Students, teachers sweat hybrid learning
If your last name starts with an “A” and you show up to Shelton High School on a Friday it will be a very short day because a parent will be called to pick you up and take you home.
Friday is one of your remote learning days, under a hybrid system designed to give students somewhat of an in-school experience while the COVID-19 pandemic remains a threat.
In Bridgeport, school days will be shorter and also tied to your last name at the high school level. In school or not, much of the
instruction is expected to be delivered off of laptops, teachers say.
As most schools brace to reopen on Tuesday, how they will look remains in flux. Districts are keeping their options open in case the best — or the worst — happens. If COVID-19 cases remain low, schools are prepared to open in full. If they climb, schools are prepared to close down and go back to an online curriculum delivery system.
But the uncertainty has caused parents, staff and administrators alike to face the fact that the reopening of school offers no firm ground. Parents will be juggling child care, their jobs, at-home learning and disparate scheduling almost from day to day.
Especially for the majority of local districts, which are offering a hybrid reopening plan, consistency has become a casualty to fate.
Hilary McDevitt is a teacher and a mom who spent an hour reviewing all the schedules and correspondence for her son, entering his freshman year at Newtown High School. Her sister, a school counselor, tried to help.
Between block scheduling and hybrid, McDevitt decided to begin with fully remote.
“It’s easier,” said McDevitt. “Much more complicated for families to navigate school on different days, factoring in school holidays, work schedules, child care, sick days, sudden quarantines or closures, etc.”
In Ansonia, both hybrid cohorts are supposed to be remote learning on Wednesdays. However, Sept. 2, the first day of the school year, was the exception.
“So we had the second half of the A cohort start today,” said Ansonia Superintendent Joseph DiBacco, very relieved to put the first day of what promises to be a challenging school year behind him.
DiBacco said everyone was just happy to be back, to meet their teachers and grasp some sense of normalcy.
Regardless of the model, school officials admit the fall of 2020 is bound to try everyone’s patience with abrupt changes to routines and schedules.
“In my opinion people will respond to it and get used to it,” said Acting Shelton Schools Superintendent Beth Smith.
Smith was principal at Shelton High when an eight period was added to the school day and an “A” day/“B” day rotation was instituted.
“We may have a few students show up on Tuesday (Shelton’s first day) who are there on the wrong day,” said Smith, but they will get used to it. Kids are very resilient, she said.
Teachers also are steeling their resolve, although many say they feel they are learning to fly a plane while building it.
“I think we are going to have to take this day by day to figure out what is feasible and what is not through trial and error,” said Kristen Record, a Stratford physics teacher and the 2011 Connecticut Teacher of the year.
This is Record’s 21st year as a public school teacher. There are so many unknowns and uncertainty, she said, it feels like she is starting all over again.
Parents, whether sending their kids or keeping them home, say they want hybrid to work but have their doubts.
Greenwich parent Tanya Leonard has a seventhgrader at Eastern Middle School and an incoming freshman at Greenwich High School.
Leonard wonders how her high school son will fare. Under the hybrid schedule, he will be at school only two days a week — Thursday and Friday — and learning remotely from home the first three days of the week.
Although she will be working from home, Leonard said she won’t be available to help her sons for most of the day.
“You are expecting young teenagers to fend for themselves for education,” Leonard said. “To have a kid sitting at home trying to learn three days a week is asking a lot of both the kids and the teachers. There will be a lot of responsibility on the teacher to keep the students socially engaged, both in the classroom and at home.”
Judy Falaro, a Quinnipiac University professor and former New Haven principal, said she feels badly for everybody.
“It’s so hard,” said Falaro of the logistical gymnastics teachers, students and parents will go through to make the hybrid system work.
She sees it as being doable, but difficult to pull off.
“It will take time to get into a rhythm and to work out the kinks,” said Falaro.
She warns that because of all the logistics involved there will be less time to teach.
Her advice is for teachers to start backward. Establish what they want students to get out of a class, then work their way back.
“Break down objectives into weeks,” Falaro said. It might help also to rely on project-based learning rather than lectures, she said.
Michael Alfano, dean of Sacred Heart University’s College of Education, also said he sees the task of hybrid teaching as “doable.” With how much fidelity, he is not sure.
“I expect some bumps in the road early on,” Alfano said.
That said, Alfano said hybrid beats all virtual, particularly from a social and emotional standpoint after a spring most students spent isolated from peers
and teachers.
Ansonia’s DiBacco said there will be no heavy lifting the first couple of weeks of school. Instead, it will be about getting used to a new schedule and building relationships with teachers.
“It was quite abrupt when everyone left,” said DiBacco. “I went through Mead Elementary School two weeks ago and I looked at the board. It was like being on the Titanic. It said “March 13.”
That was the day the pandemic closed most schools in the region.
In Ansonia, students whose parents opted to keep them home won’t start distance learning until next week.
So there have been no dry runs of how the equipment will work.
“We are OK bandwidth wise, so we should be in good shape, “DiBacco said.
In Stratford, Record said it is her understanding teachers, with students in front of them in class, will be expected to simultaneously provide a video feed to students learning remotely for direct instruction time.
She called it new territory for everyone.
“I would personally like to try to have all of my students logged into Zoom regardless of their location so that they are able to interact with each other,” said Record.
That seems to be the plan in Bridgeport, according to several teachers in the high school who say they expect to address all students, home or in school, from their computers and Smartboards even as many of them also learn to navigate a new block schedule that has been put into place.
At the elementary level, teachers like Chandra Maxwell at Roosevelt School in Bridgeport said they are aiming to make up for lost time, filling in learning gaps that have occurred because of COVID-19, as well as preparing to provide a rich and engaging learning experience for students.
McDevitt, who teaches at Bridgeport’s Johnson School, said everyone is handling it pretty well, but as a teacher, she worries about families who don’t have the resources that she does, or the kids who will have to figure it out on their own.
“Moral of the story is we need to extend a huge amount of grace to students, teachers, principals and families right now,” McDevitt said.
“You are expecting young teenagers to fend for themselves for education. To have a kid sitting at home trying to learn three days a week is asking a lot of both the kids and the teachers.”
Tanya Leonard, Greenwich parent who has a seventh-grader at Eastern Middle School and an incoming freshman at Greenwich High School