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Standards and Rigor Within Remote Education

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I observe three examples of how remote educators are addressing academic standards and rigor.

  1. A high school science teacher is adhering exactly to his traditional, standards-based curriculum guide.  All students are receiving a streamed, synchronous and recorded, daily instruction that matches the level of teaching they would receive if sitting in class.  There is no deviation in presentational pace.  All students are Zooming as classes or as chat groups or as individuals with the teacher.  Students are able to call, text, or e-mail the teacher at any time and he responds to all.  He prioritizes “talking” with students about their daily work to ensure they stay engaged.  Recorded lessons do not replace live lessons; they allow students to check what they are learning with the original instruction. Class work assignments are supported with on-line or school-bus delivered materials.  Quizzes and tests remain on a schedule that will assure that all students will receive a full annual curriculum, including AP level courses. 
  • A middle school teacher is streaming three synchronous Zoom sessions each day – ELA, Math and Science/Social Studies.  Each session is a presentation of new instruction.  All class work is posted on the class on-line platform.  Most posts are practice exercises related to the new instruction.  The assignments are a combination of school-approved curriculum and vendor/on-line materials.  Students receive enough daily material to keep them busy for six to seven hours each school day.  Submitted assignments are checked and graded and grades are posted on the student’s personal school account.  Student calls, texts and e-mails are answered in the following days. 
  • An elementary teacher posts three lesson each day – ELA, Math and Science or Social Studies.  New instruction, alternating with instructional review, is presented about every other day.  Instruction is derived from an on-line, commercial curriculum.  Daily class work is posted on the class on-line platform and provides practice exercises for the teacher’s instruction.  Most students complete their daily work in 30 to 45 minutes.  There is little opportunity for children to communicate via phone call, text or e-mail with their teacher.  Assignments are reviewed by the teacher and percentage/grades are posted on the student’s personal school account.

Academic rigor and standards-based instruction are not at the top of a school’s priority list these days.  They lie well below the daily demands of deciding whether children will be in-school or at-home or managing the amount of time a child is in either place.  They lie below the challenge of maintaining daily teaching when faculty and classroom support staff who quarantined due to positive tests of contact tracing.  They lie below the demands of daily mitigation protocols necessary for schoolhouse doors being open to any person.  Like a debt that is ignored over time because the need for daily living expenses are more demanding, the issue of academic rigor will one day need to be paid.

Most states have waived traditional, statewide K-12 testing regimens due to the pandemic.  End-of-year tests were not administered in the spring of 2020 and typical baseline tests were not administered in the fall of 2020.  Waivers or work-arounds abound regarding attendance, rules for daily physical activity, and minutes of required instruction in subject areas.  Nothing has been removed from the statutes, department of instruction regulations, or even school board policies.  Waivers are the rule of the day.

We are left with the “in the mean time” problem of preparing children for the day when the waivers are lifted – for the day the assessments return.  And, they will return.  It is probable that our state will not enforce statewide testing in the 2020-21 school year, but my money is on a reinstatement in 2021-22.  How will the education provided during the pandemic serve our children after the pandemic?

There is a sweep of articles being written about the “lost generation”, children in school during the Time of COVID whose education has been disrupted or up-ended.  This is not a lost generation.  The term is a misapplication of a label applied post-World War One to those whose innocence of the world had been shattered by the war’s death and destruction.  It is interesting that the generation of young Americans who fought and survived World War Two were labeled the “Greatest Generation”.  What new label will be attached to our children today – certainly not “lost”.

That said, the reality that academic rigor and fidelity to educational standards will be reinstated should cause us to re-think the education we are providing today.  Will a child a year from now, pencil or keyboard in hand, facing an academic assessment whisper to her test question, “We did not learn this in our pandemic classes”. 

If your school district has demanded that all remote education for its children will be standards-based and that the school’s quality requirements will be upheld throughout remote education, stop reading now.  You are on the right track at the right time.  If not, please keep reading.

