Virtual Student, No Computer: A Reflection for the Teaching Community
By: Tdo Timothy
Tags: Teachers, Virtual Education, Teaching And Learning, Education

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

First, March 2020 Happened: The Unexpected Quarantine.

It’s hard to explain the difficulty of meeting students’ needs in the middle of a pandemic health crisis, isn’t it? Initially, individual teachers (or small teaching groups) dove somewhat haphazardly into spur-of-the-moment lesson modification in March of 2020, adopting their own teleconferencing tools, their own instructional flows to keep students interested, their own methods of monitoring attendance and engagement.

We spoke to each other in code via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts, adapted ourselves based on advice from international virtual learning networks where questions like “Are you Skype, Zoom, Teams, or Meet” became the beginning of everything.

Many school districts did not purchase online learning management systems like Blackboard, Canvas, or Schoology, systems which would have allowed teachers and students access to one-stop, seamless teaching, learning, and assessment integration. Instead, teachers — according to their levels of expertise and online experience — built websites or teleconferencing pages (perhaps free Moodles or Wikis) that pieced together discussion board platforms, assignment turn-in options, lecture and practice opportunities (asynchronous and synchronous), assessments, and enrichment options.

Many school districts did not purchase learning management systems.

For some of us, this was a native process: we knew the right apps, the right websites, the best mediums for recording and assessing asynchronous instructional videos… the right places for gamified learning. Those teachers just went with the flow. For others, it meant crying through evenings and weekends, drinking in the afternoons, feeling desperate about students’ absences and lack of effort. Many of us resigned or retired in the wake of the additional cognitive load.

Then, August 2020 Happened: A Quarantine with New Expectations.

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With the benefit of experience, we began the 2020–2021 school year in August with a slew of new administrative initiatives that — in many cases — required the reinvention of an already strained virtual process (in what is still a solidly brick and mortar US public school system). Schools took on the gargantuan task of tackling a problem that we thought we’d remedied through 1-to-1 computing programs. Every public school child, regardless of socioeconomic status, has access to an computer with an internet connection (to some degree), right? I mean, at least, every child has a smartphone with data in 2020?

If you are in the middle of this experience with us teachers, you know the answers to those last two questions are “No.” IT personnel who were formerly tasked with maintaining discounted Chromebooks and laptops within school buildings (and connected to school wi-fi) were suddenly tasked with managing the distribution and maintenance of devices and hotspots in individuals’ homes, homes which were subject to the data infrastructure developed within cities.

There’s a lot I can say here about the impossibility of this situation, but that must be left for another article, because this particular piece is less about the devices and the wi-fi and more about the children… the children who never came to class.

The Surprising Endurance of Inequity, December 2020.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

In some instances, we really did our best to get students to attend some version of our classes, didn’t we? When it became clear to me that select students had cell phones or landlines but not data, I instituted a call-out process via a separate Skype for Business account to “call students in” to class. (Of course, the call-out function via our district tool was disabled for security purposes.)

This worked for a week, for as long as parents could be home to ensure that students (ages 13–18) answered the phone and completed the aural task. When parents had to work, however (as most parents do), the students would see my Skype number and simply not answer. Or, they would answer and ignore instruction. Or, they would answer, listen to instruction and not complete the connected task. I mean, they are still children. Without supervision, were they going to take “audio school” seriously? Would you have?

After two weeks of call-outs, I had to abandon the practice since it was impossible to maintain the virtual working group and the uncooperative by-phone group simultaneously. I suppose such a task really requires a separate window in the day. Perhaps, each individual student required his or her own separate window in the day. Some teachers attempted this and gave up their nights and weekends to reach every child in a separate window of time after the day’s work, and they paid direly for it… in family time, in mental and physical health.

It was impossible to reach every child and live since students’ access to the correct technology fundamentally impacted their ability to be engaged.

Who’s Responsible?

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I suppose there is a time and a place for the conversation about who is responsible for some students having Canvas, top-tier wi-fi, and iPads while other students have landlines and televisions with antennas, but this article is not about that either. Rather I would like to discuss who is NOT RESPONSIBLE: you, the teacher.

I would like to discuss who is NOT RESPONSIBLE: you, the teacher.

You have probably thought about all the ways you can raise money to make sure that every child has a personal computer, and you are brainstorming how to challenge your city council to set up free local wi-fi for everyone within a certain radius (like so many of the world’s cities have done). You may have arranged for some students to have computers, purchased them even… shipped them.

You have probably given all of your parents and students some level of on-demand access to you: a cell phone number, a Google Voice number, a Class Dojo or Remind connection… you get messages all day and night now. You feel guilty when you don’t answer, and you feel guilty when you do answer… especially when it’s after 9 pm on a Thursday and your husband or wife or child or whoever wants a cuddle.

You have probably even taught some hybrid or fully face-to-face classes in the interest of not abandoning your students regardless of your personal health situation. You have lost colleagues that you didn’t know you loved. You read their obituaries in the newspaper. You thought, “That could have been me,” but you couldn’t quit, could you?

Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash

You, the teacher, are doing your best. This is an article about virtual students not having computers, yes, but it is also an article about virtual teachers having no real recourse for changing that.

This is an article about virtual students not having computers, yes, but it is also an article about virtual teachers having no real recourse for changing that.

You are planning and pre-recording lessons. You are doing the daily check-ins with families. You are documenting contacts and sending assignments text-to-phone. You are translating materials into and conducting conferences in multiple languages (or paying translators or spending additional time soliciting aid from ESOL team members). You are building original everythings to keep children with you, smiling, excited to come to virtual school.

This “Virtual Student, No Computer” business… you cannot fix it. Whatever message you keep playing in your head that says “If only I could… parents would… administrators could… politicians could…” is irrelevant. Apart from the sacrifices the collective school community already made to purchase, distribute, and maintain computers and hotspots for every child, you cannot do much more.

Apart from the sacrifices the collective school community already made to purchase, distribute, and maintain computers and hotspots for every child, you cannot do much more.

Sacrificing your health, your family, and your general sense of well-being will not change this situation at all.

You probably started reading this looking for a solution, and maybe I inspired one in you without fully intending to do so, but I don’t have a grand solution. What I do have is the realization that I can only do the best that I can as a part of this thrust-into-virtual-learning reality.

When you walk away from your computer, or your phone, or your Medium app after reading this, I hope you feel like you’ve found some comradery with a teacher who is in the trenches with you and willing to look at the facts without bitterness or condemnation. And I hope you drink a little less alcohol this week, and spend a little more time outside in whatever version of the sunshine you most need.