At A Distance: How the Abbey successfully repositioned its curriculum to virtual learning, and why they hope never to do it again

How the Abbey successfully repositioned its curriculum to virtual learning, and why they hope never to do it again

By Annie Sherman ’95

The waterfront campus in Portsmouth was still for the first time in months. Students had abandoned their Houses, classrooms sat silent of instruction, athletics fields and the Stillman Dining Hall were bare. This was the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic that wreaked havoc across the world this past spring, emptying schools while filling hospitals. At Portsmouth Abbey School, most students left campus for March break as if they would return in a few weeks, leaving behind clothes, textbooks and laptops.

They stayed home, of course, and for the rest of the semester, campus remained devoid of the academic, athletic, social, and spiritual activities that make it a home for hundreds of students, faculty and monks during the school year. But teaching and learning continued, as teachers and administrators quickly changed tack to create a distance learning program that resembled their in-person curriculum, and that their global student body could absorb. Zoom meetings replaced classrooms, digital reading and homework supplanted physical books, and virtual conversations superseded personal connections. Though computers make poor substitute teachers and Zoom fatigue became a surprising new challenge, the sense of what they all accomplished is mighty tangible.

“In order to make this whole thing work, we needed buyin. We needed them to trust that we were going to work together to bring this online in a very short timeframe, that we would be supportive and available, and we would guide our students to port,” says Dean of Faculty Kale Zelden. Adds Assistant Headmaster for Academics Nick Micheletti, “and there were times when we had to patiently figure out what worked and didn’t work, but everyone – teachers and students – worked together and made the most out of a bad situation.”

Nick, Kale and the faculty needed to ask many existential questions to get liftoff. Do they try to fit as much of their typical term’s worth of material into the virtual medium, or do they take it very slowly and simply and be grateful that

they get anything done? How much work is too much? The answers were a happy medium, and what they got up and running seemingly overnight was unlike anything they have done in their professional careers, they say.

“In the best of executions, we didn’t believe our program could be delivered without our students on campus. But we heard they were happy with what we delivered in the context of its necessity,” Micheletti says. “The necessity nevertheless remained…. How do we teach our classes? How do we keep the students connected? How do we all support each other through a very difficult time?”

Assistant Headmaster for Operations John Perreira led an ad-hoc committee that established the synchronous schedule, with twice weekly virtual classes from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. eastern time, plus supplemental asynchronous work, like office hours, advisory meetings and homework, all on Zoom. Bisecting the week with Wednesday off allowed students and teachers to recover from the fatigue of heightened computer use, and within a few weeks, they were in a groove.

“So many things about our usual routine made little sense in a virtual setting, so this was the best possible stretch of time for students spanning the globe,” Micheletti says, “though our Asian students went nocturnal, the Californians became early birds, Europeans had it easy, and the Alaskans (my heroes!) may never speak to me again.”

Each department head shaped his or her own adjusted coursework and followed their established curriculi as best they could. Many teachers scanned entire textbooks because students had left theirs on campus, while offering algebra tutorials to empty rooms. Science teacher Mitchell Green ’11 filmed himself completing a biology lab or lecturing on difficult material and shared the video for students to watch as homework. The following class, they discussed it and students completed worksheets in small groups on Zoom. This allowed them to work at their own pace rather than being subject to the pace of others, he explains, which might be too fast to understand or too slow to maintain focus.

Chemistry and statistics teacher Susan McCarthy got creative to engage her students, assigning chemistry students a scavenger hunt to prepare for the Advanced Placement exam. She also deployed problems to solve on the school’s digital Learning Management System (LMS) where each class posted tools and assignments.

“I was excited to see the students’ level of interest and participation. Several groups emailed me regularly asking questions, and I was especially impressed with the beautiful 50-page report that one of my groups submitted,” she says. “Distance learning was an adjustment, but I was glad to find a way to reach my students through video labs, activities, and one-on-one meetings in conference periods.”

The essence of one subject taught and learned virtually is different from another, however, so while teachers employed varying techniques, so did students. Though most of her teachers had scanned books like The Great Gatsby or Latin III for digital reading, rising Sixth-Form student Lucia McLaughlin of Alaska read them on a Kindle, while reading her math and chemistry books via digital PDF that teachers shared on LMS.

