Lessons Learned - Reflecting on Covid Teaching 5 Years Later - Part 2

Last week, I spent some time remembering the events of five years ago.  I focused on how hard it was.  And it so was.  I have no perfect analogy, but this one seems to work.

For the teachers who were already in the classroom when the pandemic started, our entire careers, we have taught on a boat.  Boats aren't always smooth or stable, but you get your sea legs by managing all the ups and downs, knowing that there is something solid under your feet and that the boat is moving forward.  COVID threw all of us and the kids off the boat and into the water, so we did what you do in that situation; we tread water to survive.  In the beginning, everything looks okay because everyone's head is above water and everyone is still kicking.  Even though no one is moving forward, everyone is surviving and hoping to get back on the boat.  There's only so long people can tread water before their arms give out.  We helped each other and the students tread longer by using whatever energy we had to hold up the others.  All we really wanted was to get back on the boat, and we finally did.  The boat feels different now than it did, but at least we are back on it.  We also learned some things from the treading experience that made us stronger.  That's what this week's post is about.

1. Virtual is not a replacement for in person

Prior to Covid, there was a lot of talk about the "direction education was headed" (My Lord, how I loathe that phrase), and a lot of attention had been given to online classes, video classes, and asynchronous learning.  The pandemic taught us that the in-person stuff matters when it comes to teaching and learning.  Body language, the ability to read a room, having the teacher standing up as the person to pay attention to.  All of it matters so much more than we ever knew.  A video cannot check for understanding and respond to it (and no AI cannot either).  It is difficult on a Zoom call to tell if students are confused and impossible to help only one of them when they need it.  But at a more fundamental level, learning is a social experience.  It has been since the Garden of Eden when God came down and walked with Adam to teach him.  God could have drop knowledge directly into Adam's brain, but He did not.

I mentioned last week that I was living alone through all of this.  My wonderful friends set up virtual lunches and times for us to chat.  I'm grateful that they did, but it was still not a replacement for sitting in a room with them.  When we got back to that, it was like a weight had been lifted.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't take advantage of existing technologies to meet our academic objectives.  I'm saying that we should never undervalue the impact of a teacher who knows something explaining it to a student who doesn't in a classroom.  

2. Split attention is exhausting and poor educational strategy

Hybrid teaching was, without question, the hardest thing I've ever done for so long.  (It was not the worst year I ever had because hard is different from bad.)  My own working memory was taxed from the beginning.  Using the technology that allowed us to teach this way required multi-step setups, and we had to add masks and spacing to things we needed to look out for.

But by far, the most exhausting part was trying to make sure the kids online were just as involved as the kids in the room.  They weren't just there to watch; they were still my students. That meant a lot of pre-planning to make sure they had whatever they needed to have at home, but it also meant checking in with them just as frequently as I did with the kids in the room.  It meant stopping to ask them questions (and sometimes just to make sure they were still there - so many had left the room).  It was like trying to be in two places at once, and used every ounce of energy.  

If it were simply exhausting, we could have handled that.  Teachers are generally tired from September until May.  The bigger problem was that no matter how hard we worked, we couldn't make it better as an educational strategy.  Giving only part of your attention to the kids in front of you isn't good for them; giving part of your attention to the kids online isn't good for them.  As a science teacher, it was nearly impossible to involve the virtual students in lab experiences and hands on activities (Our AP Chemistry teacher actually ran a separate time after school when the virtual students could come in and do labs on their own).  

Please note:  I am not saying we should not have done this during the pandemic.  It was the right way to handle things in the context of our situation.  We do things in emergencies that we wouldn't do at other times.  Hybrid learning mitigated the loss that would have been so much worse if we had not done it, but it is not something we should ever do outside of an emergency situation.

3. Building in time for community matters

GRACE's mission statement begins with "GRACE Christian School is a loving community."  This is never more evident than when there is a crisis.  If there is anything we did well, it was rally around hurting people.  The pandemic required creativity to make that work.  Since there were no social events or clubs, and we couldn't even put people in the same room for chapel, we needed to have a way to keep the community strong.  Chapel was done during part of their Bible classes, leaving a space in the schedule.  We divided the kids into smaller groups, called Community Building Groups.  It was time to breathe and play. We had games and contests. Since we couldn't have fans at games, one week, our community building groups made cardboard cutout fans which were then put into the bleachers for basketball.  If I had balloons or paper airplanes from science classes, I kept them for community building time.  One of my community building students was virtual, so I mailed the paper airplanes to him and then he went outside at the same time we did (taking him with us via iPad), and when we played charades, he provided the words to me in the chat.

While they have changed the way it works several times since, there has been a continued effort to have community building groups. All victories are sweeter and all tragedies impacts are lightened when experienced with support.  That has always been true but was never more evident than it was during the hybrid year.

4. The team is truly critical

So, I knew already that I worked with best team of people in the history of the world.  But, during the lockdown, the hybrid year, and the year that was supposed to be better (but wasn't), I had more opportunities to witness this than ever before.  I'll start with my admin.  As I mentioned last week, our administration was filled with forward thinking planners.  That was true in preparing for the lockdown and for the return, but it was also true in their care for us.  They seemed to know just when we were going to need something special or a word of encouragement.  One day, we got an email that declared the next Friday would be "a snow day" just because our head of school thought we might need one. They stayed late at night, after receiving notice of a diagnosis, to measure six feet around that person's seat in each class so they could inform those people of exposure. Then, they showed up the next morning to lead devotions and help with duties.  Teachers held each other up. You would be having a very rough day, and a colleague whose plate was already overflowing would offer to take your lunch duty that day.  The math teacher across the hall from me would come to find other teachers to tell them that she heard a student say a nice thing about them.  

Without the team I had around me, I would have been a broken person at the end of the year.  Build your team in the good times so that trust base is already there in rough times.

5. Growth happens under stress

As hard as it was, I became a better teacher during Covid.  Changing circumstances required me to pay attention to details I might not have before. 

• Moving our tests from paper to online platforms (and back again the following year - I could not stand having them continue to take them on a computer) forced me to read each question and evaluate it.
• Trying to explain things virtually is very different from explaining them in person.  You don't have body language, nuanced facial expressions, and physical proximity (and weird things like jumping up on a chair to discuss the movement of electrons between energy levels) to aid your words.  That meant my words had to become better. I had to find better explanations and analogies.
• The resources I created to send to my virtual students were helpful to have after the pandemic was over.  We all know that the absenteeism has become an issue.  While that hasn't hit GRACE as hard as it did in public schools, it still hit us.  Having resources to email to a student who was about to be out for three days saved me a lot of reteaching upon their return.

I sincerely hope that we never go through anything like Covid again, but allow me to return to the boat analogy.  After a year of treading water, we may not have moved forward, but my arms were stronger than ever.  When we all got back into the classroom, the lessons we learned made us stronger and more equipped to face the normal challenges of teaching.