Teaching during a Pandemic: Five Takeaways
By: David De Céspedes
Tags: Remote Working, Learning, Teaching, Productivity

A month ago, the Brooklyn high school I teach at – in lock step with NYC – decided to close school and switch to remote learning, for an indefinite amount of time. It seemed logical at the time, but few of us thought of this as potentially being the end of in-person teaching and learning for the 2019-2020 school year.

Back when I worked at Superform, much of the creative work we did was distributed. I collaborated with developers overseas, and in some cases, 100% of client meetings were done via conference call, video, or even just a Slack channel. I would take day trips to different WeWorks in Manhattan to get a change in scenery, without missing a beat. Remote work felt natural.

When I found out we were moving to remote learning for a few weeks I felt as confident as anyone in being able to not only handle the transition, but utilize my past experience.

No one was prepared for this.

I’m speaking from a teacher’s perspective, but it’s clear very few people were/are equipped to work remotely for an extended period of time. In New York City, apartments are cramped, living with roommates well into your 30’s is the norm, and coffee shops offer(ed) the comfort and respite that you don’t get at home or at work. Now limited to just your home, these spillover spaces no longer accessible, we’re adapting our spaces to accommodate much more than they were designed for.

A week into NYC’s pause, my child’s daycare closed, which meant my wife was working from home, our daycare was now my living room, and I was teaching online, planning and grading, and holding office hours for two hours a day. Events that would normally take place in 4–5 locations now all took place in our 1-bedroom apartment.

Even the most tech-savvy of us struggle with isolation, because it’s not merely a comfort level with remote work, but grappling with the psychological effects of immobility, no longer having access to areas, stores, and places you love, and making the little personal space you have as comfortable as possible.

Five Takeaways

With each week that passes, we get a little more effective with remote teaching and learning, but there are a few specific takeaways from this experience that I think will change how we teach and learn.

1. Every Student Needs a Laptop and Internet Access

This has been the most frustrating and disheartening part of remote teaching over the past month. Many students have missed weeks of instruction, office hours, 1-on-1 meetings, and emails, all because of something completely out of their control. As we contemplate schools potentially closing for the remainder of the year, this can have huge negative impacts on students’ learning for years to come.

Beyond the unique circumstances the coronavirus has brought on, lack of technology has disproportionately effected students in low-income families, and is perpetuating the achievement gap the same way other lack of services has. How much learning, exploration, and discovery is lost by not having a computer or reliable internet in the household? Conversely, how much more opportunity do students instantly gain by having a connected device throughout their entire K-12 education? Viewed through a budgetary lens, the price of one device per student seems inconsequential, especially considering the device (and its value) go directly to the student.

2. We Need to Take Digital Literacy Seriously

I was shocked at how few students were sending formatted emails, or using our online classroom’s message board in all kinds of wrong ways, until I realized: Most of my students have never discussed digital literacy in the classroom. I know there’s a wide spectrum in the U.S., some districts investing heavily in digital literacy, and many schools in which online learning is a more critical component, but I suspect there are thousands of schools across the country who have simply not addressed the elephant in the room: how to be a person on the internet. Skills like sending professional emails, formatting documents, and being presentable (as much as one can be) in video conferences, can mean the difference in building strong professional relationships, being awarded scholarships, or getting hired. It’s ludicrous that we graduate countless students without having discussed and practiced digital literacy thoroughly. It’s the level of importance that it can’t really be covered in one class, but must be embedded in school culture, where we offer students every opportunity possible to practice digital behaviors that will set them up for success.

3. The Schedule is the Glue that Holds it all Together

By far, the most common feedback I’ve gotten from students, is their schedules have gone to shit. This has been the most jarring part of remote learning for students — they’ve gone from weekdays of ultimate consistency to unstructured days that bleed into one another, in spaces often occupied my multiple family members, while often sharing devices or doing work on phones or tablets. From one week to the next, students are managing (in some cases six or seven) online lessons, work time, and office hours across, on schedules that have no resemblance to the normal school schedule. The past month has really highlighted how little we (students and teachers alike) frame our weeks in terms of work time, and how critical consistent schedules are to getting things done. How many of us plan our mornings, evenings, and weekends with the same rigor we plan our workdays? How many hours are simply lost as a result?

There are tons of students that will have likely never made a schedule before graduating high school, and will be attending college and/or working jobs, and having to figure out from scratch when they’ll get things done. As ‘work’ becomes more of a amorphous term that now encompasses freelance, remote work, consulting, and side-hustles, creating and sticking to a schedule as a skill seems more pressing than ever.

4. Online Classrooms Should be Standard (Even If They’re Secondary)

There’s been a huge silver-lining in the past four weeks of remote teaching, especially for someone who has (used, but) not relied on Google Classroom. Publishing assignments, coursework, links to relevant articles and videos, and having both class-wide and private conversations can have a tremendous impact on facilitating learning outside of the classroom. This is not an argument for 100% permanent remote learning, but I’ve noticed several students who are not typically engaged in the classroom, are now thriving. The internet is their domain, their comfort zone, and this dichotomy highlights how little schools have adapted to students’ digital-first experience.

Further, having a digital space where every lesson, assignment and material is accessible, allows for much deeper connections between topics; as a high school student, how many times did you finish a project or unit, turn it in, and never see it again? Every lesson or unit that ends without any further study is a lost opportunity to build deeper connections between wide-ranging topics. As a teacher, being able to digitally pop-in to classes gives an immediate insight into the culture of the class, student engagement, and materials being covered. Ideas for collaboration or inter-disciplinary projects are floating at the surface, rather than buried in a shared, nested drive folder.

One day, we’ll return to the classroom, fist bump, catch up, and get on with the lesson, but I hope the use of online classrooms continues to grow; it’s a space for students to shine, help each other, and flex their muscles in a way that can be difficult in the physical classroom.

5. Resourcefulness is Now a Requirement

September will roll around, a new school year will begin, and everyone — teachers, students, and administrators — will be expected to continue making progress, and ensuring students have the skills and knowledge they need to excel. The experiment of removing the physical spaces that house almost all of our interactions, both academic and social, has forced all of us to adapt, and achieve as much as possible with the resources we have (actually, this sounds like the norm for many teachers, coronavirus outbreak or not). It took a few weeks to get into a remote-learning rhythms, but the speed of adaptation has been pretty remarkable. Of course, everyone is struggling, and we’re certainly operating at not 100%, but the vibe of online classrooms in some cases is shockingly close to pre-isolation physical classrooms. Students are sharing devices, calling and texting teachers, and messaging each other for help on assignments, a lot of which was simply not happening a month ago.

Teachers already know a lot about resourcefulness, which is a big reason why remote learning has not been a complete disaster.