When children are at-home learners, faces on a screen that seem totally unschool-like, it is easier to dismiss daily rigor and standards.  Just getting connected is a success.  Just getting a lesson presented is a success.  Getting responses from a child is a success.  Engaging remotely with children is a real success.  Rigor and standards?  Not so much a success.

But, that is the problem we will face tomorrow and every day after that tomorrow if we don’t address rigor and standards today. 

As a thought, ratchet up rigor and standards in your remote education a little each week.  Begin with the standards.  Assure that a growing number of assignments point at the appropriate academic standards for your children.  Look again at assignments children already have completed to verify standards that have been addressed.  On your annual checklist of grade level or course-specific academic standards, do a check-off of what has been and has not been addressed in September.  Get back on a standards-based track.  Before long, all assignments will be standards-based. 

Gradually increase your demands for rigor.  Move from pass/fail back toward your traditional quality requirements.  No longer count connected engagement as an end-success but as a beginning for success.  Correct responses and corrected responses improve correctness.  Push children to move from good to better to best. 

I congratulate our local school district where the Board confirmed that all teachers will provide instruction using the district’s standards-based curriculum only.  In the past week, elementary teachers began administering the school’s academic screening tests for reading and math to ascertain individual and class status on annual performance expectations.  Secondary classes will begin their annual series of ACT-battery assessments by the end of the month.  None of these are high stakes assessments, but will be used to adjust instructional targets for children. Standards-based instruction and assessment measured rigor are the the order of the day for the duration of remote education.

The real end goal when we transition from remote or hybrid education back to in-person learning is that all children will be ready for success in resuming a standards-based and rigorous education.   Make these two goals, standards-based instruction and rigorous learning expectations, your constant normal to assure children become “academically “lost” as a result of the pandemic.

Remote Ed is Prime Time For Independent Learning

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It is easy to grumble about what children cannot do as at-home learners.  Instead, let us consider what they can do.  In fact, remote education is prime time for learning that requires children to work independently, requires practice, lends itself to asynchronous collaboration, and requires one-to-one teacher assistance.  Consider the kinds of school assignments that a child typically does as an independent student – just me, myself, and I.  I will highlight several and know that all PK-12teachers will quickly identify more.  In each, a teacher provides clear instruction and demonstration of new learning and checks for student understanding.  Then, teacher and children disconnect from the Internet and work independently.

Before we go further, all at-home learning can be informed by academic standards and assist children to become competent and proficient in those standards, just as if they were sitting in school and in class everyday.

Student Writers and Peer Editing.  Some children love to write and others would rather go to the dentist.  However, all students write.  And, all students submit their writing.  Let us start there.  Writing begins and finishes as a solo endeavor.  The assignment may be to write a paragraph or an essay, a poem, or a short story, to answer a question or make an argument.  As a writer, picture a child with a pencil and paper or at a keyboard pondering what to write, beginning to write, considering her writing, editing her writing and making corrections and changes.  Envision a child focused on writing, stand up to stretch and move about, return to the writing, tear up a page of paper or delete it from her screen, begin again, and persevere until she has a composition.  Writing, or the writing of a first draft, is a very private and independent process and fits the isolation of at-home learning very well.

She writes or thinks “The end” at the end of the assignment.  But, not quite.

Remote education also is a wonderful setting for peer editing.  Writing and peer editing go hand-in-hand in theory.  However, when children are in-school, time for peer editing often is omitted.  Peer editing takes time and, although editing is a specific assignment, it takes children time to focus, to read, consider and make comments.  This editing process can look like some children focused and others fully checked out, hence class time, a limited commodity, too often is eliminated for peer editing.   

Remote peer editing is flexible time – children do it on their time not on the classroom clock.   Online classroom platforms allow children to write and maintain their writing in a personal folder and then share their writing with other students.  This sharing option is made for peer editing.  It is easy to share a written document with several classmates, for those peer editors to read and make marginal comments on the document and for the author/student to read peer comments.  No one needs to move.  No paper is handed back and forth.  This is truly a digital routine and children complete this task on their time.

