Class where? For?

 

News has come out that Pfizer has a potential Covid vaccine, one which is 90% effective. If we assume that this 90% is enough to embolden those vaccinated, we are on the cusp of some sort of progress back to “normal.” But will we ever actually go back to the way things were before last March? In some ways, maybe, but the pandemic has fueled innovation and driven technology while making us reevaluate how we live and I think that in some ways, we will not take steps back. Companies will allow more workers to stay home and work virtually. Contactless check-out lines in supermarkets will become the standard. Restaurants that introduced delivery will not stop delivering. People who have concerns about their health will take more opportunity to wear masks, stay distant and not shake hands or hug. Telemedicine, once offered cannot be taken away. The same holds true in education.

Schools, like it or not (speaking as a teacher) have been operating on a distance model either entirely or in concert with live classes. Teachers who are in school buildings are still, simultaneously, teaching students who are at home. Whether or not a teacher thinks that the “Zoom” class is as effective or personal as a live class, it is an option that it will be hard to deny. Snow days, students who are a little sick but want to listen in, or who are on vacation but don’t want to miss content will be able to join their classes. Though this was available before Covid-19, it was rarely used. Students out for extended periods sometimes had a friend Face-time them in but the teacher, even if aware, made no accommodation for that mode of learning. Only schools that specialized in this method of delivery offered it. But now, I foresee that all changing.

I anticipate not only students’ opting to stay home more and yet still wanting to be “in-class” and teachers confronted with poor weather or personal demands not wanting to miss a full day’s salary teaching remotely. If we think that the platform is an effective mode of instruction, so much so that we continue to use it AT ALL after a vaccine appears, then we should be leveraging its advantages, the primary one being that we are free of geographical constraints. Colleges offering all their classes digitally (synchronous and not) have students going to Hawaii or elsewhere, figuring “I can attend the classes from anywhere, so why should I be where the weather isn’t perfect?”

Private schools, then, need not limit themselves when recruiting to students in their vicinity! A private school can offer an experience as academically rich to a student in a small town who, otherwise, would either have to move to take advantage of what the school has to offer, or would be out of luck, having to be satisfied by a (possibly less rigorous or specialized) public school. Students from anywhere can learn from the caliber of teachers that normally would be out of reach, or cover material and curricula that would never find its way to a building in every physical corner of the world.

True, the “campus experience” would be missing if the student was confined to a Zoom classroom, but the extra-curriculars (at least ones that can’t include a virtual participant as easily as a classroom can) are only one dimension of the time in school. Homeschooled students miss the same opportunities and have found ways to supplement their classes with trips or meetings that supplement the intellectual part of their daily lives. If we truly value the academics in our schools and the teachers are already making alterations to include the resident students who choose to be on Zoom, then offering that option to outsiders adds no additional prep work or financial investment. The trade-off for the student could be a reduction in tuition as the students gets only a part of the overall experience. Would there be some missed socializing? Yes. But there would also be some otherwise missed acculturation. A student who would not expect to have access to a religious school because of the lack of one in a community could become part of the intensive religious education that another community has to offer.  Affiliations via other facets of culture can be explored and a student can find himself virtually surrounded in both classrooms and informal meetings by likeminded students and faculty. Additionally, students whose families move would not need to abandon their social niche – they could finish their schooling in the school at which they began it.

This would change recruiting models, increasing certain aspects of competition, but it would increase opportunity in all directions. Marketing would shift as would economics since local students might opt for the same on-line experience, but class sizes and staffing could also be reconsidered with the school offering entire Zoom classes populated only by virtual students. Local, smaller communities could have students who band together and rent a local room and attend class as a group, creating a satellite campus in areas in which any particular style, mode or approach towards education would never have been available.

Unless we ditch virtual learning and assume that everything will truly go back to the status quo ante, we will continue to incorporate these parallel modalities of instruction. Once we are doing that, we should look ahead to see how we can parlay these innovations into a new model and eventually standard of educational offerings.