San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Struggle for better distance education
When school starts next month for millions of California students, the majority will remain at home, logging into classes online and learning to read and write or solve for X from afar. But that doesn’t mean parents, teachers, principals and kids are happy about another stretch of distancing learning — one that will probably last longer than the marathon in the spring.
High school junior Henry Mills paused as he mulled over any upsides to the return of distance learning this fall at Alameda High School.
“I will no longer have to worry about what I’m wearing the first day of school,” said Henry, 16.
The list stopped there. “That might be as good as it gets,” he said. “No one really wants to do remote learning.”
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Plans to reopen with at least some inperson instruction were largely nixed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Friday, with new state orders banning a return to classrooms until counties can meet rigid requirements related to coronavirus case counts, hospitalization rates and other factors.
More than 30 counties do not currently meet the standards for reopening schools to students and teachers. Once a county does meet the requirements, it must continue to do so for 14 days before schools can bring students back. And the rules for reopening include demanding directives such as testing all school staff every two weeks.
It could be months before that happens, which means virtually every Bay Area private and public school student will do distance learning for the foreseeable future. So, Henry, along with nearly every family and school facing the fall, is asking: How do you make virtual instruction better?
Answering that will be critical in the coming months, given that once schools reopen, many districts will adopt a hybrid plan that combines inperson instruction with distance learning.
With the school year rapidly approaching, many teachers and families still have more questions than answers about how to do distance learning in a way that ensures all students can participate and benefit academically, especially given what happened in the spring.
The emergency coronavirus closure of virtually every California school in midMarch pitched the public education system into chaos, forcing teachers to figure out how to teach students from afar.
By many accounts, it was a disaster. Some schools just sent home paper packets of work, while others assigned homework via email or other services and sent links to online videos or other instructional sites. In other cases, teachers ramped up quickly, providing live instruction via video conference, but often less than half the class showed up.
The uncertainty surrounding the status of the pandemic exacerbated the situation, with districts unsure of how or when to reopen. Newsom’s announcement brought muchneeded clarity, but left officials little time to prepare.
“I’m very, very concerned about distance learning working for us,” said Mark Sanchez, San Francisco school board president, during a recent public meeting. “It didn’t work anywhere in the country and we’re no different. We have to do better.” Henry agreed.
“It got bad fast,” Henry said, describing one teacher who simply recorded himself explaining math problems, with only his hand visible.
“I’m sitting at home, all I see is this person’s hand writing on a piece of paper and saying, ‘This is where the X goes,’ ” he said.
In another class, the teacher had the class read a book on the Holocaust, “a very dark book,” and perhaps one that was illtimed for stressed and scared students.
Students were bored and in many cases simply stopped doing schoolwork, knowing districts wouldn’t or couldn’t flunk them given the crisis situation. In addition, tens of thousands of California students couldn’t participate without computers and WiFi at home.
“Kids really want to succeed in online learning, they do,” said Henry, a student board member for the district. “But they have to be met with what they need.”
Parents, students and teachers fear little has changed and more distance learning will only exacerbate
“I’m very, very concerned about distance learning working for us. It didn’t work anywhere in the country and we’re no different. We have to do better.”
Mark Sanchez, San Francisco school board president
inequities and leave students woefully behind academically.
District officials have been working on plans for remote learning behind the scenes and on how to reopen schools, but with so many uncertainties, labor negotiations and public debate, there’s still much left to do. While there is ample advice on the internet regarding distance learning, not all districts have created comprehensive plans for scheduling, hours of instruction, online curriculum and the type of technology teachers should use.
“We have a team, including administrators, teachers and others, dedicated to improving our distance learning options for all of our students,” Oakland Superintendent Kyla JohnsonTrammell said in a statement after the governor’s announcement.
But most districts still don’t know how those who can’t work from home will juggle child care. And it’s unclear how students in special education programs will get the services they need.
For other families, virtual instruction just didn’t work for their kids.
