Learning & Teaching During a Pandemic

LEARNING & TEACHING During a Pandemic

— by Shelly Hughes

When the governor of Ohio announced that schools would be extending their spring breaks due to the Coronavirus, I was not sad. I was actually kind of, dare I say, gleeful. Education be damned! I could sure use a nice extra-long spring break. I loved the thought of not using my car all week or sitting in traffic. I could sleep in as I did not need to commute or pack a lunch daily. There would be no guilt over abandoning my dog and no more doggie daycare fees for a week. This was going to be awesome, I thought. Then, after our extra week of spring break was over, when we learned that we would be transitioning to distance learning indefinitely, buyers’ remorse settled in, and my journey of constant reflection and self-doubt began. At first, it was pretty practical - questions like: What did they still need to learn before sending them to the next grade level? What were areas of weakness that needed more attention? What was essential? What could I let go of? Who will struggle with this format? Whose parents need reassurance? Who needs what?

My first-week-back-from-spring break lesson plans were completed before the break so that I could relax and enjoy my break without worrying about them. Now, my thoughts were will these lesson plans still work? What needs to be changed or modified? What materials do they need to do this from home? Will they be supported by their families? Would I be asking too much of them? What if I am asking too little? What are the rules for this? Do I bug them about missing work? How hard should I push them for more effort? What if parents are helping? How will I handle that? How do I keep them from bugging their parents? What needs to be communicated upfront? How do I find out what their parents are anticipating? Surveys were sent to students and their parents. Data was analyzed, and yeah, it was looking like we were all on the same page, and my goal was to make school as normal as possible.

For us, digital-school was just like in-person school. I set up our Zoom meeting times for the same times that things happened at school: Morning Meeting at 8:30, with Word Work right after. Theme at 9:30, followed by a break for lunch. Math at noon, and ELA at 1:30. We did not stay in our Zoom meetings the entire time. We met at the beginning and I taught the mini-lesson and then released the children to work, much like Samantha Bennett of the Workshop Model taught me. We came together after a bit to share our learning and produced work. Then it was break time till the next meeting. We thought of breakout rooms like working at tables in our classroom. The kids were put in them to work together, and I circulated from room to room, answering questions, and checking their thinking and work. Those who needed a less social space, worked in a breakout room, alone or with one partner. My students were happy.

I was happy. I used the break times to view their videos and record my reply videos. I also looked over their submitted work, made suggestions, and sent it back to them. It was interesting to learn which of my students would thrive and who might struggle in this new environment. It provided me a challenge to observe closely and implement changes to meet their individual needs. It was a delight to see some who had struggled to stay focussed in class, thrive alone in their distraction-free basement or bedroom workspace. As I do at school, I allowed the children to figure out where they work best. Some left our Zoom meetings entirely and rejoined us at a specified share-out time. Many liked their self-created workspaces at home. Many liked sharing their thinking and work in a video format, using Flipgrid. Many liked being able to see and hang out with their friends after being apart for so long. We often ate lunch together. My students’ parents were pleased. I was occupying and engaging their child much of the day, and they were able to get their work done. There was peace and harmony across the lands. Until there wasn’t.

Our union and administration were meeting daily to hammer out expectations during this unprecedented time. We were getting conflicting emails daily, one from administration using our school email account and one from our union using our private email account, each prompting us to engage in opposite behavior. The district’s lawyers were being consulted. The union was in communication with the Ohio Department of Education. On one day alone, we received three emails from our union, which made us all very anxious. At the crux of them were: Zoom had security issues, some teachers had small children at home to tend to, and the district recommended two and a half hours of student engagement time to regular teachers, and to fulfill all IEP minutes to special education teachers. I kept my mouth shut and kept doing what I was doing, hoping nothing would go wrong.

Colleagues, following our union recommendations, were emailing work lists with embedded videos to their students and keeping office hours, were inundated with communications from parents and students. My questions became very egocentric. Why wasn’t I getting many emails? Was the fact that I was not getting many emails a good thing or a bad thing? Was I working harder than what was expected? Was I neglecting my own selfcare? Was I neglecting obligations to my peers and union?