Peer editing not only helps a student/author improve her writing, it helps the peer editor see how other children interpreted and completed an assignment.  It extends their understanding and requires peer readers to be critical readers and clinical in their comments.  Peer editing helps a teacher to understand how children understand the assignment as writers and skillful and insightful peer commenters. 

Musicianship, Solo and Aggregated Performance.  Elementary music classes, secondary bands and orchestras, and secondary choirs illicit in-school images of large group instruction and performances.  Social distancing and remote education seemingly shattered large group music instruction and performance.  Maybe not.  At-home learning provides a music teacher the opportunity to focus on the musicianship of each individual child with a specificity that is not present in-class.  Many of us may remember being called upon by our music teacher to sing or perform, especially while we stood in the middle of the chorus or sat in the middle of the band room and every other student waited, listening only to us.  “Again”, the maestro required.  After the third “again”, we could not shrink to a smaller psychological low.  This is not just my inglorious memory – I hear about similar moments from many.

A Zoomed individual music lesson allows a child to sing or perform just for the teacher and for the teacher’s individualized comment.  It allows the teacher to critically assist a child to understand and undertake the incremental steps of improvement required.  And, without peers.

A child at-home can audibly and/or visually record practice time, review her own performance, and forward it to her teacher.  There is no limit to the amount of practice time and recorded practice time an at-home child can accomplish.  The key is to make a record, forward it to the teacher for review and comment and then wait for next instruction. 

Zooming to a large group allows a teacher to provide academic musicianship instruction and individual Zoomed appointments allow the child to demonstrate her understanding of that instruction. 

Practicing voice or instrumental lessons may have been harder to schedule in pre-pandemic times.  In the Time of COVID, practice time helps to structure a child’s time at home and a teacher can listen to each recording at the teacher’s leisure.

Math Reasoning.  One of the most effective math teachers I have observed wonderfully used “show me” and “explain to me” requests in causing children to excel in high school math.  In-school, she had students at the board – chalk or white – displaying and then explaining their solutions.  It was all about reasoning and using mathematics to create clear and concise answers to quantifiable and qualifiable problems.  Children watching learned from the reasoning of others and confirmed or reworked their own rational solutions based upon the work of their peers.  Eloquent reasoning is a trait of mathematical problem solving that requires time and practice and critical review.

Remote learning changes nothing.  Children are provided quality, synchronous instruction by their teacher on new mathematics.  The teacher uses the synchronous time to verbally check for understanding.  Independently, a child works and resolves practice problems.  She submits electronically to the teacher her “show me and explain to me”.  This is a one-to-one conversation and the teacher provides personal feedback on the math application and reasoning.  Depending upon commendation or recommendations, the student then resolves other problems or reworks the existing problems using the teacher’s comments.  This process takes time, but time in remote education is an available commodity that is well worth the depth of individual understanding and learning that is accomplished.

Drawing, Painting, and Design.  Many teachers and children have created at-home art studios.  Supplies are delivered by school bus to children’s homes where kitchen tables or card tables or corners in garages have become independent art rooms.  Once again, teacher instruction is delivered synchronously to the art class of at-home learners.  Clear demonstration of technique and expectation are presented and children are checked for their understanding.  Then, children have independent art time to draw, paint and design at home.  They do not need other children or a teacher to do this – they work independently.  Completed work is submitted to the teacher electronically or returned via school bus pick-up. 

Extended and Intensive Reading.  Because in-school time is limited to class periods or segments of a morning or afternoon, time for children to read in-school is reserved for short assignments or to begin them on assignments to be finished at home.  Children seldom have time in-school to read a full chapter of a book or reread any parts they did not understand.  And, children almost never read an entire book using in-school only.  Extended reading takes time and at-home learning provides the time for a child to read, take a personal break, return to reading, consider reading, and read more. 

Consider the traditional readings of literature in-school, such as The Miracle Worker, Night, Great Expectations, Of Mice and Men, Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet.  Some works are assigned to all children and others are child-selected. 

Consider children in elementary classes taking a trade book to sit in a soft chair, stretch out on a floor cushion or walk around while silently reading.  Consider a child of any age reading aloud so she can hear the words not just see them.  Consider a child reading all the parts of a play and moving around to semi-act them out.  Now think of a child having extended time at home to read without a school bell or the need to close the book and move on to a math lesson.  Remote education promotes extended and intensive reading.

