These are accoutrements of a school classroom which we are familiar. Slate chalkboard and chalk. Green chalkboard and colored chalk. Roll of butcher paper. Flip charts on an easel. White board. Smart board. Interactive digital board. Laptop with camera. Video camera with large video screen. Multiple cameras and multiple video screens. Studio classroom for teaching in-school and at-home students. To paraphrase a commercial from the last century, “Classrooms, you’ve come a long way, baby!”.
As I stand in a pandemic-mode school hallway looking into a classroom, it is impossible not to have an “oh, my!” moment.
First, due to our school’s mitigation protocols that limit who can enter a classroom, I must stand outside and look in. The school created and maintains a low incidence virus environment and protocols are enforced. This is good.
Second, there are six children where there normally would be fourteen in this classroom. Our school is staffed for small sizes, but due to the pandemic eight children are at-home learners. The six in-school learners are masked and distanced and seated on either side of a digital camera on a tall tripod.
Third, the teacher stands in front of the classroom’s large, interactive digital screen where the faces of her at-home learners are displayed in checkerboard fashion. Each at-home learner has a school-provided chromebook and the camera on the chromebook ties that student to the classroom. This allows in-school learners to see and hear their at-home classmates.
Fourth, a classroom camera is displaying the teacher and her teaching in real time for at-home learners. That display is on the other half of the classroom screen. This camera allows at-home learners to see and hear the teacher and their in-school classmates during class time. Wow!
These four “oh, mys” mean that everyone in the class, the teacher and all students, regardless of location, are in real time with each other. The teacher in front of the classroom, students at their desks, and children at their kitchen tables are in “school” for teaching and learning today.
The teacher uses a presentation camera connected to her laptop to present information to all children. It may be the display of a math problem she hand writes out, a word processed list of vocabulary words, a page of the book children are reading, a clipped video of a news story – everything the teacher would write on a chalkboard, hold up in her hands to show or display, or want all children to observe can be seen on the in-classroom big screen or on the at-home chromebooks. No matter of location, all children are part of the classroom.
This is studio teaching. This is a very big “oh, my!” in our adaptation to the COVID-effect upon teaching and learning. Teachers and children are in a studio not a classroom. There is little difference between how Lester Holt works on NBC’s “Nightly News” and how a classroom teacher works in her classroom/studio. And, we will have studios for classrooms for the foreseeable future.
Add a fifth “oh, my” to this list. This is the most significant “oh, my”, I believe. A teacher in a studio is a combination of instructor, stage manager, coach/cheerleader, and producer.
- At the heart of what I see looking into a studio is instruction of the grade level or course curriculum. This lesson is being taught with fidelity to its unit design and with an accountability to ensure all children will learn the lesson. Good teaching practices always!
- Simultaneously, I see a teacher managing the studio of in-school and at-home learners. Her eyes go from children at desks to children at kitchen tables and back again. She scans all faces as if they were in their pre-pandemic classroom desks. It is easy for a child in a studio environment to wander off. The teacher as stage manager keeps all players in play.
- The teacher is coach/cheerleader with personal, individualized attention to each child. Remote education can quickly evolve into perceiving children as only “talking heads or faces”. On the checkerboard screen is the face of an at-home learner but within that face is the social, psychological, and personal development of a unique child. Some children need coaching from their teacher; some need cheerleading – all need their teacher’s attention.
- From slate and chalk to cameras and screens, classrooms have become studios that require the teacher to be an educational producer. She converts instructional materials and lesson plans into media that can be shared through technology. She sets up cameras and screens. She ensures that camera angles allow all children to be active participants. She connects with school tech specialists when the studio equipment needs service. She is a real time educational producer of daily teaching and learning.
Each walk down the school hallways increases my understanding of how our schools are changing in the Time of COVID. Without exception, I greatly appreciate how our teachers have grasped the dramatic changes required of teaching to in-school and at-home children. A year ago, a teacher taught in a classroom. Today and tomorrow, teaching is in a studio. Teachers and classrooms have come a long way, baby!