“I can tell you that for my shy kid, when he was asked to be in live allclass sessions, he totally shut down and refused to talk or turn his camera on,” said Berkeley mom Caroline Francis, whose son was a kindergartner. “From talking with other parents and some teachers we know, this was a pretty common experience.”
Teachers say they need help and support to do remote learning more effectively.
“We need an online curriculum,” Brian Bethel, a high school math teacher at San Francisco Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, said at a recent school board meeting. “Asking teachers to take the curriculum as is and adopt to an online curriculum led to frustration for teachers, parents and district staff.”
Yet many districts, including San Francisco and Oakland, are still negotiating teacher schedules and other working conditions with their unions, meaning they can’t set student class schedules or set expectations for live instruction via video conference until those agreements are finalized.
In Fremont Unified, while those negotiations are ongoing, district officials have posted training sessions online for teachers who want to get a jumpstart on how to teach better remotely, said Kim Kelly, director of curriculum and instruction.
“Some of them are nervous because the technology demands are significant,” Kelly said. “Some of them are concerned about how they’re going to keep kids engaged.”
The big lesson learned in the spring, she said, is that everything takes longer when you’re doing it remotely. That means teachers need to narrow down content and focus on the essential topics.
“Distance learning isn’t as simple as, ‘I’m just going to turn on a camera and run class how I was going to run it.’ It really requires a different approach to learning,” Kelly said.
That isn’t easy, said UC Berkeley education Professor Alan Schoenfeld.
“Teachers were thrown into an utterly horrid condition and did what they could in the most trying circumstances,” he said. “My feeling is, at this point, we go more slowly and pay more attention to kids’ wellbeing so they can participate in the right ways, so that will pay off more than trying to race through content in stupid ways.”
It might be tempting to focus on rote learning, to give students online exercises in math or other subjects to get through the textbook — a drilltheskills style that’s easier online.
But the goal should be to help student think more deeply, “half as much telling, twice as much thinking,” Schoenfeld said.
Professor Zachary Pardos, Schoenfeld’s colleague at Cal, helped create a certificate program in the midst of the pandemic to help teachers navigate digital learning, although it includes several months of courses — a “noncrash course” program that’s just now available.
The program focuses on how to personalize the instruction so that teachers are not just recording videos, but helping students communicate with each other, to develop who they are and what they think, he said. That’s something that happens organically at school, but not so much online.
School is much more than just the academics, experts said. The oncampus environment provides experiences and services that are nearly impossible to replicate at home — the running around on a playground, the group projects, the singing at circle time.
“I believe we will figure out the academics. We’ll get better as the year goes on,” Kelly said. “I’m really more worried about the socialemotional impact.”
Oakland Skyline High School debate and ethnic studies teacher Harrison Noah is trying to figure out how to transfer that feeling of community and connection he creates in classrooms to a digital environment — before school starts on Aug. 10.
In the spring, he was lucky if 40% of students showed up for online class.
“As teachers we got into (the profession) for the relationships, and it’s tough to do that in a Zoom call,” he said. He’s judging online debate tournaments this month to figure out how to best teach the subject this fall.
Noah said he thinks online teaching will be less chaotic when school starts next month, compared with the spring, with teachers better prepared to use the technology. But the downside will be the challenge of getting to know their students. At least in March, teachers had already spent a significant amount of time with their students.
“I’m getting kids who have never had a high school class before,” he said. “I’ve officially started to have stress dreams about it.”
Fremont student Alvin Lee never imagined he’d start his senior year at home. He wonders what classes will be like when they start up again. After his high school closed in midMarch, he never had another minute of live instruction with his teachers and classmates, he said.
Instead, his instructors made howto videos he watched on his own time. He said he didn’t mind at the time given the stress of the situation and the inability of some students to log on at a set time. But he hopes that’s all fixed in the fall.
“In the coming school year, I’d prefer live instruction again,” he said. “It’s kind of closer to that real learning experience.”