Natural Observations.  Children at-home have the opportunity to be observers of what naturally happens in the world around them.  No matter where – in a rural home in the woods, a suburban home in a neighborhood, or an urban home in a city – life happens.  Observation of life can cause learning.  Children can observe people.  They can observe weather.  They can observe plants.  These observations can be planned for in an at-home curriculum based upon academic standards.  Science, social studies, mathematics, the arts, behavioral sciences – all and more can be crafted into at- and around-the-home observations.  Children see.  Children make notes.  Children write or talk about.  Children learn from.

Astronomy.  Lastly, school time and astronomy do not live on the same clock.  Unless a school has access to a planetarium, it is difficult for children in-school to observe the stars and planets and heavens.  However, as at-home learners, children have access to the nighttime skies.  Synchronous instruction and direction can prepare children for sitting or laying out on the ground at home to watch the sunset and the night skies appear.  They can identify and become familiar with constellations, meteor showers, planets and stars.  They can observe and record the seasonal rotation of the skies.  They can report and share their observations on Zoom chats with classmates and their teacher.  They can learn first-hand what otherwise would be largely book learning.  At-home learning can definitely promote a learning of astronomy.

It is hard for me to write, but I do, that there are many things that remote education with at-home learners allows us to accomplish that we could not when all children were in-school.  It must be our decision and design to cause all children to learn in this new educational setting.

Teach Less Well In the Time of COVID

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Panic sets in easily in the Time of COVID.  Or, the denial of panic.  They almost are interchangeable when pandemic causes extreme anxieties.  In the schoolhouse, a rising panic concerns the availability of enough direct instructional time and opportunity for all children to make the academic growth in the 2020-21 school they need to make for their educational future.  We acknowledge that a solid academic education requires direct instruction, professional monitoring and adjustment of instruction, strategic assessment leading to corrected learning, and enough time for guided and independent practice for learning to be mastered and ingrained.  Panic can be separated into mini-panics.  A first panic is a belief that school closures last spring prevented children from completing that full academic year.  They begin 2020-21 behind in their learning.  The second panic, with children either learning at-home or in hybrids of in-person and at-home learning, is a belief that all children will not or cannot achieve a full academic year this year.  The mix of in-person and at-home is the prohibitive factor.  Finally, the third panic is an aggregated panic that this generation of children in school will not be adequately prepared over time for their futures in a higher education and careers.  The pandemic has robbed them of their time to learn.  Hence, what will we, what can we do about it!

As an aside, it is about time that people in and out of education are panicked regarding children who do not achieve a full year of academic growth.  For too long, our culture accepted a sub-class of studenthood, those who gradually and steadily underachieve.  Perhaps, COVID will shake this antipathy loose.

Are there work arounds that can improve academic achievement when instruction for children is disrupted by something as significant as the pandemic?  You bet there are.

Take Away

The science of teaching gives us many tools that are not time- or condition-bound.  They are time- and condition-tested.  They work effectively in the best and worst of times, in- school and out-of-school.  As often is the case, panic causes people to lose a grip on what they know and seemingly re-invent or re-tool what they think they need in the moments of panic.  The key here is – don’t panic.  The science of teaching will cause children to learn, even now.

Teaching is teaching whether it is in-person with children in the classroom or remote from the classroom to children learning at-home.  Best teaching practices don’t change because a teacher is in front of a camera instead of in front of a classroom of child faces.  And, teacher-child relationships do not change because of distance.  A caring and nurturing teacher can be just as effective without proximity. 

Our task is to provide each child with a full academic year of instruction and apply all that we know about good teaching to that instruction.  Children will learn. 

Worry scatters thoughts and thinking.  Don’t let that happen.  Focus on essential learning and get after it.

What do we know?

