Observations about Virtual Learning after 1st Quarter:
By Gail Ravnitzky Silberglied
As a PTA president and mother of 3 kids in elementary and middle school, I’ve seen and heard a lot about how all-virtual school is going this year. These are my top 12 takeaways:
- There are a lot of tears. So many of my friends have described that their child frequently erupts in tears. During the 7th week of online school this Fall, all 3 of my kids cried at one point or another directly related to school. The kids cried for different reasons, over different issues, at different times during the week. The math problem is hard, the link doesn’t work, the directions weren’t clear, it’s too much, I hate school, I miss my friends, and I thought I already submitted that assignment. Most kids are not experienced at advocating for themselves, problem solving, and expressing how they are feeling. Online school is just really hard.
- Everyone is trying their best. Despite the frequent waterworks, I am not blaming the schools or the teachers at all – they are doing an impossible job that they did not sign up for. Teachers had to learn a whole new set of online systems and deal with unpredictability of teaching online (see #8) My hat is off to everyone going above and beyond to support their students.
- Some kids don’t have a desk at home. A kindergarten student was sitting on the floor at home and the teacher asked if the PTA could help get them a desk. We are fortunate that when we put out the call for desk donations, several families offered to donate one. One family even offered to purchase a new desk for that child. Other families donated desks, chairs, and school supplies in October during our PTA’s Donation Drive. You can help make sure every child has a desk by supporting the organization Desks by Dads, which builds very basic desks. They are making them as fast as they can but they can’t keep up with the requests they receive.
- “Normalcy” is key. Yeah, “normalcy” has to be in quotes because nothing feels normal right now. But anything the schools can do to keep things “normal” is very important: virtual sports, morning announcements, bus patrol training, instrumental music, student government, clubs, birthday celebrations, and much more. These are vital opportunities to keep kids engaged, and will be important so the kids don’t feel that they missed important opportunities when they reflect back on this year.
- We are headed for a real mental health crisis. Some kids are actually doing well but so many are suffering. For many, school is not only their place of learning, they also receive meals, emotional support, speech therapy, and much more. And for some kids, being at home in multiple Zoom classes per day is not fun. They are sad, angry, frustrated, and hopeless. Nine months feels like forever. They’ve missed school events, recess, field trips, classroom parties, and just laughing with friends. The isolation is especially acute for children without siblings. The rates of child abuse and neglect, suicide and suicidal ideation, and domestic violence have exponentially increased, and the typical intervention strategies are greatly limited while children are not in school buildings. School counseling is woefully underfunded already in schools, with a typical caseload of about 600:1 (instead of 250:1 as recommended by the American School Counselor Association). When we return to school, students will need extensive support to deal with PTSD, learning loss, re-learning school routines, and more. This will take resources.
- Do you know where your child is? First-quarter report cards came online November 24, and I suspect there were some surprises. Did you know your child missed (or skipped) some days of school? Were there some grades of “M” for missing data? If you haven’t been following your child’s progress online (or even if you’ve been trying to), you might not have known if they’ve fallen behind in their schoolwork. Some schools did not hold parent-teacher conferences, so the opportunities to connect at school have been limited. But teachers seem more than willing to discuss your child’s progress or challenges, so parents should not hesitate to reach out and ask for a meeting.
- Navigating multiple programs and platforms. MCPS students are learning to navigate dozens of programs and platforms. There’s StudentVue (which is the same as ParentVue and Synergy). And there’s Canvas (which is the same as MyMCPS). Then there’s Benchmark, Kahoot, Nearpod, Pear Deck, Quizlet, Epic, Brainpop, Powtoon, and Kami. And to top it off, the way I understand it, kids have to check modules, announcements, and voluminous emails (even for elementary students!). For weeks, one of my kids wasn’t opening the emails where teachers were reminding about assignments. I guess I should be grateful for all the online resources, but I wonder how our kids are learning to use them and how the teachers keep track of it all. My kids have school-issued Chromebook tablets that could be “written” on with their finger. But I’ve observed my kids creating text boxes during math equations to write their answers. Sometimes the on-screen navigation – doing long division, for example – leads them to lose their place and make a mistake. (Make a text box, type the equation, make a text box, divide first number, multiply, make another text box, subtract, make another text box, bring down the next number, text box, repeat).
