Adapting on the fly: Teaching during COVID
Every weekday during the school year, thousands of students across Atlantic Canada file into classrooms or, during the pandemic, log onto Google Classroom accounts.
Their education is a hugely complex, massively consequential undertaking. Teachers are the vanguard of that effort, but few of us truly understand the scope of what they do.
Since March 2020, school has essentially toggled between two pandemic modes: in-person with full COVID protocols and remote learning.
Alison Boros spent this past year as a support teacher at Fairview Junior High in Halifax. Although schools anticipated they would use a blend of the two at some point, Boros said that has not been the case.
“What I did in person was I would go into classrooms. I would be given a schedule with various student names in each of these classes,” she says.
“I would either stay with them in class and work on the current task or, if they were really behind, I would pull them out to the resource room and we would catch up.”
What Boros describes in a paragraph or two is the combination of years of training and experience on her end to meet the abilities and individual needs of each student.
For teachers and students, those skills were geared toward a world built on a different set of rules than the one we're living in now.
Virtual learning naturally threw the biggest curve at teachers and students.
“That actually took a lot of time, to figure out what to do with support teachers because we would just join in classrooms and we would be pretty useless,” she said. ”Because the teacher would be instructing.”
Adapting on the fly, Boros said it took until the last lockdown to really find a way to translate what support teachers had been doing in-person into the online mode.
“Halfway through this last lockdown, it was much better. Where I got a schedule, I got my students, and what I would do is I would log into these classes and I would pull the students out at the beginning.”
JUGGLING ACT
Much of Boros' work was focused on helping kids who had fallen behind on multiple assignments figure out a way to catch up, working on what's called “executive function” skills — basically, the ability to prioritize multiple things that must get done without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down.
Using Google Classroom, Boros and her colleagues could see at a click the to-do lists piling up for each student, and it was eye-opening.
“It really helped us see just how many tasks each student juggles,” she said.
“Everything becomes a little thing to submit, and that to me can be quite problematic because it really makes a mountain out of molehills, in a way. So there is that challenge to stay organized. But at the same time, it's creating extremely digitally literate students.”
HOME, SCHOOL COLLISION
In normal times, the places students come from might be very different, but when the bell rings, they are all seated in the same building.
During remote learning, home and school merged, with consequences as varied as the students themselves.
“Some students didn't even have their own computer, so they had to borrow a school computer. Some people shared their computer with their siblings and parents,” said Boros.
Even if every student had a computer and/or a good internet connection, teachers were not engaging with students in a pure online analog of the classroom. If there were 30 students, there were 30 different places.
“Many students couldn't put their visuals up. They didn't want to or they couldn't because they have so much going on in their houses," she said.
"Some of the kids live in apartments with multiple people in them. They're lying down in their bed, but some of them don't have another place to be private and quiet and listen to their teacher.”
TRUE GRIT
Every generation worries that the new generation won't be able to hack it in “the real world."
Those people have always been wrong. Boros has seen the proof in the students she's worked with this year, fighting to learn through all the challenges listed above and more.
“It's been amazing, actually, what they've been doing. They're really showing up. They're really present. They're there to learn, they want to learn,” she said.
“As much as we thought there'd be a lot of trouble and obstacles, which there were, there's also been quite a bit of buy-in … because they understand how difficult the situation is.”
Of course, in praising students and their teachers for their grit, we can't forget that strength needs support.
“A lot of kids really struggled. And adults too. This was so stressful, and the stress of getting COVID, spreading COVID, having family members at home that are very immunocompromised,” said Boros.
“Just having to adapt, how hard that can be for some kids. So to check in with their mental health became even more important, and I don't think that should slide when we go back.”
BEING ADAPATABLE
At the best of times, how we educate children is a focus of intense debate. It is, after all, one of the most important things we do as a society.
This year has not been the best of times for anyone and the debate has been more fierce.
It's too early to tell what the impact these two COVIDimpacted school years will have on students or teachers. What is clear is that working together they've dug down deep and done what they could with what they were given, and Boros thinks they'll be better for it.
“I think it really highlights the importance of being adaptable, both as a person and as an instructor and as a student,” she said. “Whether it's a pandemic or not, there will be problems and situations thrown in your course. This pandemic, if it's taught us anything, it's how important it is to be flexible and adaptable, to changing situations."
And the students appreciate the efforts their teachers have made in what's been arguably one of the hardest years yet.
"My teacher teaches me awesome things," said Lennon Richardson, who was taught by Miranda Stewart at Joseph Howe Elementary in Halifax. "Learning math games with Halloween was kind of like the best thing she taught me."
Quinn Misner, who attends Aldershot Elementary in the Annapolis Valley, is full of praise for her teacher Tammy MacLeod.
"I love being in your class," she said of her teacher. "I love being in your class when you teach multiplication and division to me."
Go online: See more best wishes for teachers in a video at SaltWire.com.