Teach less well.  Take that apart.  Our curricular shelves are heavy with stuff.  We do not need to teach every thing in the collection.  Publishers and vendors provide more and more each year.  Teach less.  Teach what have been labeled “enduring” or “mastery” content, concepts, skills, and disposition.  Then, teach what you teach so that every child learns what you teach.

Teach less.  Time is not on our side this year.  180 days of 7 hours per day exist on a paper calendar but they do not exist in real time.  Real time is contact time when a teacher and children are actively engaged.  Today, real time is three to four hours per day and often less.  Real time is when the Internet connections are working.  Real time is when no one, teacher or child, is ill or no one in the home where the child is learning is ill.  Real time is when children at home have adult assistance.  Real time forces us to teach less this year than we usually would teach if everyone was in the classroom.  We need to teach less stuff because we have less real time to teach.

Teach well.  Best teaching practices always, please.  Take enough time in every lesson to assure student mastery of the content, skills and dispositions.  Set a clear lesson objective.  Attach the new learning to what children already know.  Provide impactful initial instruction.  Model and clarify the new learning with strong examples.  Check EACH child’s understanding of what is being learned.  Give enough time for guided and independent practice of the new learning.  Assess.  If necessary, unteach what is wrong in what children learned and research so that all children get it right.  There always is enough time for best teaching practices.

The basics of teaching well sound and feel like Education 101, because they are.  They focus on effectiveness and efficiency.  Good and compact units of instruction.  Good and compact daily instruction.  Good and precise assessment.  Good and necessary reteaching to ensure all children learn.  Good to go to next.

Teach less well.  Huh?  Read it again but read it like this.  If you are going to teach children, teach then what they need to know, teach them so that they learn it and remember it, and teach it so they can use it for further learning.  The Time of COVID is not a time to worry about quantity of learning and covering every topic a child might learn in the best of times.  The Time is a time to assure that everything a child learns is purposeful and is taught so well that what is taught is solidly learned.

Why is this thus?

There is truth in what we fear.  Teaching and learning take time and we did not have adequate real time in the spring of 2020 to complete that academic year.  Remote education was an emergency process and less than adequate.  Now, unless we teach differently in 2020-21, we will not have enough real time to completely teach this academic year’s curricula.  If we don’t work differently, children will fall significantly in their academic learning.

We will not get a “do over”.  Children will not repeat last year’s incomplete curricula this year and they will not repeat this year’s incomplete curricular next year.  Children will not be held back in their grade levels or be prevented from graduating.  There are no “school do overs” in education.  (Hypocrisy – we retain children for not performing, but we do not retain promotions when schools do not perform.)

We will not do an industrial recall.  If education was a manufacturing industry, we would issue a recall of 2019-20 and 2020-21 learning, retool it, make it better, and then release it as an improved model.  There are no recalls in education.

We are called to make all children complete in their 2020-21 academic year of learning.  To do this, we need to teach less well.

To do

Modify assessments of learning to match modified curricular instruction.  Administrators and teachers must be on the same page regarding what will will be taught and what will be measured.  Everyone in school must be telling the same story.  It does make sense to maintain full curricular assessments when children will not receive full curricular instruction.  Align teaching less with measuring less.

Pace lessons by teaching them well.  Don’t pile on lessons.  Don’t hammer children with so much work that they become panicked or angry.  When we teach less, we have enough time to teach it well and well takes the time we have.  This reinforces our need to cull out the non-essential stuff of our curricula.  Learning takes time.  We have enough time for children to learn by pacing what we teach well.

Differentiate who delivers instruction and who supports learning.  Now, more than ever, the delivery of initial instruction is essential for teaching well.  If a grade level or departmental team recognizes that one teacher has more expertise in teaching a unit or lesson, let that teacher become the “face” of that instruction and other teachers the supporters of that learning.  This applies well to in-person as well as at-home learning.  Take the pressure from some teacher of daily presentations in front of the camera and replace it with chat groups for precise modeling, checking for understanding, guided practice and formative assessments.

Synchronous and asynchronous on-line teaching allows us to capture an “expert” delivery and provide it to all children.  A child who misses the beginning of the lesson can view it when ready.  A child who does not understand the initial teaching can see it again and again.  With one teacher only giving the initial instruction, a grade level or subject team assures that every on-line segment is highest quality instruction.