“With English, Latin, and American History, we’re writing papers, reading classic novels and taking online quizzes, but using PDFs of my math book was complicated because it was pictures of concepts. Math is my hardest subject anyway, and I am a hands-on learner, so doing it virtually was a challenge because Zoom can be chaotic. I couldn’t brainstorm with classmates, and there was no blackboard to do problems,” McLaughlin says. “A surprising positive take-away is that I learned a lot through Khan Academy videos and quizzes my math teacher assigned. Although they were time-consuming, we could take a quiz as many times as needed to get a perfect score, which forced me to keep trying until I fully understood the concept.”

Doing all of this while sharing space with seven siblings and waking up for a 5 a.m. class was a unique obstacle for McLaughlin and her sister Caroline, Class of ’23, whose four-hour time difference posed logistical challenges that East Coast students didn’t face. Though she said she is normally productive in loud places, she is accustomed to a private room on campus or the library for undisturbed study time. When taking quizzes or tests online in her family home, she didn’t have that automatic quiet space, and there were so many more distractions as younger sib

lings wanted to bake or play outside.

Dr. and Mrs. Bonin’s advisory group in April

“I feel like I work pretty hard, but I called my advisor the fourth day because I felt like I was slacking off already, and I was worried about my grades. During quarantine I became a person who needed more quiet time to get work done, because I forgot what it was like at home with so many temptations,” she says. “But I scheduled teacher conferences, figured out a routine, and did pretty much the same grade-wise, so I’m happy with that.”

Those virtual performance indicators looked different too. Though the administration opted for a graded term versus pass/fail, which McLaughlin says some students wanted, Micheletti says grades ultimately were on par with what they would have been in a traditional setting. And given the distractions, added stress and quick adjustments everyone made, he says he’s all the more impressed with the outcome.

“The biggest surprise for me was the students, as I knew our teachers would always pull off the impossible,” Micheletti says. “I didn’t doubt students’ abilities, but I kept thinking to myself, ‘If I were a senior in high school and the world snatched away my final months with my friends, and in exchange there would be distance learning, I would revolt. If I were a freshman and they told me that I didn’t have to go to school and I could just feign effort over the internet while spending hours playing video games, I would have done it.’”

On the surface, distance learning seemed like it would be easier than the rigorous daily schedule on campus, says Assistant Headmaster for Student Life Paula Walter, but she found it to be much harder, more time consuming and slightly overwhelming. Combing through mountains of information and daily webinars, she noticed that the need for connectedness became so apparent, that the joy in talking with someone in person, in seeing their faces and hearing the inflections in their voices needed to be emphasized. While the face time wasn’t perfect, the firm commitment to synchronous learning proved instrumental to students and adults, she says.

“Technology, willingness, faith, ability to adapt… All of these things were needed, to be sure. And colleagues needed to be willing to do a little extra at the end of the day. After they had already spent hours on Zoom, and set aside time to meet with a student who was in a time zone 12 hours ahead, and figured out how to grade and guide and mentor in the virtual classroom, and check in with the spring sports team they were coaching, they needed to put on their advisor hats or their houseparent hats,” Walter says. “All of this while juggling the new challenges the pandemic was forcing upon them in their own lives.”

Walter focused on fostering a sense of connectedness despite the distance, highlighting the Class of 2020 through a series of nine celebratory videos, which she says didn’t scratch the surface of a traditional Sixth-Form spring, “but we tried to remind them on a near-daily basis that they were cherished,” she says.

Overall, successes and failures seemed to equal each other out. The biggest successes were that students continued to learn, teachers pushed out of their comfort zones, and all found ways to foster their usual community interaction in a virtual setting.

“By the end, we all figured out how to make do with a distance-learning format. But I don’t think anyone would choose it. We all learned some new tricks and were able to continue our academic program. My students and I found that we could get into deep conversations in a Zoom meeting, which weren’t quite as natural as being together in person, but they were stimulating nonetheless,” Nick Micheletti says. Adds Kale Zelden, “If anything, this has made me miss my classroom and my students. We can’t wait to get back to the real thing.”

Annie Sherman ’95 works as a freelance writer in Newport, R.I.