School Like That

I hate to harp on issues related to education but it is the only instrument I know how to play so, harp, I shall. In the midst of the pandemic (heretofore to be referred to as “the pandemic”) school administrators around the country, and probably in its middle, are wrestling with the model for schooling come late August – in person, with or without masks, plexiglass shields, swords of omens or albatrosses, or distance (Zoom or a competitor or generic equivalent, depending on the prescribing doctor) learning with students in a galaxy, far, far away. Or some sort of centaur like hybrid, exploiting the absolute worst of each delivery context so as to completely baffle social scientists in the year 3000.

As of my last check, many colleges and at least two large public school districts have opted for fully distance learning, at least at the outset. I sense that something along these lines will trickle and ripple across the country and, in light of a recurve-in-nation, require that we work from home in the next school year. As such, we spring plan F into action. By the way, “Plan F” is “FREAK OUT.”

If I learned anything from my experience using distance learning for the final 3 and a half months of the school year then I’m the only one. And though we have received praise from stakeholders regarding how we weathered that storm, the impetus is now to do better than just plain great. We must enter an era of miracles, just to survive. As per my earlier posts (tell your friends!) things like assessment, informal conversations, sidebars, bodily engagement and other pedagogical bits and pieces are done for. It is time for a reinvention, and this has me worried. It isn’t that I can’t reinvent myself -- I have been 3 different people already this morning; it is that the direction of reinvention is troubling. 

The Zoom model is forcing a major change in the approach to teaching. That might be OK on its own, but it doesn’t stop there. The method now becomes the driving force behind the choice of content instead of being a medium through which desired content is delivered. We have to tailor what we teach, not just how we teach it, to accommodate this new mode. That de-emphasizes current curriculum.

I get a weekly summary of education articles written up by Kim Marshall (The Marshall Memo – if you are in education, get it). This week there was this quote (and I include the Memo’s citation): 

                “I have taken good online classes and bad online classes. What determines their quality has little to do with the format itself and everything to do with the teacher’s pedagogy, their grasp of the technology, and their ability to design a course around that.” -- Shalon van Tine (University of Maryland) in “The Bias Against Online Teaching” in The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 10, 2020 (Vol. 66, #33, p. 14)

To my eyes what this is saying is that the “good course” according to the writer is tied into how a class is designed to accommodate the delivery method. Now, on one hand, sure, this makes sense. If I know I’m lecturing, I have to select content that will survive and be vital via lecture. But I also know that I have the option NOT to lecture. I can design a course, on a macro level, to work through many delivery models, supplementing that lecture with other delivery channels to ensure that the whole of the important information gets through. If the technology becomes the one and only, then the course design has to start (and, on some level, end) with that awareness. This then becomes really troubling as many teachers would agree to the proposition that designing a course around anything other than curricular goals in terms of content acquisition and skills performance is to subsume content to delivery. Reinvention, it seems, requires tearing down old curricula and rebuilding the entirety of the educational system, all driven by the new technology of delivery. It is now less important “what I have to teach” or “what the student has to be able to do” because neither of those (in the traditional sense) might be compatible with or demonstrable through the technology, and that technology is one thing I cannot change. And if I want to switch things up, I have to do so within the confines of that technology – third party apps etc. all have to work within the strictures of the distance model. I can’t mix and match to leverage the strengths of each. 

This is, as we say in the teacher world, scary. I mean, maybe other people say that, too, but so what? Teachers say it. 

As a complementary note, please recognize the position established about the potential for success in the Distance Classroom in another quote from the same issue of the Memo:

               “There’s a limit to how good a lesson can be when you’re trying to interact with your students through a keyhole in the door.” -- Doug Lemov, quoted in “The Worst Is Yet to Come” by Robert Pondiscio in Education Week, June 10, 2020.

This expert seems to be saying that no matter how “good” the class, the inherent limitations of the electronic forum will adversely affect the ultimate quality of the lesson. One would assume that the author of the former quote would advise the author of this latter one to design a different lesson recognizing that the technology affords a keyhole and he has to learn to deal with that. 

So let’s all go out there and reinvent who we are, how we deal with students, how we assess performance and how we decide on what we teach, keeping in mind a new set of limitations regarding the potential for success in how we will be able to teach which will drive an absolute upheaval and revolution in the entire educational system in this country. August is a few scant weeks away and we have no option of getting this wrong. 

Should make for an interesting summer.