Constantly monitor student engagement – all of the time.  Understand that engagement for at-home learners looks different than engagement for in-school learners.  Know the differences.  Monitoring is not browbeating; it just means knowing.  Monitoring will show some children who are engaged in-person or at-home all the time and doing well.  It will show children who look to as if they are engaged all the time but not doing well.  Likewise, some children may not look engaged but will do very well in demonstrating their learning.  And, monitoring will highlight children who are not engaged when they should be.  Use the monitoring information to shape a child’s attention and attention span.  Each child can find an effective and efficient use of in-person and at-home time.

Manipulate the logistics of immediate and precise feedback.  Instead of kneeling next to a child’s desk, make a telephone call.  Most at-home learners will have a cell phone near their screen.  A private phone call treats the child with respect yet is directly to the point. 

Constant contact.  Every child every day.  Sadly, we know that some children in-school in normal times pass through a school day without a single personalized contact with a teacher.  In the Time of COVID, every child needs a personal contact – called in a zoom lesson, talked with in a zoom chat, shared e-mail, or a phone call – everyday.

If parents are able to create earning pods of supervised children, make the most of these small groups.  Regardless of the parents’ reason for forming a pod, grouped children give a teacher renewed opportunities for small group work, collaborative projects, peer editing, and socializing for children.  Done safely, pods are a great way for groups of families to provide supervised learning when individual families cannot.

The big duh!

Don’t panic even though there are many reasons for panicking.  The science of teaching, best practices, culling the curricula and teaching less well will cause children to complete a full academic year in 2020-21.

Virtual Learning Is a Misnomer

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But, learning virtually is real.

When was the last time you virtually learned something?  Really?  If you virtually learned something, by definition, you really didn’t learn it.  You simulated its learning or learned something that is hypothetically close to learning it, but because you virtually learned it, you might not have learned it at all.  Or, you got very close to learning it, but because your learning was virtual it was not fully successful – just virtually successful.  Or, your learning may have been in a virtual dimension, one that is fabricated to be like the real thing but not flesh and blood real – virtually real.  These are virtually true statements.  Really.  Not virtually.

Take Away

Words do not always mean what we think they mean.  We use a word in our everyday speech in ways that conform to how we hear the word being used.  The word is defined by its use and not necessarily by its meaning.  This is the case with “virtual.”

Our school dictionary says that virtual is an adjective meaning

  1. Being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted.
  2. Being on or simulated on a computer of computer network.
  3. Of, relating to, or using virtual memory.
  4. Of, relating to, or being a hypothetical particle whose existence is inferred from indirect evidence.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/virtual

A thesaurus tells us that the most relevant antonyms for virtual are –

  • Actual
  • Authentic
  • Real

https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/virtual

Change the word to virtually and we have an adverb that means

  1. Nearly, almost entirely
  2. For all practical purposes

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/virtually

By definition, to virtually learn is to not to actually or really learn but to come close to learning, perhaps as close as your learning needs to be.

Back to everyday speech.  To learn something virtually in our non-dictionary parlance means to learn it via a simulation, a computer or through indirect evidence.  Learning virtually, as in virtual shopping, is to shop but not be in the shop shopping.  Learning virtually is to be taught but not be in physically present as a learner when you are being taught. 

In pre-COVID times, virtual education was the domain of on-line learning for home schooled children.  Entire curricula was presented via computer-based instruction, transported paper and pencil materials, and voice and face-time communication between teachers and children.  Virtual education was outside the traditional classroom and usual teaching and learning environment.  Teaching and learning were asynchronous; taking place in different places and at different times.  Hence, it was virtual by definition.  And, it worked.  However, virtual educators may want to pay attention to the meaning of virtual and whether they use it as an adjective or an adverb.

In the Time of COVID, virtual learning takes on a new meaning.  Live streaming allows teachers and children to be synchronous in their teaching and learning.  In real time, a child sees a teacher’s face and hears a teacher speak and a teacher sees a child’s face and hears a child speak.  This is virtual in the sense that it is transmitted via technology and it is real because it is synchronous.  “As if” in the classroom together, a teacher and a class of children engage in real time teaching and learning.

