I open my blog today because I wanted to write about distance-learning. It is 1:38 PM and I have just finished teaching for today. Today is Monday, March 30In the first day after my school’s spring break. Usually, the first day after spring break means we are back on campus and excited to see one another in person after our various travels to locations around the world. I work in a school where most of my families are quite affluent and international travel is common.
When I ask my students to write entries and their blogs they’re required to give me some visual evidence of what they’ve been working on in addition to answering my summary questions. I want to give you visual evidence but it is not good practice to post a screenshot of my students in a video grid with their names below.
Friday, March 13 was the last day on campus for students. The following Monday and Tuesday we’re teacher planning days in preparation for distance-learning. We engaged in distance-learning on Wednesday and Thursday and then begin our spring break early not having classes on that Friday. Although we were on spring break many other schools were not.
The first three days of my spring break I spent a lot of time online, furiously going through the many pop-up communities that appeared on Facebook for teachers all across the world who had been asked to shift their curriculum from in-person to online or distance learning.
Some of my friends were teachers and local public schools learned of their school closures on the news. They had not received an email from their principal or from their district, and they had no direct instruction as to what was expected of them moving forward. The governor of a nearby state announced that schools would be out for the remainder of the year leaving many of my friends with children wondering how they were going to take care of their children at home while also being asked to teach from home.
It seems that some administrators were trying to push forward with business as usual in a new model.
Others were able to see that this shift in practice- for public health safety- required a shift in thinking and practice that could lead to greater opportunity for students.
Fundamental questions such as what is school, or why do we GO to school, or whose responsibility is it to support students’ learning have to be revisited in this new normal.
Questions like what is normal are also valid.
This shift, both observing it and being a part of it has led me to think about things like disposition.
If the system call school has been set up where the role of the teacher is to disseminate knowledge and the role of the student is to digest and regurgitate that knowledge can that model hold up in this new framework
I wish I were back in grad school right now. In my cleaning house during Spring Break I came across my notes from my Masters of Education program in human development. Feeling overwhelming I simply moved the box from one location to another, without opening. I knew I could not throw these out- but what to do with them? Maybe it’s time for a serious re-read and skill-up as we all shift?