LESSON PLANS
Some students benefit from virtual learning: What does that mean for the future?
Perhaps the most broadly felt impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions it brought has been that on public schools. Most closed last March, at least for a time, and some have yet to reopen, opting instead to continue with virtual online classes.
Those closures, and the subsequent scramble to provide education online:
• affected student education, as well as such school-related milestones as graduation, proms and field trips;
• affected teachers who had to suddenly learn an entire new methodology for teaching;
• affected households where those adults lucky enough to have kept their jobs during
the ensuing economic upheaval, now had to figure out child care for their children’s remote learning if they wanted to keep those jobs.
And the impact was not just in the U.S.
“The global health crisis has disrupted the education of an estimated 90 percent of students worldwide, meaning that 1.6 billion youth have been negatively affected,” according to U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-6th Dist., who has co-sponsored a bill to examine the impacts more closely.
“The implications are especially dire for up to 24 million students at risk of dropping out of school permanently due to rising levels of child poverty associated with the pandemic,” according to Houlahan’s office.
Almost since the day schools were closed, parents have been clamoring for them to be reopened in some capacity. Some districts seem to have mastered near regularity, while others turned to a now-familiar word — “hybrid,” meaning a few days a week in-person, a few days virtual.
And at school boards across the country, officials and families can be heard talking about things returning to “normal.”
Does ‘normal’ work for everyone?
One thing the pandemic has brought to the surface is greater awareness of the cracks in public education, whether it be funding inequity or the fact that the “normal” doesn’t work for everybody.
Last month, Pottstown School Board member Thomas Hylton observed that some things are better online for some students. Most of Pottstown students have been learning online for nearly a year.
Hylton was not alone in making the observation.
“I was recently contacted by one parent who told me her student is on the honor roll for the first time, that she loves virtual,” said Pottstown Schools Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez.
In the first week of March, the district surveyed staff to see “what worked” about virtual education. “We should look for ways to come out this better than we went in,” said board member Steve Kline, a retired school administrator.
“We need to have the conversation: ‘what does education look like next year?’” Rodriguez said.
“It’s something we need to explore. I’m intrigued by how we learn from the pandemic and re-think education,” agreed North Penn Schools Superintendent Curtis Dietrich.
Who is thriving?
Edutopia, the magazine of George Lucas Educational Foundation, published an article shortly after the lockdowns began which observed that “a handful of students — shy kids, hyperactive kids, highly creative kids — are suddenly doing better with remote learning than they were doing in the physical classroom.”
“That sounds like the right profile, although it’s hard to generalize,” said Dietrich. “Some students, not the largest number, are doing very well in virtual and may even prefer it. And that sounds like the kinds of kids who are flourishing there.”
In the Edutopia article, Nora Fleming wrote “the unplanned break from the physical classroom may be bringing to light hidden reasons some kids strug- gle while others succeed.” Reasons offered by educators included social situations, relief from bullying, an inflexible bell schedule and the ever-present debate about kids getting enough sleep.
“For a few of the teachers, at least, it’s inspired them to consider making permanent changes when they return to the classroom,” Fleming wrote.
The past year certainly has brought change for teachers, both at home and at work, as much as it has for students and parents.
Unlike wealthier districts, Pottstown first had to clear the hurdle of providing computers for all students to learn from home, something that took months and was only accomplished with help from a capital fundraising campaign.
By the time classes began for the current school year, most households and teachers could face the challenge of online learning.
“At first in August I was petrified over the complete 180 that I would have to do as a teacher, but as time went on, I felt more confident,” said Nick Fox, a math teacher at Pottstown High School.
“The pros are that students who really want to learn have zero distractions from classmates. No fights, no yelling, no disorderly behavior, so I can just teach as the profession was designed. I also think the students have been able to successfully learn to write actual emails, and not rely on social media slang to communicate,” said Fox.
“The cons: I don’t feel I can connect with my kids as I normally would and rapport is harder to build. I can see they are getting burned out by pandemic fatigue and I can’t emotionally help them as much as I could in person,” said Fox.
And as much as some students thrive under the online model, “the disengaged students have no recourse for doing work. In person, I can go near them and ask them to put the phone away etc . ... but here, I have no power outside calling a parent and getting the response that they struggle motivating their kid, too,” said Fox.
Teachers in many districts have struggled with the hybrid model of teaching in-person and online at the same time, splitting their attention. Rodriguez said the pilot hybrid program the district tried at one elementary school was largely a failure. “You’re under-serving two groups of students,” he said.