New words now replace virtual education.  Distance education.  Remote education.  These two terms do not include the concept of virtual, meaning “nearly or almost”, because they can be in real time.  They retain the property of learning virtually because remote and distanced teaching and learning, even though in real time, are possible only through technology.

So, what?  Words matter.  At least to those who listen carefully.  If you mean to say that education or teaching and learning are almost the same as real education and that one who is virtually educated is almost but not completely educated, keep using the terms virtual education.  If you mean to say that teaching and learning are occurring in real time “as if” a teacher and children are in the same place and time, then describe it as learning virtually.  If you want to stay clear of the potential or virtual misunderstanding, say remote or distance education.

Really.

Fear-driven Policy in the Time of COVID

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“What is your biggest fear?”, is a powerful question to ask public policy makers in the Time of COVID.  Their responses give insight into the decision-making processes and policies that are informing how we go about our lives in this pandemic.  Fear-based decisions abound, but are they leading us properly?  Life tells us that we will not know the effects of our 2020-21 policies until time has passed.  Perhaps that is our biggest fear?  Did we choose wisely?

Pandemic policies for schools are flowing in two streams:  Fear of the health risks – our decisions will endanger the health and lives of children and school employees and family at home, and, Fear of educational damage – our decisions will endanger the intellectual, social, and emotional development of children. 

From outside the school board room, multiple other fears are afoot.  Fear of endangering the economic viability of our community and school parents.  Fear of community spread that could overrun a school.  Fear of the electorate who will not be happy with policy decisions and their effects.  Fear of public demonstration at a board meeting.  Oh, the list is long.  The biggest fear of all is the fear that time will tell everyone we made the wrong decision.

Take Away

What are we afraid of?  Are your afraid of “fear itself”, as President Roosevelt declared.  Perhaps not.

“Fear is hardwired in your brain, and for good reason.  Neuroscientists have identified distinct networks that run from the depths of the lambic system all the way to the prefrontal cortex and back.  The capacity to be afraid is part of normal brain function.  In fact, a lack of fear may be a sign of serious brain damage.”  What does that mean?  Fear is a natural emotion in humans.  Fear happens!

“Fear dictates the actions you take.  Actions by fear fall into four types – freeze, fight, flight, or fright.”  What does this mean?  These categories accurately portray how we respond to our fears.  We also have dominant or usual responses to fear.    

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smashing-the-brainblocks/201511/7-things-you-need-know-about-fear

Just as we recognize that COVID is real, it is not a hoax, we realize that fear is real and human and not an emotion of shame.  Hence, policy makers need to put their fears up front by stating “…this is what I fear will happen, or, because I am fearful that this will happen, our decision is to …”.  Then, we can understand the context and purpose of policy decisions.

What do we know?

From March through August, children attending school in-person was an abstraction in the daily COVID news.  Children learned at-home.  Frontline health care workers and their risk of infection headlined our concerns.  We followed the surge stories of the virus in assisted living centers, among meat packing workers, within professional sports teams and their summer practices, and at political rallies.  Then, attention focused on the surges following Memorial Day, July 4th gatherings, partying at bars and resorts, and Sturgis, SD.  In each of these stories a large number of people gathered, worked or partied.  Large groups of people begat large numbers of positive cases, hospitalizations and numbers of deaths.  While we fretted these events, schools, the largest collection of children in any community, were in summer recess and were not gathering people together.  But, September was coming and with planning for school openings loomed the fear that large gatherings of children and teachers will beges positive tests for COVID.  Our fear became personified.

We fear health risks to people.  We fear risking our personal health as well as the health of family and friends.  We fear risking the safe health of those who are medically fragile and elderly.  We fear risking the health of children by opening school and gathering hundreds if not thousands of people, children and adults, together in proximity.