- Screen time limits are pointless, or at least hard to enforce. If you’ve been tracking or monitoring your child’s screen time, good for you! But if your kid does school in their bedroom, and you have, say, a job that requires you to leave your kids to their own devices (literally) for at least part of the day, it is hard to monitor what goes on in their room. They can say “I’m doing my homework” even if they are doing something else. I’ve also heard of a few kids playing video games on their school-issued Chromebook during class. (Note to kids: Yelling “Let’s Go! You die, you die, you die!!!“ is a dead giveaway.)
- Bedtime? What’s a bedtime? When the list of “What’s In/What’s Out” list is written for 2020, I suggest the new word is Asynchronous (which is the time our kids are supposed to be doing school work independently). The word that is out is: Bedtime. School starts at 9am, and there’s no rush to the bus stop, so maybe going to bed doesn’t seem to be as high a priority as having some fun family time. A friend recently told me that she went by her teenager’s room at almost midnight to say goodnight and her daughter was on the phone with a friend! Do any kids still have a bedtime and is it possible to enforce this? The experts say that keeping a regular sleep routine is essential for our kids’ educational success. But I give myself a C- on this one.
- Quiet space is a premium, and a luxury. Avoiding background noise can be challenging at home. At my house, a 3-story townhouse, all 5 of us have a dedicated corner of the house where we do our work. And we still have those moments where there’s a loud phone call, a home repair, road work, loud trucks, leaf blowers, or it’s time for percussion class. I have gone into my car a few times to ensure I wouldn’t be interrupted on a phone call. I’m sure that some kids have trouble paying attention and participating in class if it’s noisy at home. Some parents share a desk or table with a child because they need to assist their child with logging into class. Having your child as a coworker is hard. Many families don’t have the luxury of dedicated space for each student, or are not available at home to provide support. At the beginning of the school year, some families hired a private teacher or formed a learning pod. That’s great for them, but not financially possible for most families. Educational inequity is not new, but virtual learning has made things much worse. Equity hubs at schools can help.
- Food insecurity is real for so many families. Montgomery County Public Schools has done a good job providing numerous local sites where families can pick up free meals for all kids under 18. But still many families are reluctant to seek help, even when their budgets are tight and kids are hungry. With so many families experiencing food insecurity (being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food) for the first time in their lives, I hope this issue will be tackled once and for all at all levels of government. In the meantime, donate to the Manna Food Center, Montgomery County’s premier food bank, the Capital Area Food Bank, which notes that 1 out of 10 residents in the Washington metropolitan region is food insecure, or Feeding America, which supports 200 food banks and 60,000 other food resources across the country. Distance learning is hard enough as it is. Attempting to learn while hungry is next to impossible.
- Resilience, sacrifice, and gratitude as curriculum. “Learning loss” is a concern, and for many kids it will take a tremendous amount of support – and resources – to get them back on track academically. But for many, this is a year of learning about overcoming adversity, being resilient, understanding antibodies and immunity, and making sacrifices. And maybe we will all emerge from this pandemic with greater appreciation toward teachers, first responders, grocery clerks, delivery drivers, and our elderly parents and grandparents who we haven’t seen in nearly a year.
These takeaways are based on my personal experience. Other issues are top of mind for families, including the lack of opportunity to play high school sports (and the potential impact on college scholarships); the challenges faced by English-language learners and their families; the immense challenge of providing the services indicated in IEPs; the extra burden of families on the front lines; and the physical and emotional toll of battling COVID itself.
Nine months after school shut down, my 11-year-old says she can’t remember life before COVID. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. I am hopeful that our kids will return to an education system reimagined, with an emphasis on individualized learning, addressing learning loss, tailoring lessons to the various ways that kids learn (some kids are thriving in remote learning – will this remain an option for students?), repairing the significant social and emotional damage done during the pandemic, and providing an increased level of support for the heroic teachers and school counselors out there. This will all take a great deal of resources, but is essential to the success of our students and future of our nation.
Gail Ravnitzky Silberglied is the founder of Speak Up Advocacy, which is dedicated to helping people and nonprofits advocate effectively. She serves as PTA president at her local elementary school, and chairs a committee on virtual learning for the Montgomery County Council of PTAs. The views expressed here are her own.