Posted on 10/01/2020 10:03:43 AM PDT by Kaslin
It seems that teachers and students are being set up to fail.
This fall, many public schools are responding to COVID-19 by offering online learning. In this pandemic era, we’ve been discouraged from taking potentially life-saving medications without “gold standard” studies supporting their use, yet it seems parents are now being told to place their children in a brand-new learning environment with no study of any kind supporting its use.
In my northern Virginia school district of Loudoun County, online learning for most students is five days per week. The typical daily schedule includes three hours of whole-class instruction, one hour of small-group instruction, one hour of independent learning, and one hour of “specials” in the form of music, art, and physical education (yes, our district is even trying to teach P.E. online.).
As a licensed elementary teacher who has taught reading to children via Skype for the past five years, I have just one piece of advice for all parents of elementary school-aged children who are enrolled in virtual classrooms this fall: Sit with your children as much as possible during their online learning, and observe what they’re being asked to do. If you find it difficult to follow along and engage in the lessons, chances are your children are struggling too.
I have taught many children to read through a national virtual program called Rhyme & Reason Online. So I know firsthand that teaching by video conference can be highly effective. It enables me to meet with my students multiple times per week for short lessons, with little or no inconvenience to their parents. This arrangement is ideal for phonics instruction, where short drills work best and repetition is the key. That is not the case for all academic disciplines.
Along the way, I have learned some hard lessons — lessons that school administrators who are now plunging their entire districts into virtual learning have little time to learn. First and foremost, I’ve learned there is no way to effectively teach young children via video conferencing, whether on Skype, Zoom, or any other technology, except in very small groups. It does not work well even with as few as five students, let alone 10 or more.
Second, teaching by means of video conference requires that teachers work closely with parents to manage their child’s computer, internet speed, camera, audio, headphones, workspace, background noise, and lighting. This is a big task, and each child who is added to the call complicates it exponentially.
Third, I’ve learned that some parents, no matter how well-meaning, simply cannot do what is necessary to make this type of instruction work for their child. They might, for example, insist that the only workspace available for their child is the middle of their kitchen, with a steady stream of family members walking in and out and loud appliances running in the background. They might have an unreliable internet connection or faulty headphones, causing their child to drop in and out of calls frequently. They might have other young children at home whose noise levels they cannot adequately manage.
Any one of these problems, if it persists, can be a deal-breaker.
Many teachers who are working for public schools are required to teach up to 30 students at a time, while many of those students are experiencing one or more problems that interfere not just with their own ability to learn but also that of their classmates.
Even with very small student groups and parents who meet all the technical demands, virtual instruction requires strong teachers who are not only competent in the subjects they’re teaching but also able to motivate and inspire their students across the internet. Teachers must remain positive, encouraging, and friendly, even when the lessons aren’t going as planned.
Being able to smile easily is a real asset, as is using one’s voice and facial expressions to communicate, since body language is lost over the internet. Teachers who are incompetent, don’t truly like teaching, or smile little will have even more trouble engaging their students online than they do in person.
All of this might seem like a tall order. The requirements for making a virtual classroom work don’t end there, however. This method of instruction also demands that the curriculum be well-matched to the medium.
Reading instruction is well-suited to virtual learning. I teach a highly structured decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension program with precise objectives and goals. Students in our program have hard copies of our books and workbooks. Many children, not surprisingly, prefer to hold a colorful storybook in their hands and turn the pages with their fingers, rather than to stare at a computer screen and click an arrow button.
Most public schools this fall won’t be trying to teach this way online. They will be trying to teach all subjects, often with inadequate methods and materials as well as unrealistic goals. Imagine trying to teach a young child how to properly hold a pencil without ever being able to take that child’s hand in your own. Consider how frustrating it must be to attempt to simply read a story aloud together while students are dropping in and out of the call continuously.
I fear that virtual learning will be ineffective for many students this fall. School administrators do not seem to have a realistic idea of what can and cannot be accomplished through video-conferencing. Their online classrooms are likely to be noisy, chaotic environments, run by teachers who are, at best, uncomfortable in their new assignments and at worst, downright miserable.
The shutdowns pose unusual challenges, yet I am astounded at the apparent audacity of school administrators. I am not aware of a single published, peer-reviewed study that offers scientific evidence to support instructing large groups of young children online for many hours each day. Many children will likely be frustrated, and some will most certainly act out. Others might become depressed. For these children, finding an alternative schooling option might become a necessity.
Meanwhile, when evidence emerges that students gained little or nothing from their time spent in virtual classrooms, will there be any accountability for those who imposed this program on our children? Sadly, if history is our guide, the answer to that question is no.
Because the ignorant are much easier to rule.
My 7 and 8 year old nieces hate it.