North Penn, with more financial resources than Pottstown, addressed that issue of classroom engagement with new technology. Last October, the district used the federal COVID-19 aid to purchase 50-inch monitors and improved cameras and microphones to make the livestreaming of classes less jarring.
“It really helped us have more of a seamless transition,” Dietrich said in an interview last week. The larger screens and better cameras and microphones enable teachers to better see students online and vice versa.
“You don’t have to back to your desk and look at the laptop on your desk to see those students,” Dietrich said.
Of course, some subjects lose something in the online translation.
It’s hard to get as much out of a science lab when you’re not holding the test tube or dissecting the frog in person, acknowledged Dietrich, who is a former chemistry and biology teacher.
“I’m also really worried about our career and technical education students. We’re doing the best we can, but it’s not the same as hands-on,” he said.
You don’t have to tell that to Elizabeth Yoder, chairwoman of the art department in the Pottstown School District and the head of the teachers union.
While North Penn seems to be making due with online art lessons thanks to its advanced technology, Pottstown does not have that advantage.
“It has been extraordinarily difficult trying to teach virtually as an art teacher. We have a very limited budget so being able to get all the basic art supplies together (so kids had pencils and scissors and paper at home) used up a good portion of our budget, took an enormous mount of time to create, distribute and keep track of. We were able to make boxes for every single student in all of our art classes so they could be successful, “Yoder told MediaNews Group.
“Demonstrations in art have been the worst part of it. I have two cameras and three computers set up so kids can see what I am doing and so that I can see them,” Yoder described.
“They upload images, I download them. I print them and then I try to demonstrate on them. This is after I have walked them through each lesson while recording it. At the end of the day, I upload recordings for the kids who need to see it again or who are absent,” she described. “The amount of emails and digital communications (whether by text or through Google Classroom, etc.) has more than quadrupled. I get literally hundreds of communications every single day. Sometimes some emails slip through the cracks because I simply just cannot keep up with it.”
“As far as my ‘classroom’ setup I have basically been living in my garage 14, 15, 16 hours a day. There is no heat in there so having space heaters doesn’t always do the job. I often have to bundle up in a blanket, wear a hoodie and a scarf,” Yoder wrote in an email to MediaNews Group.
Yoder’s experience makes it clear that all-online-allthe-time can be a struggle for teachers as well as students.
Refuge from bullying
The National Center for Education Statistics reported in 2017 that at least 20 percent of students ages 12-18 reported being bullied at school. Students who are the most bullied have also been found to have lower academic performance than their nonbullied peers, according to Edutopia.
For other students, the much-mentioned element of socialization can be a mixed bag. While the majority of children benefit from interacting with peers and teachers, pressure to “look good” or to “fit in” can be a distraction and take away from academic focus. That emphasis diminishes with online learning.
And then there’s the matter of the kid who is always yawning during first period.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends eight-to-10 hours a night for teens ages 12-18 and 12 hours for children ages 6-12.
But as advocates in area school districts from Owen J. Roberts to Phoenixville to Spring-Ford have argued during efforts to delay the start of school, a 2018 study of high school students across 30 states found more than 70 percent of students were not getting enough sleep during the school year.
In districts where the start of school has been delayed, some studies have found better grades. And if there’s one thing made easier by non-synchronus virtual education — which permits students to complete work on their own schedule — students are sleeping later.
Dietrich agreed more sleep, fewer activities and less in-person pressure to succeed may be aiding some aspects of student mental health as much as the lack of social contact may be damaging it.
What happens next fall?
All of which leads back to the original question: “What do we do in September and would does it look like?” said Dietrich. “That’s the big question.”
Like many districts, North Penn has run its own virtual offering, in part to compete with cyber-charter schools — whose ever-rising tuition represents what school officials call an unsustainable strain on annual budgets.
The North Penn Virtual Academy is provided through the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit. “So we need to ask ourselves, do we make adjustments to that? Do we start from scratch and do something else?”
Many school officials may find the pandemic has permanently changed public education in ways they had not expected, but one year in, they are changes which await discovery.
In the meantime, one thing is for sure for Beth Yoder, who has supported Pottstown’s decision to remain virtual despite the hardships: “I miss being in my classroom and I miss being with my students. I miss being with my colleagues as well but I am grateful that we are all still healthy and alive.”
“I was recently contacted by one parent who told me her student is on the honor roll for the first time, that she loves virtual.”
— Stephen Rodriguez, Pottstown Schools Superintendent
“The pros are that students who really want to learn have zero distractions from classmates. No fights, no yelling, no disorderly behavior, so I can just teach.” — Nick Fox, Pottstown High School math teahcer