We fear that closed schools will cause damage to the education of children.  In the best of times, we constantly read that too many children do not successfully achieve in school.  What will happen to the quality of their learning in the worst of times?  If not academic loss, then losses in social and emotional development, personal development in arts, activities and athletics, losses in college and career preparation, and losses in the potentiality of an entire generation of children.  We fear the risks of the pandemic to the future of our children.

We fear that closed schools and open schools will cause damage to families in our community.  Many parents need to work and do not have access to or can afford the cost of day care when schools are closed.  Working parents are not available Monday through Friday to assist their children with remote education.  On the other hand, if a parent stays home with children when schools are closed, a parent will lose income and may lose employment.  Parents face problems regardless of their decisions.

Quickly we get back to the other hand.  If we return children to school, we fear that children in school will become carriers of the virus and will infect parents and family members at home.  Teachers and staff may become infected and in turn infect others in their homes.

Our dilemma is this – which course of action do we choose – freeze, fight, flight, or fright?  Our decisions and policies will fit one or more of these.

Why Is This Thus?

Reality can be crass and harsh.  In a pandemic there will be illness, death, long-term health damage, educational loss, economic loss, and damage to families and the community.  And, by definition, the virus of a pandemic will be with us for several years in the future.  Regardless of our fears and with the best decisions, these will happen.

During and because of the pandemic there will be –

  • Lost school days
  • Inequity in access to virtual education/Internet
  • Lost academic achievement
  • Lost 4A opportunities – academics, activities, arts and athletics
  • Lost educational revenue
  • Falling behind on long-range goals
  • Children with COVID
  • Staff and teachers with COVID
  • Families with COVID
  • Increased unemployment
  • Businesses and families that lose income
  • Businesses that close
  • Individual and personal angst

School boards must choose how to best manage their real and potential losses.  This is not where any board wants to be, but it is where every school board is.

To do

Be responsible for good governance.  School board members are elected officials and at all times responsible for good and proper governance.  This does not always mean giving an individual constituent what that person demands.  It means giving that constituent access to the governing body, opportunity to be heard, and to receive a response to his concerns.  It means adhering to the rules of governance and the procedures for decision-making.  It means compliance with open meetings and open records statutes.  It means civil discourse.  The need for good governance is non-debatable.

Provide maximum support to achieve your primary mission.  A school board is not a state government, a county board, or a municipal or town council.  Those governmental bodies have their own missions and jurisdictions.  School boards are authorized by the state constitution for a specific purpose.  Stick to that purpose – the public education of children.  Provide a maximum of support to achieve the education of all children.  Push the envelope of allowable options for educating all children.  Provide all of the ancillary services that a public education now includes, like breakfast and lunch programs.  Make and continue to make every required and needed modification of teaching and learning to achieve an education for every child.  Be fiduciary in aligning all expenditures with your mission.   

Make the decisions and policies that assure an equitable and equal education for all children.  A pandemic may make things difficult, but it does not remove or reduce the responsibility of these essential words – equitable and equal.

Provide flexibility for individuals to choose among options.  Choice is now a standard in public education – parents expect and demand choices in how and where they will educate their children.  Expect that more parents will choose homeschooling and virtual school options during the pandemic.  Additionally, parents and children are accustomed to options and choices in schools.  Elective courses, arts, activities and athletics that can be implemented within pandemic low risk guidelines.   Maintain as many choices as possible to satisfy a parent’s primary mission – a best school year for my child.

Personalize your listening but do not personalize the response to your decisions.  Regardless of a board’s decision for in-person or at-home learning, some parents will applaud and some parents will boo.  Even the Solomon-like decision to provide parent choice – in-school or at-home – will have dissenters.  Until the pandemic no longer threatens our health, board members will face pandemic decision derision.  Please consider, when did a board decision please 100% of the public? 

The big duh!

A board’s biggest fears regarding the pandemic will color its decisions and policies.  Know your fears.  Validate or defeat your fears with facts.  Know that others may not agree with your fears, your facts, your decisions or policies.  Maintain the best of governmental practices.  Protect the education of disadvantaged children.  Then, make your decisions and let the future determine your wisdom.  This is what a board is elected to do.