Looking Back to Move Forward

During the Spring 2020 stay-at-home orders, I was an online learning coach, experiencing the trials and tribulations through the eyes of the teachers that I supported. At the time, I had an intense curiosity of their experience. How exactly do you teach kids online??Panic set in quickly across the grades, mostly primary. Are they behind? What skills are they lacking? Can you teach through a mask? It was suggested that March to June 2020 was a loss. I disagree because that was the dry run, the technology dry run. The pivot was extreme, while some grades had previously used an online classroom, the primary grades had not, though across the grades, tech skills were accumulated in a trial by error situation. At first it was surprising, but not so much when you understand that teachers rise to the occasion, these kids were log in to their online experiences, their families assisting as they handed in work.

Fall 2020 started with a choice between in-person and online teaching.?The directive was to teach “near normal”.?So, we did. The buildings were devoid of soft items, desks were arranged in rows, arrows affixed upon the floor. A plethora of hand sanitizing stations. Far from normal, but nonetheless, you work with what you got. Online this was different, sitting in a small office, spending my teaching days isolated from the rest of the school, supporting students ages seven to nine as they negotiated their online experience, parents in behind them, cheering them on.?My students and I hit the ground running, diving deep into core curriculum day one. The overwhelm came quickly. Was this working? Are the students understanding it? Would they have the courage to tell me if they did not? Were their parents helping too much? Were their parents helping too little? What about the students’ mental health? It was this last question that consumed me.

Recommendation One – Moving Forward – Being Intentional with Screen Time

???????????As we moved through fall, students did their best. Rapidly accumulating tech skills, but slowly consumed by screen time. It was clear that as we moved through the early months, students who had off screen hobbies, maintained a level of evenness. Those that had few options to distract themselves, struggled. This included the gamers.?Technology was their whole day; screen time was never ending.?These students had received a crash course in technology, an accelerated version, that in some ways was long overdue. Yet, the time immersed in technology, was time stolen from their play, childhood pursuits and connections with each other.?Moving forward, Brodeur (2020) suggests that we rethink screen time and to be intentional with its use.?I felt these competing voices in my head, I knew that hands on learning was better, but using technology was easier, and in many ways, the only way to complete assignments efficiently. Yet, I began to include more screen break times in our daily schedule. During that time my students are encouraged to go outside, have an at home recess experience. With in-person classes we can do better to balance tech-time. Yes, students like tech just like they desire candy. But they have accumulated screen time over the past year that has distracted them for using it as a tool for learning and increasingly as a form of escape.?In person teaching means that technology can be a tool again, not the whole learning experience. We owe it to our students to bring them back to healthier balance.

Recommendation Two– Moving Forward – Advocating for the Arts

With the pandemic in full swing, my daughter descended our staircase, “Mom, it’s like you prepared us for this pandemic our whole life.”?Indeed, my family of four all agreed, we could make these stay-at-home orders work. Why? We are artists.?Yes, pre-pandemic we would go out. Sometimes we went shopping, to farmers’ markets and to the movies.?Yet, we did not rely on these outings to stay sane, it was our artist’s practice, at home that centered us.?It was not just our family. As we edged through the early months of the pandemic, it was the arts that people craved. Suddenly people were baking, so much so that stores sold out of yeast.?Many people learned new skills like drawing, cross-stich and mask making. It was obvious that the ability to tackle new hobbies and build with their hands was on the upswing.?Wellness opportunities call out to us, and we need to answer the call.

What skills and attitudes are life giving? Life saving??Kettler, T., Lamb, K.N., Willerson, A., & Mullet, D.R. (2018) state that “creativity plays a powerful role in healthy mental status, coping with change, and emotional growth.” ?As we look towards the fall 2021, we need to make sure that students have these “artist” survival skills. Schools have a role in developing the whole child. We have these students in front of us, for more hours than they are with their families. It is an opportunity to examine what we can do to support their needs. Though students can create art with each other, the versatility of art, is that it can be created alone.?I think of the students who only played soccer or hockey, recreating these activities, that brought so much joy and wellness, were next to impossible during the pandemic. During the pandemic, if a student was only involved in group activities, not solitary activities like art, adjustment to being confined at home has been challenging.?Moving forward schools need to think of activities as dual purpose, group, and individual settings. One thing that worked for me, during in-person learning was introducing sketchbooks, as tool to settle in and for individual expression.?When you take away expectations, and reduce the materials to paper and a pencil, a sketchbook becomes a mobile wellness tool, for all life situations.??

Recommendation Three– Moving Forward – Building Better Peer Connections

“Can I show you something?” This question is asked daily, generally from the same students. These are the students who have been the most resilient online. They have the gift of easy connections. Show and share, their relatable tool. Whether they are builders, crafters, or artists, they stayed connected.?These students, like my own children, were prepared for this pandemic, but what about the other students? The pandemic brought with it, social distancing, disconnection from peers.?All my online students have been affected in subtle and extreme ways. Students who are the only child in their household, rely on our online classroom for peer interaction. Sometimes this is not enough. Yet, many of my online students have siblings.?This not the same as peer age friends in school.?I can sense their growing resentment of being in an enclosed space with their siblings and other relatives.?Yes, they have people to talk to, they are not alone, but they are lonely. While some of the students messaged each other to maintain their pre-pandemic friendships, many found it hard to relate to each other over text.?I mediated this lack of contact by recreating peer interactions through Jamboards, break out rooms and online “get to know your classmates better” quizzes. Some of my online students have figured out that they can hide from contact, not answering TEAMS calls, keeping their cameras off, choosing not to unmute, and using only text messages to communicate.?I wonder how they will adapt to the exposure of an in-person classroom. I worry that they will continue to choose the online option to avoid peer and teacher interaction. Moving forward, I worry about them reconnecting with their in-person peers and getting back to the level of friendship that they were pre-pandemic.

?Although I teach online, I also work at my school in another roles, as a learning coach and an acting assistant principal.?I have witnessed the effects of the stay-at-home orders on the students that have returned. The time away from peers has eroded some of the social skills already accrued.?Most of the work done by our onsite Emotional Behavioral Specialist, has been to mediate peer interactions.?The social distancing required in classrooms, makes group work a challenge. Even so, it is important reignite group work, safely.?

As I write this, I see a light at the end of the tunnel. Vaccines are becoming widely available; students should be back in the classroom fall 2021.?We need to look back on the experiences of stay-at-home learning, as a reminder of what tends to fall away when students are not in front of us, and what they need most now:?mediated screen time, immersion in the arts and facilitated peer interactions.?Never did I think my career would pivot in such a dramatic way.?Teachers were unprepared for the demands of the stay-at-home orders. No one saw it coming. Yet, looking back at the experience we are reminded that the work we do in schools, is more that just teaching kids to read and to count, it is helping them to mentally survive the unexpected, inside the classroom and beyond.

References

Brodeur, J. (2020). De-confinement: Rethinking screen-time in a post-COVID context. Our Schools/Our Selves, 13-14.

Kettler, T., Lamb, K.N., Willerson, A., & Mullet, D.R. (2018).?Teachers’ Perceptions of Creativity in the Classroom.?Creativity Research Journal, 30 (2), 164-171. Httpd://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2018.1446503

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