation is complete, you are expected to move back home.  Remote education, as we installed it, was an emergency delivery system and when the emergency is over so is that delivery system for the every day education of children.

Remote education is authorized by the Department of Public Instruction as an “alternative delivery system” to be used at the discretion of a local school board during the emergency of the COVID 19 pandemic to ensure the education of every child eligible for public education.  There is no mandate that a school board must provide remote education as teaching and learning delivery system.  This alternative is premised upon waivers granted by national and state governments to educational rules and practices that are not sustainable in an emergency.  When the emergency ends, so do the waivers that permit the alternative delivery system

I understand that we live in a consumer economy.  Some parents and children found learning at home and not attending school to be a new preference for how they wish to continue their experiences in 4K-12 education.  They do not want to return to daily, in-school life.  Parents as consumers of child education will make their demands known.  Homeschooling, open enrollment, charter schools, and virtual education are responses to past educational consumerism.  And, each contains an element of what a consumer seeks in remote education.  Children can be taught at home.  Parents can choose their educational provider.  Parents can band together as their own schools.  Teaching and learning can be conducted on-line.  We will see if these legislatively-approved options appease new consumer wants.

Sadly, the pandemic will become endemic.  Resurgent infections and variants will cause schools to use quarantining and perhaps campus closure in the future as diligent responses for child and adult health needs.  Quarantining and closure will require the use of remote education strategies.  There also will be residual use of remote education for emergency times when children can not attend school.  A child who needs an extended absence due to illness or injury can connect with daily instruction remotely.  The technologies we use today will satisfy that child’s emergency and continuing learning needs.  We know how to use remote education in an emergency -in an emergency.  Consumer want is not an emergency.

To every parent or child who responds to the writing with “…but I want remote education…”, I repeat my “No!”.  Remote education necessitated by a school closed due to the emergencies of the pandemic is not the birth of another parent choice option. 

Some may use open enrollment options to find a school district that provides remote education within its usual programming.  Parents may demonstrate their wants in school board or school referenda elections.  These are real and positive options in our political life.  No problem.  The state legislature may make remote education their latest concession to the politics of education.  Again, no problem, if that is the mandate.  And, with a new mandate, appropriate study will be made regarding how to staff remote education for the success of all children.  Today, it is not the mandate and there has been no study of how remote education can serve all children with equal success.  What we know of synchronous virtual teaching and learning is the residual of our emergency strategy only.

Public education will return to its solid normalcy of in-person teaching, coaching, directing, guiding, advising, and mentoring of children attending school in a non-emergency environment.  And, as needed, we will rise to the next emergency.  And, as educators, what we learned in this emergency will help us to be better educators in the future.

Stop Teaching and Breathe

Posted on by
Reply

Continuous teaching and learning reached a new status in the pandemic.  Teaching and learning now are a constant stream.  Synchronous and asynchronous online delivery means that a child may be engaged in school instruction without interruption – 24/7, five days a week, 52 weeks a year.  Barring an electrical outage, schooling need not stop.  That is, schooling need not stop unless we stop it and we really should stop the constant stream of instruction now and again.

Online delivery platforms allow us to synchronously deliver instruction in real time to students.  We can simulate in-person classrooms on screen.  We can easily create unit and lesson designs that allow a child at-home to be taught as if she were in the classroom.  That means that every day we schedule in-school teaching, all children regardless of location can be engaged in schooling.  The same platform allows us to asynchronously prepare instruction for engagement outside regular school hours.  A child who is not able to attend during the day can attend to schooling after hours.  A child who needs more instruction can receive it without contradicting her usual day time schooling.  A child who wants more can receive it.  Our growth in delivery systems during the pandemic means we can make schooling constant and continuous across the calendar and clock.

Asynchronous streaming does not require a teacher to teach in real time.  Lessons prepared and recorded can be streamed at any time.  Teachers can teach on a regular clock and children can learn on a virtual clock.  This moves the needle of instructional design miles from where it sat pre-pandemic.

The possibility of an unlimited stream of instruction raises an interesting question.  Because we can, should we?  Because we can provide a constant stream of instruction for every child, should we expect a child to engage in a constant stream of learning? Because we can operate a school 5, 6, or 7 days each week, should we expect children to attend on that schedule? Because we can mesh synchronous and asynchronous teaching into a constant delivery stream, should we believe that such a constancy is best for children?

Nope, is the right answer. 

We need to take a breath.  Children need to take a breath.  We need to make these breaths planned and purposeful.

A breath is a conscious break from constant engagement in teaching and learning.  Why take a breath?  These are a few of the cogent reasons.

  • The whole child needs time for schooling and time away from schooling.  Consider all the interests and needs a growing child displays.  Time is the vehicle for these interests and needs to be addressed.  If schooling consumes a child’s time, then the whole child cannot grow properly.
  • Learning requires time for conscious intellectual digestion and skill exploration.  That time is a recess from the constant spigot of instruction and the opportunity for conscious and unconscious thinking about and mulling over what has been learned.  Short term memory requires 7-10 repetitions of a fact or a concept before it sticks.  Long-term memory requires 17-20 reps.  Many of these repetitions do not take place in class time, but in a child’s reflective thinking.  Children don’t stop thinking about and trying out the things they learn.  They need time away from teaching to learn what they have been taught.
  • Learning fatigue is a reality.  Being consciously engaged in on-screen learning is hard work.  Focusing on a screen or screens for a length of time, although it is not physical movement, is tiring because of its rigidity and lack of movement.  Fatigued children do not learn efficiently.
  • Attending school is a child’s conscious decision in remote education.  And, not attending also is a conscious decision. With a click, a child can turn off the screen and be absent.  Work with a child to make time off the right time off.

Stop the teaching and breathe.  It is a healthy thing to do.

A breath taking looks like this.

Create a school day without any new instruction.  Stop the teaching and catch up.  Why is that when a line of cars travels in a caravan, the last car drives at a higher speed than the lead car?  Every hesitation in the speed of each car in the caravan is exaggerated for the last car in line.  The gaps grow and more speed is required to catch up.  Consider a constant stream of instruction as a caravan.  We need to stop teaching and attend to the last children in the learning line.  Is each of these children confident enough in their learning to continue the journey forward?  It takes time to catch up.  Catching up is highly individualized and it takes time to measure what each individual requires to get caught up.  Catching  up requires the right teacher questions to establish how a child will catch up.  Catching up takes time to unlearn and learn correctly.  Catching up results in a confident and solid learning for all children.  Effective teaching works best when all children are ready to learn and why wouldn’t we take a breath to ensure their readiness?

A time of the school day with no new instruction.  Take a break every day from the constant streaming.  It could be the proverbial one-hour lunch break.  Shut off the screens and enjoy a time away for eating.  In school, lunch is a finite number of minutes pinched by the time it takes to get to the cafeteria, get a lunch, and get back to class.  For elementary children, lunch is a compromise with noontime recess.  These pinches are not at play for at-home children, so eliminate them also for in-school children.  Lunch and free time!  What an idea. 

It could be a real recess for standing up, walking away, and moving. Tell at-home children to go outdoors and take a safe walk.  Take in-school children for a walk around the school campus or several laps of the school hallways.  Get the blood stirring.  This is not a PE class, but relaxing recreation, a social walk, a time away.

Stop the teaching – for a moment.  Breathe.  Allow the whole child to breathe.  Assure that all children are caught up and ready for their next learning.  Now, everyone, breathe deeply.  And, again.