BACK TO SCHOOL

The coronavirus has certainly turned the world sideways. Civilization has effectively stopped in its tracks trying to limit the fatalities resulting from the virus’s spread. The ramifications will be examined for the rest of human history.

One fascinating subject to study…. Is how people learn to study. The effects on the education system are already startling.

As necessary as shelter-in-place orders have been to “flatten the curve” and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed with covid-19 patients, the challenges they present to education are now very apparent. As a result, I believe it is imperative that students return to the classroom this fall, even if it’s on a limited basis.

Administrators and educators have gone to tremendous lengths, using all manner of imagination, innovation, and resources trying to educate students remotely. This has been a learn-as-you-go process, with frustrations and mistakes being inevitable. Their efforts should not be regarded as failures by any means. Nonetheless, it is clear that the classroom is too important to be eliminated.

Even if social distancing forces limited time in the classroom, such as half days or one day a week depending on how your last name falls alphabetically, students must return to the classrooms.

In a scenario where only partial attendance is possible, extra-curricular activities (I prefer the less prevalent term “co-curricular”) may be limited or impossible, but even without these, I’ve seen plenty to suggest the classroom is indispensable to education.

Teachers are seriously hampered by the remote experience. Some simply aren’t as adept with the technology as others. When I worked at Kelly Air Force Base, I helped many co-workers who were so petrified of their computer that they handled their mouse like a detonator. We have a lower percentage of people like that these days, but there are teachers who simply aren’t mastering Google Classroom, Zoom, and the like. To make matters worse, in the lockdown, they are separated from the technology people and fellow teachers who might be able to help them… if they were face to face.

Most of all, teachers are cheated of the simple personal time with their students. Face-to-face accountability to the instructor is markedly superior to a phone call or an email warning, but there’s more. How much of teaching is a simple reminder to a student to concentrate on the lecture, or their own schoolwork? How much of teaching is studying the class, and seeing that just one more repetition of the lesson, just one more amplification of a point, will create that “A-ha!” moment the students and teachers live for? Can this possibly be replicated by a Zoom session?

From the students’ standpoint, the socialization aspect is paramount. Children need to be around their peers. Most want to be around their peers. Many are more motivated to go to school to see their friends than to learn in the classroom. Being cut off from friends is not just a problem in and of itself. The incentive to achieve is stronger when your friends are also learning. Students can even help each other with schoolwork, which has benefits to all involved. Phone calls, a series of text messages, even Facetime make poor substitutes for live learning.

Senioritis is bad enough when you’re in class every day. (Favorite quote from my own high school classmate: “I don’t understand it. I’m failing. And I actually LIKE this class.”) What does senioritis do to you if you know you have credits to graduate already and the only thing drawing you to class is a “ping” from your phone?

More than anything, the pandemic shutdown has highlighted the difference between the haves and the have-nots among students as well as teachers. Certain households, where finances are secure, parents are well-educated, technology is readily available, and the children are self-motivated manage pretty well. However, many households aren’t like this.

First of all, certain poorer districts don’t know where all the students are! Austin ISD and San Antonio ISD have reported an alarmingly high number of students who have incorrect addresses and phone numbers in their records. (These are called “displaced students.”) It’s easy to imagine many other districts face this problem.

Even if the districts know where the students are, those pupils may not have adequate technology to access the learning. Many students have no computers and try to access classroom materials on their phones; this certainly slowed down their learning if it didn’t stop it altogether. In addition, many students who have resources must share them with their siblings.

The challenge to parents is even more acute. It goes beyond trying to relearn parabolic formulas. Parents, forced to teach the few children in their home, are better appreciating the challenges teachers face; that idea is even being played for laughs. How difficult is it to teach if you’ve never had to teach before, you aren’t comfortable with the material…. And you’re distracted because you’re a single parent whose lost both his or her jobs and has no idea how the June rent will be paid?

Even attempts to simplify processes can be doomed. I’ve spoken to a technology director at a medium sized school district in South Texas. He described to me not only teachers who have trouble managing the remote classroom, but also parents who are issued a computer tablet and a hotspot but can’t figure how to work with them, even if the instructions are 1) turn on the hotspot, 2) turn on the tablet, 3) follow the instructions on the tablet.

Yes, this seems simple to many of us, but I remember the detonator-mouse people I’ve worked with. I can certainly understand how someone with no knowledge of technology can be presented with this, and to them it sounds like, “Here’s your crystal ball, and here’s your magic wand. Now figure it out.”

And remember, the children in these families are precisely the citizens we hope to elevate through education. Throwing a life preserver to a drowning person probably won’t if their wrists are handcuffed behind their back.

I’m not even talking about the fact that many students need meals provided in school, or that parents need a safe place for their children to be so they can return to the workforce. Even without these critical factors, the need to return students to the classroom, even in a limited fashion, is compelling.

I know there are challenges. The logistics of a half-day of classes, or 20% occupation of classrooms, are very complicated. I can think of many problems, and I acknowledge there are many problems I haven’t thought of. Social distancing is certainly one. There’s also the fact that many teachers fall into the high-risk categories of the pandemic.

Yet, education is too important. To prepare people to cope with future crises on the scale of the current pandemic, we give them an effective education. Lessons learned in creating remote learning should certainly be retained and used, but for the sake of a fully effective education, we must make a priority of returning students to the classroom this fall.