Note: We want to wish everyone the best in the midst of
this unprecedented health challenge.
A reminder to do your part to help others when the opportunity arises.
—Wayne Ogden and Larry Myatt, Co-Founders
For educators, we’ve entered a new and highly challenging time, doing our best to help young people (and each other) learn.
As teachers face empty classrooms and weeks, potentially months, without seeing their students, what will teacher-student interaction look like? How will students interact with each other? In a time where less will have to be more, what aspects of the curriculum will we keep? What aspects of school may give way entirely and what things will give way to the new or different?
In Boston, for example, the teachers union and district officials have yet to come agreement on what “online learning” will look like and the elements it will require. A district official was quoted as saying, “As we move from classrooms to a dependence on technology, we are aware that some of the plans are quite unsustainable and levels of experience with remote tools are very different.” Other districts are convening staff to firm up ideas on the implementation of new systems and procedures, while in some locations, the work has begun.
A fond recollection
Websites for teacher curricula and planning are being electronically dispersed each day, more all the time, sent out by schools and districts, networks, state DOE’s as well as companies eager to establish or enhance a presence. Curriculum content abounds, it seems. What we’re curious to know is what teachers are actually thinking and saying to each other in the midst of all this, how they are making sense of it.
A lot of assumptions have been made over the past fifteen years about the nature and tensile strength of on-line learning, asynchronous and otherwise. Everyone has added and now counts on a bevy of technology/machine-dependent things to undergird our work --credit recovery, “e-school”, all manner of LMS (“learning management systems”), Google Docs & Classroom, Power School, Skyward, on and on.
Dr. Katrina Kennett, strategic planning at White Mountains School District, NH
But, suddenly, as demonstrated in Boston and likely elsewhere, much of this world is being revealed as unexplored and untested. We knew we needed to fasten on to someone who could help us make sense of all this. Who better than our esteemed pal and ERC Consulting Practitioner, Dr. Katrina Kennett, link here. who frequently and expertly shines a light into that unexplored world? Since she routinely contributes to and monitors teacher planning in lots of far-flung places, we asked her to engage with us, and to begin by sharing themes she’s noticing. Here’s what she had to say:
Teachers are using their content expertise to connect students to “current events”- Hardly anyone can claim expertise with COVID-19, so few, if any, educators are able to retreat to the traditional role of “teachers as the source of knowledge”. I love seeing teachers using their skills and interests to rise to the challenge, a sure sign that their teaching is likely to improve.”
I’m helping some math teachers look at math-related COVID-19 activities / resources and evaluate which might be helpful for different groups of students, given skill level prior knowledge, interest in the subject matter, etc. Social studies teachers of course are reaching for materials on the 1918 and Polio pandemics, among others, while ELA teachers trace narratives of the virus using the perspectives media literacy offers. I’m interested to watch if science educators who may have “covered” such issues as infections, viruses, bacteria, pathogens, the immune system, will choose to dig in to them again, try to go deeper, or presume the knowledge base is firmly built. And I’m wondering who will guide those decisions.
Dr. Katrina Kennett
I can’t resist commenting on how of many the content conversations I’m seeing overlap naturally, and as teachers work together, will they be asking, why keep English separate from history, or science from math or sociology? To me it’s a superb time for interdisciplinary, urgent, Grand Challenges kind of work. link to ERC Grand Challenges blog.
Teachers reaching out far and wide
I’m seeing more teachers beginning to network, and in a bit of a hurry, to find resources and trade ideas. As routine as we think this might be, it’s still new for a majority of teachers and the levels of comfort and familiarity differ widely as educators working at home alone reach out to others in and beyond their usual contacts.
So many lists already exist, and more are being created as we speak –pedagogical approaches, digital tools, platforms, virtual field trips, synchronous tours, etc. Some are using educational chats like #sschat to reach ‘wide,’ and also Google Classroom to connect ‘in-house,’ teachers around the country are finding their footing as they prepare to offer students remote learning experiences.
Conversations like these lead the way to critical, active discourse, often difficult or unattainable in conventional school schedules. As you, my colleague Larry, are fond of saying, if a Martian came down and examined how our schools are designed, they would determine that adults are made to work alone, in private practice, largely apart from other adults. This crisis could begin to crack that, and one can now perhaps find and welcome places where others help you see your choices in light of student experience and the learning choices you provide. High-performing schools are places where the level of high-quality adult collaboration is high.
ERC Co-Founder and Head of Executive Coaching, Wayne Ogden
Teachers are designing “away-from-school” assignments that favor more student choice; addressing the self-organizing challenge.
It’s interesting to see how many teachers are creating assignments that give their learners more control over time, “path” and pace, using video chat to schedule and offer office hours, and looking for other digital tools to structure peer feedback groups. These learning structures offer teachers one-on-one and small-group meetings to address questions and coach students’ critical thinking. What we more routinely see is that almost all classroom choices are made by the teacher, and even that much of student choice-making is trivial. The last decade of student voice research confirms that clearly. But, here’s a post that shows how we can engage students more deeply via their own proclivities and tastes. See link.
Teachers are also recognizing the opportunity to send their students to places they wouldn’t have time or opportunity get to in daily classroom life: explore Smithsonian Open Access, the Digital Public Library of America, tour the Museum of the American Indian, going to visit animals as zoos give tours. Building on one-unit-a-year projects (ex. Youth Participatory Action Research, oral histories, etc.), we’re seeing teachers encourage young people to be primary recorders of history-in-the-making as the primary work going forward.
