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The Hechinger Report
Online, students still need 'the proverbial pat on the back'
TEACHER VOICE: From the remote trenches of the nation’s largest school system
By Luba Ostashevsky
March 24, 2020
The first sign that we’d entered a new world came from the “What’s Your
Mood?” survey that I sent to my classes at a north Brooklyn high school.
A student who routinely arrives late and spends his class time texting
wrote, “School is an everyday thing to me so it’s a bit of an unusual
feeling.” Another student with a tendency to skip class disclosed, “I
am feeling flustered and extremely bored.”
It was Wednesday, Day 3 of the shutdown. Students who “hate” school
are, in this crisis, showing their true stripes: when it’s not there,
they miss it.
They are also eager to work. An assignment I sent, due on Friday, March
20, had already begun to populate my Google Classroom the night before.
And it’s not just the high flyers. An early responder is currently
failing all of his classes. He watched the EdPuzzle video and filled
out the accompanying quiz, earning 10/10. I take his effort as a sign
of a shift that has already taken place but that we teachers are only
now registering: Students are more comfortable doing work online.
Duh.
But it’s not a cold, impersonal world they are after. They still want
the nurturing approval that’s best signified by a grade and a live
teacher response. A typical email in my inbox goes like this: “I
completed this form yesterday but it says missing but I did it already
and it won’t let me redo it and I don’t want to get a lower grade when
I did it on time so can you check and get back to me.”
Moving to remote instruction has made clear that students still need
the proverbial pat on the back, the figurative check mark, and the
corresponding grade in Pupil Path that they obsessively check.
Our job for the next few weeks — or months — will be to assign them
engaging remote work and provide them a sense of routine. Just because
they don’t have to huff up the five flights of stairs, and just because
they can’t put their backpacks in the aisle to see if this time I’ll
trip, doesn’t mean that they’re outside my purview. The mood survey
taught me that that’s what they crave. In response to the question
“What’s your least favorite thing about being at home?”, I got:
Staying at home
cleaning …
Not seeing my friends.
I can’t go outside as much
Repeat the same thing every day
my least favorite thing to do is watching the news
Sleeping too much
The virus
Ensuring the remote routine is effective has meant a quick ramp-up in
virtual learning for teachers. The New York State Education Department
recommended that schools continue the same class schedule, shorten
classes to 25 minutes and shift to online instruction. Students will
log in at the appointed time, attendance will be taken and the remote
lesson will commence.
In our three days in school last week, teachers had intensive
professional-development sessions about online platforms such as Google
Hangouts, Meet and Zoom. In surgical masks and failing woefully to keep
the prescribed six feet from one another, we tried to retool remote
technology that was designed for the corporate world of adults for a
younger and more mischievous crowd. We spent hours anticipating their
tricks.
The settings that allowed conference members to share screens and
annotate the host’s screen had to be disabled. Recording the host and
chatting to one another behind the host’s back went, too.
Bonus points to the teacher who has figured out how to mute all and
create a waiting room that blocks kids from jumping from class to
class. But students retained the right to change their backgrounds.
What’s the harm if they want to report to class from the Death Star?
If teachers spent the weekend worrying about the transition, Monday
rolled around soon enough. Students logged on at the appointed time for
class. We took attendance, and I told them a little about what to
expect every day.
They would receive assignments through Google Classroom. These could
include videos or PDFs, followed by a quiz to check for understanding.
I had a plan to go over the nonverbal feedback buttons for most of our
25 minutes online together, but true to our age gap and chasm in
digital capabilities, they were waving at me, clapping, raising their
hands and privately messaging me before I could say “Google.”
Then we did what I felt they really needed to do: We took turns saying
one nice thing to the whole class. Most hemmed and hawed; some said
things that were more comic than appropriate. Outside it was raining,
with a touch of snow. One student joked that we might get a snow day.
Then another yelled what I took as the surest sign that they craved the
comfort of school: “Hey, Miss, can you lend me a pen?!”
It wasn’t a perfect class, but we all hope that the sense of routine will at least brace students in this uncertain time.
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