Remote education for teachers and learners quickly became a totally different ball game, an educational scenario that neither had engaged in before.  After our emergency experience last spring and our planned deliver this fall, are we prioritizing the right skill sets and dispositions for student success in a remote education?

What gets measured gets taught!  This generalized rule of thumb guides many teachers as they lay out their annual curricular goals for children.  This explains why reading, language arts, and mathematics demand so much instructional attention.  They are the focus of high stakes tests, statewide assessments, international comparisons, and ratings of school performance.  Tested curricula rules!  Not now.

COVID presents us with new challenges that are outside the 3 Rs.  Remote education is a test unto itself and success as a remote learner or teacher is not tied to reading, writing and arithmetic.  Instead, self-motivation, self-regulation, ability to work independently, and concentration and focus are the requirements for success for at-home children doing school work.  Consider this – if what matters most gets taught, how well are we teaching children how to be successful as remote learners?

Take Away

We cannot assume that children are pre-prepared for remote learning.  A child’s brain is constantly learning, it cannot help itself and that is what makes teaching children so wonderful.   Kids are natural learners.  However, the brain is a non-discriminating learner – it soaks up everything.  Education provides children with a channeling and scaffolding of instruction that prepares children to learn and then provides children their learning.

For example, when children enter PK or K classes, much attention is given to learning readiness and the skills, behaviors and dispositions that young children new to classrooms need to learn to be successful in the environment of a school.  Kindergarten teachers do wonderful work in building necessary school skill sets.  Once prepared with these, children take off in their elementary grade learning.

A second example is how teachers use pre-writing activities to focus a child’s thinking upon a writing assignment, consideration of possible topics, and application what children already know about creative or expository writing before a word goes onto paper or screen.  Getting into a writer’s thinking process makes for better writing.

A third example lies tech ed.  Before a child ever touches a tool in a workshop, the teacher demonstrates safe and appropriate uses of the tool.  A student must demonstrate “safety first” before allowed to use a tool on a tech project.  No safety, no going forward. 

Using this understanding of preparation for learning, causes us to consider how we have prepared children for the challenges of remote education.  Which skill sets and dispositions have we prepared to assure children can be successful as at-home learners?  Not many and almost all in the technology realm.

What do we know?

There are critical attributes of a successful remote learner.  We can naively think that a successful student in-school will be a successful at-home learner, but this is not a valid assumption.  Children who tacitly meet teacher directions and complete assignments neatly within classroom parameters are not equally prepared to be successful outside the classroom where teacher controls are absent or far less apparent. 

On the positive side of the ledger, there are attributes of a successful remote learner that schools do teach.  These lie in the area of “soft skills” that entered school curricula in recent decades.  Schools teach collaboration, problem-solving, team work, consensus-building, small group roles and responsibilities, and the use of communication technologies.  We can see these skill sets within the remote or virtual assignments children are given as at-home learners.

Yet, skills and dispositions which are seldom taught in school are causing many children extreme anxiety and real problems that keep them from being successful at-home learners.  These include:

• self-motivation,
• self-directed study,
• time management,
• focus,
• self-restraint,
• assistance seeking, and
• patience. 

These skills and disposition certainly are not in the 3 Rs and not in the batteries of school assessments and, as they are not tested/important, they are not universally taught.  More to the point, when children are in school, teachers and classroom protocols dictate the parameters of these skills and dispositions.  Teachers motivate children, provide directions and then clarify directions, manage student work on the classroom clock, enforce classroom behavior rules, provide relatively quick and direct assistance when needed, and calmly require an element patience as the school day unfolds.  None of this available to the at-home learner.

It is essential to add at this point that parents, almost always mothers, who are at home with at-home learners are not prepared as teachers to assert any of the above skills and dispositions required for a child to be a successful remote student.  Parents are not prepared to be supervisors of at-home learners let alone teachers of their at-home learning children.

Why is this thus?

Repeat – these skills and dispositions are not tested and thusly not prioritized.

Second, in the competitive realm of school, we allow students to seek their own level of achievement based upon these skills and disposition.  If we disaggregated end of the year data by the filter of motivation, time management, and focus, we would quickly see that these cause and effect relationships.  Children with these traits fly to the top of our data list and children without fall to the bottom.

Can they be taught?  Yes.  Can they be strengthened?  Another yes.

A current pedagogical theme is the gradual release of responsibility (GRR).  The Wisconsin DPI provides a framework for shifting the responsibility for learning from the teacher to the student.  The department sees this as an essential and natural shift in the focus of who is motivating and directing student learning that can be applied to all learners.    

Fisher and Frey have incorporated GRR into the development of student reading capacity over time. 

https://dpi.wi.gov/ela/instruction/framework

https://dpi.wi.gov/sites/default/files/imce/ela/resources/Fisher_and_Frey_-_Homework.pdf

To do

Adapt GRR to the skills of self-motivation, self-direction, time management, focus, self-restraint, assistance seeking, and patience.  Each is a mini-unit that begins with teacher instruction, teach modeling, guided practice, checking for understanding, and then release into independent practice.

For example – Examination of what motivates a student unveils that each child may respond to generalized and personal motivational.  Identifying and creating a self-awareness in children of the common motivators that all children in the class respond to sets a “button” a teacher or a individual child can push.  More importantly, identifying the unique personal motivators that a child responds to creates an individualized button that a child can use.

Aligning task completion and success as a reinforcement of both buttons builds a child’s sense of self-determination.  A child can choose when to push their self-motivation button, create the anticipation of focused work, and the sense of self-satisfaction with completed and successful tasks.

Each component on the list can be its own mini-curriculum.  Because they are inter-related, each will be addressed no matter where attention to this begins.

The important things are:

1. Do not assume children are motivated.  Provide initial motivations and use GRR to build self-motivation.
2. Do not assume that children can self-direct.  Provide clear direction at the beginning of a lesson, check that children have the parameters of the task, and GRR children toward their own sense of assignment direction.
3. Do not assume that children can manage their own time when they are on their own.  Build a daily schedule that orders their work.  Be exact and be demanding and then GRR them to managing small amounts of time that gradually increase.

And, so it goes.  When in school, a teacher sets the tone and dimension for the completion of school assignments.  At home, out of direct contact with their teacher, children need to be taught how to do set the tone and dimension for the completion of their school assignments.  This is an important as the 3 Rs.  In fact, the longer children remain as at-home learners, the more important purposeful instruction, review, and application of these “self” skills and dispositions become.

The Big Duh

A school’s success, more importantly, a child’s success in the Time of COVID will not be related to direct instruction.  Success will be correlated with how well children learn when the Zoom camera is turned off.