In my typical Northeast “blue city” the most “at risk” kids have basically been on vacation since last March. Of course, these are nearly all black kids, with single or no-parent homes. There’s a lot of talk about delivering these kids computers or iPads, or making sure someone pays the bill for the internet. Of course, the expensive, union-run, bloated education bureaucracy here will never achieve anything close.
Combine even lower educational achievement and greater ignorance with the perpetual leftist of message of victimhood and righteous black rage, and they are setting-up an even greater proportion of this generation for failure and membership in the BLM brownshirt street-activist club.
The only difference now is that parents are see how their children are being taught.
Otherwise... SSDD.
Why pubic schools are failing students. There, fixed it.
So do my 2 granddaughters in CA. The 13 year old doesn’t love school but she’s had it with online learning. The 15 year old is just plain miserable and my son has had to hire tutors so they don’t fall behind. My daughter-in-law is able to help the younger one but the sophomore is another story.
Urban public schools have been a disaster for 60+ years
And now so many suburban schools have been, for at least 40 years
Like my beloved HS, which once was a “destination school” and now is a shadow of its former self
I wouldn’t send a kid there for anything
We have started in person school attendance here in Wisconsin and it seems to be working as COVID happening among the kids is rare.
Despite some signs of being able to be back to normal, the WI teacher’s union is demanding Democrat Gov. Evers shut down the schools and make schools go back to online learning. They want to get paid while sitting at home and pretending to work.
One in my elementary age grandsons was informed he may have been exposed to COVID in one of his classes. Not from a kid, it was the music teacher. She probably was not careful about her out of school activities.
We have two smaller schools in TX that have cancelled all remote classes and told all students to return to school for classes. Reasons- students are failing, extreme expense. Hoping many more schools will follow the leaders.
Did my masters thesis on digital versus print comprehension. The only data that supported having any kind of computers in the classroom was paid for by guess who? It started when Schools stopped teaching academics and started teaching socializing. Continued when phonics and math memorization were thrown out. Advanced when technology became the measure of a good education, and now, we have the insanity of what they call digital education. We are teaching the children how to press keys. We do not process computer images the same way we process actual reading and physical writing. And this is true for both adults and children.
If my daughter were not homeschooling her for children, I would have no hope whatsoever.
Have their mother look into real online schooling through K12 or another similar program, or just do full on homeschooling for this year. For the high scholl kid have him look at Khan academy. It’s a good resource for self learning most high school subjects. Maybe in January, the sophomore could take a couple of college classes either in person or online.
bflr
Online learning=teachers who would rather riot every night with their Antifa/BLM buds than teach kids.
Online learning also= parents doing most of the teaching.
Therefore, no pay for the teachers and no money for schools because they are not doing the jobs they were hired to do.
Hey, Antifa/BLM Teachers, YOU ARE FIRED.
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There's no better way to get kids interested in learning to read than reading to them, every day from the time they are babies old enough to sit up in your lap.
Wait, we were told in person leaning was failing students last year, the year before, the year before that and on back.
Aren’t CA schools supposed to all be open in a month?
Unless he has a learning problem, the 15 year old needs to buck up and stop wasting his parents’ hard earned money.
bookmark
Grandon #1 is 4th grade, and he is at our house 3 days a week for the online. There are about 20 kids dialing into the daily Zoom classes, (there should be 25-30 for the full class) and the behavior is about what you would expect for 4th graders. Mom works from home, and has the other 2 boys (3rd grade and 1st grade) with her.
So, how is this working from what I see? The amount of education being provided is probably about the same as being in class all day 5 days a week, because when you take out recess, lunch breaks, and other distractions how much really gets done in a normal school day?
That said, this will only work on a temporary basis, and the wheels already look like they are coming loose if not ready to fall off. One thing I can't do is blame the teachers - they are working with the tools they have available under lousy conditions for education.
And the education being provided covers the middle of the curve, but the kids at both ends (high and low) are not getting the attention they need. But is that really different than if they were all in a class?
Our school district in northwest Illinois was supposed to start going back into the classroom later in October, but the entire area (Region 1 of Illinois - basically the northwest corner of Illinois) is being shut down again because of some bureaucratic criteria related to COVID test results, so everything will probably be set back again.
And our governor will probably send HIS family to the estate in Wisconsin or Florida to avoid all of this lockdown crap in Illinois. His initials are JB, but he acts like King George. Too bad he's not on the other end of the ocean, like the real King George was.
Maybe if HER teachers were doing their jobs they wouldn’t have to spend their hard earned money. She’s an excellent student but when you have an assignment dumped on you with literally no teaching you’re pretty much on your own. My grandsons in MA. found that out in the Spring. There was no teaching just assignments and they had no guidance. When the semester was finished they were informed they they really only had to finish 50% of the work. Maybe if the teachers weren’t being paid for doing nothing this would be a different story.
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