Then, our community got involved. Facebook community groups lit up as parents learned how much teacher FaceTime their neighbors’ children were receiving compared to their own. One of my colleagues pointed out that while she did not have children at home, she needed to support those teachers who did and that when I spend more than the district’s recommended two and half hours of daily student engagement, I was part of the inequity problem my community was passionately discussing on social media.

Yikes! My inner voice turned philosophical - Was she right? Was I creating inequality within my school community? Was I part of the problem? Should I scale back? How can I scale back now that we have routines established? What will my students’ parents think if I scale back now? How can high school teachers who have over a hundred students, some of which just joined them at the semester change, be compared to elementary teachers who have 20+ students for the second year in a row? Obviously, children’s experiences were not going to be the same. Even comparing elementary students across the district was fruitless as our elementary school communities are incredibly diverse. It’s never apples to apples, as there are too many variables. Why don’t people understand this? Why is sameness societies default?

I also felt a sense of guilt at how smoothly I transitioned from in-person to online. Why would a true progressive educator adapt so easily to this new inauthentic impersonal realm? Would this become part of our new normal? Somehow, I knew that I should not want this to be our new normal, but I kind of enjoyed working from home. Before the pandemic, I was the one who lambasted digital books, and paperless classrooms. I argued the developmental appropriateness of putting an iPad into the hands of every child to anyone who’d listen. I researched how screen time negatively impacted social and emotional development and shared links to the articles I read with anyone who showed the slighted interest in my ramblings on the subject. Now, here I was doing school 100% digitally.

My students were engaged in project-based learning, sharing their creations, discoveries, and thinking via Flipgrid videos. They completed 4 STEM-based design challenges around the ideas of transferring energy. They researched childhood during different generations, interviewed an elder, and wrote comparative essays. They were turning work into me via shared google docs, and Notability. I was able to give individualized feedback and my students were coming to me with questions in our live Zoom meetings. We were still engaged in robust discussions during our read aloud, White Bird by R.J. Palacio at the end of each day. Students were making their artwork via School Sketch. It all seemed pretty normal, school as usual, right up until the end, and as a bonus, I got to feel good about all the trees saved by going paperless. I took pride in my ability to be flexible and learn how to go 100% digital at my age.

Even though the school year has ended, my colleagues, many of whom are also my friends, routinely profess their dread and anxiety around having to return to this format in the fall. When they do, new questions of self-doubt creep back into my psyche. What is wrong with me? Why do I not detest this way of doing school? Again, am I truly a progressive educator? When this happens, I try to be introspective. What does it mean to be a progressive educator? I try to ground myself with the tenets of progressive education, and remind myself that the physical space need not matter. If I emphasize learning by doing, if I integrate the curriculum, if I engage children in problem- solving and critical thinking, if I foster collaboration, service, social responsibility, and democracy, if I highly personalize the experiences, if I give individualized feedback and encouragement, and help families grow their children into lifelong learners, then I am a progressive educator.

While I do not have all the answers, especially about what is fair, I do know that whether we come back to school in the fall full time, do a blend of face-to-face school and digital school, or are 100% back to distance learning, I am a progressive educator. I will continue to learn and grow, be flexible, and do my best with what I have, and the children in front of me whether I am looking at them on a screen or not.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shelly Hughes was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio. She is a graduate of The Columbus College of Art and Design, The Ohio State University, and Ashland University. She has taught at the Arts IMPACT Middle School in Columbus City Schools, co-founded and served as administrator of The Arts and College Preparatory Academy, been an assistant principal and then principal of Jones Middle School in Upper Arlington, and then joyfully returned to the classroom at Wickliffe Progressive School, as a 4th & 5th-grade looping teacher. Shelly lives in Columbus with her husband and children. Shelly enjoys nature, creating, and beekeeping. shughes@uaschools.org