30
F I V E PAT H S O F S T U D E N T E N G AG E M E N T
and ones who were well supported at home, the transition to online learning was manageable. But these were exceptions. Now, for the first time in history, we got to see what learning would look like with hardly any schools functioning in the traditional sense at all.
When COVID-19 closed schools, advocates of educational transformation, especially through technology, became practically euphoric about the possibilities. For them, the coronavirus pandemic was a miraculous opportunity to transform education in ways they had been advocating for more than two decades. Often generously, but sometimes disingenuously, many publishing and technology companies flooded parents, teachers, school districts, and education ministries with websites, applications, content, and links, all free of charge (at first) so students and teachers could access their learning platforms. New relationships were being established between students and devices, teachers and machines, and ministries and companies. A new baseline for a post-coronavirus future was being put in place. Much of this was benign, as teachers, students, and entrepreneurs began posting all kinds of innovative materials online. When Dennis asked undergraduates in his classes at Boston College to retrieve and discuss new curricula that were emerging online as a consequence of the pandemic, they discovered a plethora of fascinatingly creative homespun innovations that teachers were devising. Other aspects were more troublesome. In May 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York wondered at a press conference why, “with all the technology you have,” there was even any need for “all these physical classrooms” anymore. Announcing a major partnership with the Gates Foundation to “reimagine education” on these lines in the post-coronavirus future, Cuomo overlooked the foundation’s consistently negative track record with school-improvement interventions—to which prominent critics immediately drew attention.74 Everything got a lot messier for everyone. Teachers turned into contortionists as they strove to engage and support their students in any
©2021 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.
Learning at Home
