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The Atlantic Monthly
It’s Hard to Teach Writing Online
A veteran educator’s tips for reaching students remotely
Kristina Rizga
April 6, 2020
We are in the midst of the most sweeping education experiment in
history. The coronavirus pandemic has forced the majority of the U.S.’s
3.6 million educators to find ways to teach without what most of them
consider the core part of their craft—the daily face-to-face
interactions that help them elicit a child’s burning desire to
investigate something; detect confusion or a lack of engagement; and
find the right approach, based on a student’s body language and
participation in the classroom, to help students work through their
challenges.
The good news is that this is happening at the end of the school year,
after teachers have had opportunities to build relationships with their
students. And in the past few decades, many educators have been
experimenting with some promising technology-enabled approaches,
sometimes called “hybrid,” or “personalized learning”
models—essentially, a mix of in-person and online learning.
Renee Moore is one of them. An English teacher of 30 years, she has
been honored with the Mississippi Teacher of the Year Award and the
prestigious Milken Educator Award, among others. Moore has been
incorporating online teaching in her classrooms in the Mississippi
Delta for more than two decades—first as a high-school teacher in
predominantly black schools, from 1990 to 2005, and, since then, as an
instructor at the Mississippi Delta Community College, where she
teaches high-school and college students, as well as working adults.
During our conversation last week, which has been edited for length and
clarity, I asked Moore to reflect on some of the most important lessons
she learned about teaching reading and writing online.
Kristina Rizga: What have been the greatest challenges in your transition to remote learning in the Mississippi Delta?
Renee Moore: The Mississippi Delta region is very rural, and our
biggest issue is access to broadband and wireless services. Some of the
students don’t have access to the internet; others don’t have devices.
The bandwidth isn’t used to this heavy traffic due to the coronavirus.
Mississippi Delta Community Colleges are solving this issue in an
innovative way by allowing students to use Wi-Fi outside of the campus,
in the parking lots. Students pull up in their cars and get their work
done in the parking lot.
The other big issue is that many of the teachers don’t have the skills
to teach online. They all had technical training, like how to work the
buttons and set up the system. But they haven’t had the pedagogical
training: How do you teach your subject, like writing and reading,
online? That to me is the greater concern and the biggest need right
now. Teachers will have to learn on the fly how to teach online, and
there will be even greater discrepancy in the quality of instruction
for students.
Rizga: How have you been translating this online?
Moore: It depends on the student. Some students work very well
asynchronously. They are very comfortable working alone on a draft; I
make color-coded comments in a word document or their PDF, and then I
send it back. Some students need me to explain things to them in person
before I send them the comments; we’ll do a video or audio chat. Others
need even more interaction: I’ll hook them up to a videoconference, and
we’ll go through all the comments together. Some students I need to
refer to a grammar-brushup program or a YouTube video on how to do some
of the mechanical stuff like uploading papers online.
Then there is the option of getting students to talk to each other
online on discussion boards and videoconferences. Some students adapt
to it quickly and like it. Some don’t, because it feels impersonal. You
have to be patient with that and give them some time and space to
adjust.
Rizga: Is there something you taught in person that can’t be transferred online?
Moore: So far, I haven’t found anything that I couldn’t move online,
but some parts of teaching are much harder and take longer. Research
papers, for some reason, are really hard for students to figure out how
to do online. I think as long as they can feel that I’m there, and they
can reach out, it takes care of many issues. Twice a week, I do a chat,
and I’m always staying on top of my email inboxes.
Then, you have to think about accessibility issues. How will my
vision-impaired and deaf students access it? Have I put everything in
print? Do I have to put in some audio? There are whole series of checks
you have to do for different access issues.
Rizga: What are some of your most important tips for online teaching?
Moore: My No. 1 tip: Pace yourself. You don’t have to cover everything.
If they don’t read that play by Shakespeare, they will still live to be
fine old people. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Don’t put too
much pressure on your students. It’s not just a matter of taking what I
do offline online. I’ve shortened my units because of the coronavirus.
I have a lot of working parents; now they have kids at home. I can’t
ask them to do a 25-page paper on pronouns in Shakespeare.
Figure out what’s really essential for learning, and what can be let go
in the next three months. For my composition students, for example, my
primary focus is always helping them express ideas clearly and
coherently. I’m less concerned about the genre of writing or how long
it is. I can do that a paragraph at a time.
For my more advanced students, they need to learn research skills: how
to locate, evaluate, and use information. Online learning offers great
opportunities for that, including with what’s going on in the news
right now.
For my literature students, my emphasis is helping them understand
stories that come from cultures other than theirs. Are they able to see
the humanity and connections across the stories? That’s essential.
Whether they remember all of the characters and the authors—that’s not
essential.
This is a great time to individualize instruction and have students
work at different paces. You don’t want 100-120 papers coming at you
all at one time. Spread it out, and it will keep you from getting
short-tempered with your students.
I’ve got some students who won’t turn on a camera in their house. They
don’t want you to see inside their house for various reasons. Be aware
of it; be very sensitive and careful with human beings.
Be prepared to let your students teach you. Students can be great help to us. Be each other’s tech support.
Rizga: Which resources would you recommend for educators learning how to teach online?
Moore: Research and books on digital writing by Troy Hicks, a professor
of literacy and technology at Central Michigan University, as well as
the resource page on digital learning curated by the National Council
of Teachers of English.
Rizga: What are the most urgent things districts, government officials,
and the business community can do to make this transition as smooth as
possible in the next three weeks?
Moore: The best thing we can do in the short term is to do something
like my own institution did it: We are pairing teachers who are novices
online to those who are veterans online. We are putting them up in
small groups to network with one another. In a rural setting, this
might need to be organized as a statewide or region-wide effort to have
teachers access experts in their own fields. For larger school systems,
it can be done within a school and district.
The second most important thing is providing all students with internet
access. If Mississippi Delta can do it, anyone can do it. We can open
up parking lots, provide help with equipment and devices.
Many of the textbook companies have been putting their materials online
for free. That’s a very helpful thing. You don’t want teachers to spend
their limited time hunting for resources.
Rizga: When you think about families and students, what are you worried about the most in the next few weeks?
Moore: That they’ll get frustrated with school and give up on their
education, period. A lot of our students need encouragement, because
they’d been told all of their lives that they are dumb: “You are really
scoring low on these tests. You can’t do this; you can’t do that.” So
teachers spend a lot of time encouraging them face-to-face. Now that we
can’t see them, it’s going to be harder to keep them motivated.
A lot of students have issues at home. When they come to school, they
are able to put some of those home issues out of their mind. Now that
they have to be home 24/7, those issues will be staring into their
faces and they have to deal with them. I’m thinking of some of my
working mothers; when they come to school, it’s the only time they have
to study, read, write a paper. They can’t do it at home. It’s chaos.
School for many people is a place to get fed, a place to feel safe, a
place to get encouraged. It’s a place to be around people who share
your desire to learn. Now they are cut off from that, and some of that
can’t be duplicated easily online.
Some issues are financial pressures—the choice of keeping the internet
on versus getting some groceries, for instance. I have families living
in a trailer with one light bulb, and they are trying to pick up a
signal, and you want me to do what for your class? These extensive
issues of poverty, homelessness, inequality, abusive situations are too
big for any one person to solve, but all I can do is say the same thing
I always do in school: I’m here for you. You can talk to me. Reach out
to me. And I’ll do what I can from here. We only have a few counselors,
but we’ve made all of our counselors available online 24/7. We try to
remind students that there is someone available to talk to you anytime.
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