I’m eager to track how students are allotting and using time without being in the thoroughly controlled environment of school. Will they attempt to mimic class periods at home? Doubtful. I’m also expecting to see more young people doing their best to address the need to reflect and self-organize as their teachers give them increasing opportunities to make choices in completing their assignments. All without the immediate presence of an adult who “sets out the pre-determined answers to the puzzles they must solve”, as a critic of industrial age schools put it.
Students reading period, Calcutt Middle School, Central Falls, RI
Some students, of course, already have the skills to self-organize and are comfortable with a range of “meta” and on-line strategies. For some of them the “boxes” into which their thinking must fit are likely to be constraining. For others scaffolding will be helpful, even critical. I wonder what the discussions about this will reveal when we resume a more normal school life.
Teachers are reminded of differences and variables involved in student learning
Of course, school folks are always reminded of this. It’s probably the most relentless challenge classroom teachers face. Not a huge surprise that teachers have shared that as they begin to send out assignments they have some students answering questions and completing tasks almost immediately, others less so. Some students who are barely able to reply, requiring a different approach, more time, a certain learning cue, an exhortation, a warning of sorts. Teachers know how they might support these students face to face – now the question is how to do so from afar.
As teachers face the daunting task of designing remote units according to each grade level and separate course, I expect we may see more integrated, multi-grade projects. We know from teachers who already teach in multi-age environments that students can help each other understand and learn – within and across grades. Age doesn’t determine the level of intellectual engagement – interest does.
Teachers are questioning the efficacy of tests and tests
Entire states are cancelling their preferred versions of standardized testing; SATs are cancelled; AP Exams, too, look to be in peril. In conversations I’m privy to, teachers are quietly asking each other about the logistics, sometimes even the usefulness of “grades” at a time such as this. I think these “purpose and meaning” questions have a space and urgency right now we haven’t allowed for in during business-as-usual school days. It’s another subject for our “parking lot” of discussions to have as we reflect on these weeks and months.
The standing logic is that without tests and grades, kids won’t be held accountable for their learning, that they need strong incentives or disincentives to engage. We do our best to cling to that brand of compliance logic, but I hear some notes of despair when I listen to teachers asking ‘why am I sending home this packet?’ or ‘why should I make them do this?’ This new reality is likely to expose weaknesses in our grading logic: all over social media we’re seeing examples of young people teaching themselves – and each other – without the ‘incentive’ of grades. When and where educators are able to connect for adult discourse, I’m counseling a pause to consider the difference between “grading” and “assessment” -how is the learning going? Many schools conflate grading and assessment. That’s a major mistake for professional educators, one that shortchanges many students.
Dr. Larry Myatt, Jeffrey Liberty and Deborah Meier in Boston
We know from our own experience as well as from the research, that learning is curiosity-driven, and is at its most robust when authentic incentives and relationships exist, compelling subject matter, community import, an inviting sense of future, new and different POV’s, etc. Examining the efficacy of the “test-and-grade” paradigm as we try to keep our sea legs could help us shift our thinking more toward the idea of the classroom as a place where practices, structures and systems enable students to construct more transdisciplinary knowledge. And I would argue, that’s more naturalistic knowledge anyway, emerging through a prism of differing content areas, including some we seldom acknowledge or employ –psychology, sociology, the arts and design, etc.
Educators are paying attention to stress
Finally, a conversation I know we are bringing to schools that work with ERC is that for more and more students, schools are stressful places. This is not a new realization, but the degree to which students are feeling less able to tolerate school is striking. Link to Yale study. We are likely to find that for some loneliness and isolation will have a substantial impact, while possibly for others, there may actually be some relief from the grind described in current student voice research.
In Brookline, MA an elementary principal has invited her students and their families to an hour of reading and story-telling each night to provide “a sense of stability and belonging.” In various regional newspapers, interviews with students about what they miss most almost always begins with socialization -friends and classmates- and increasingly, expressions of surprise about how much they miss their teachers!
Some teachers are using the new reality to design healthy work schedules. I just talked with a teacher who has scheduled her Zoom office hours for students, but also an hour for lunch for herself. Teacher quality of life – something we know grinds down many aspiring educators – could be a positive reality even in these trying times.
I know that in our ERC schools network, we’re involved in a long-standing conversation about how we can make schools saner and more supportive for all involved, so I’ll be anxious to see what students will say down the road about not having to “be there” each and every day.
Quite a reaction to our query! Thanks, Dr. Kennett.
So, we’re taking in what Katrina has had to say and share. Things we’ve taken for granted will no doubt be substantially changed.
Will there be some important re-examination when the Corona virus clears, some reflection on lessons learned? Our hopeful side imagines so. Can we carry any lessons beyond this crisis, or will it be back to business as usual? We’ll be paying attention to what happens now that they’re seeing that they don’t “have” to go to school.
We also wanted to end this post with an uplifting tale. One of our family members who lives in NY with his wife and 4-year-old daughter, sent a copy of a text that he received from a friend who works in NYC in the world of banking and finance. The essence of the text was, "ok, I just spent the last 30 minutes trying to teach my seven-year-old her school’s online curriculum, in use while schools are shut down. I am now totally convinced that all teachers should be paid a million dollars per year!"
We hope this has been a good read for all of you out there.
If you’d like to network with us, investigate some of our answers to these questions, explore our “Nine Elements of a Strong Social-Emotional Platform”, the New Architecture of Learning, our Inquiry Tool Kit, the Grand Challenges, or get to know our coaching and consulting work, please be in touch. We’d welcome a conversation!
Again, our best wishes to everyone for your safety and comfort.
Wayne Ogden and Larry Myatt
ERC Co-Founders