Tag Archives: at-home learning

What Did We Learn? Lesson #7: At-Home Learning Workshops

Posted on by
Reply

As the classroom has become an instructional studio, the place where each child does her schoolwork remotely has become an at-home learning workshop.  This is not Grampa’s workshop with a thick-topped wooden workbench and wall of hanging hand tools.  A school child’s workshop is a table top where a pad of paper and pencil, or laptop, chromebook or tablet lay.  Some days, it is a child’s lap as she sits on the sofa or is propped on her bed.  Every at-home learner has a learning workshop place.  This is a COVID-effect.  It is a reality that we need to understand, support, enhance, and appreciate.

New concept:  Every remote learner has an at-home place or places for doing schoolwork and these places are her learning workshop.  Think about a writer’s workshop that is a place for thinking, writing, editing, and rewriting.  A writer’s workshop is about the writing process not the place.  A learning workshop is the place where an at-home learner engages in the processes of learning.

Remote education put an end to classroom fussiness about how a student sits at a desk during class time.  A teacher who once harped “Now, sit up straight”, no longer has a concern for posture.  An at-home learner will not hear “Both feet on the floor, please”.  And, about those neatnik comments.  A teacher who frowned at a student’s desk that was a mess and dissed a child saying, “No wonder you can’t find your assignment!”, need not be concerned.  A child’s at-home desk or schoolwork area is that child’s domain.  And, no one need say, “No hats in this classroom, please”.  At-home children set their own standards for how and where they work and how they sit and what they wear while doing schoolwork.  “Clothing, please, when on camera” is all we ask.

“Oh, and be kind to and respectful of each other”.  Cannot forget this in our on-line environment.

This is great!  It says for a first time that all we are interested in during class time today is what a child thinks, says, learns, can show in writing or media, and how she feels about her learning.  The absence of school-centered demands allows us to shift most appropriately to learning demands. 

“Show me or talk to me about your work and let me see your smile.”  And, I will show you my smile as we talk about your learning.

This is the essence of a remote education connection called “class”.  This statement tells us that we are approaching a real performance-based education.  All the other insignificant yet enforced regimens of classroom behavior are suspended for at-home learners. 

In-school teaching can enhance a child’s at-home workshop.  As we provide children with digital devices and Internet hook-ups, we cannot forget all the other provisions a learner needs no matter her location.  She still needs books and workbooks in print form, pencils and pens and paper, and art and mechanical supplies that would not be available in kitchen drawers in most homes.  A paint brush for home walls and halls will not do for a child’s watercolor painting.  Advanced math learners need their upper-end calculators.  Chemistry and other science students need “safe” materials for home-based lab work.  We will not be sending band saws, drill presses, and lathes home for tech learners, however.  As we push at-home learners further and further into a full school curriculum, we must supply at-home learners with required materials for their at-home workshops.

High quality teaching and learning continue throughout the pandemic.  This is what we are called to do.  Our new understanding of a child’s at-home learning workshop helps us to foresee and prepare all children to be successful learners in the Time of COVID.

In the Time of COVID, If We Value an Equitable and Equal Education for All Children, No Option is No Option

Posted on by
Reply

Almost every question regarding how schools should operate in the Time of COVID leads to this problem – no matter how well intended and accommodating, plans for re-opening schools do not allow all children to receive an equitable and equal education.  A second outcome of almost every plan is that a segment of teachers, staff, children, parents and community are unhappy with its outcomes.  Our educational systems have worked hard to create accommodating options in every area where the education of children is not equitable and equal.  And, educators have worked to create parent, family and community partnerships in school programming and services to assure equity and equality.  COVID is leaving educators without options to provide the kind of options that make education equitable and equal for children and amiable with parents.  No options is not an option.

I posit this as a given. There is a real difference between in-school and at-home learning for students, regardless of how diligent schools are in providing remote instruction.  At-home just is not the same as being in-school and this this builds conditions of inequity and inequality.

The first divisor of COVID is the reality of health conditions.  Children and their families and teachers and their families who have health conditions that are imperiled by COVID have no option.  Their baseline consideration is “I cannot participate in any schooling that presents my exposure to any person who is infected or contagious or has been exposed to such.”  Because the infected and contagious may be present in any social situation, this immediately eliminates in-person teaching and learning for these students and teachers.  Their parameter must be safety first.  Students and teachers with health conditions have no options for in-school attendance.

The second divisor is perception – perceived danger or perceived safety.  Whether a person perceives danger or perceives safety, their perception is right.  Prevalent COVID data yields this “glass half full or glass half empty” proposition.  Our county is rated by our Department of Health Services as being “high in COVID activity” – community spread.  Our county has a suffered few COVID-related deaths and a low number of hospitalizations.  The “high” rating of community spread builds the perception of present danger.  The “low” number of deaths builds the perception of relative safety.  No argument can convince either perceiver that their perception is erroneous.  Perception is reality and the reality is that some children and teachers believe they should be in-school and some children and teachers believe they must be at-home.  Students and teachers who perceive the dangers of in-school attendance are separated into at-home students and teachers. No options to be in-person.

The third and fourth divisors are real time factors.  Some schools have the physical capacity for all children and teachers to be socially distanced in-school.  A combination of lower enrollment and available in-school classrooms spaces allow for a socially distanced instruction of all children.  At the same time, some schools do not have this capacity.  At best, these schools can offer a combination of either in-school and at-home instructional days for all children or in-school all week instruction for some children and at-home all week instruction for other children.    Social distancing requirements are dividing children into full-time or part-time in-school and/or at-home students.

Internet access is the fourth and highly significant real time divisor. Synchronous  screen time between teachers and students has become a strong tool for delivering in-school teaching to at-home students.  Some homes have high speed connectivity and some have little to no connectivity at all.  And, of those homes with connectivity, some Internet is not strong enough to support streaming and Zooming.  Additionally, the amount of school time required for at-home learning can be very expensive given a family’s Internet plan.  Internet connectivity has divided students at home in the “haves” and “have nots”.  Access to the Internet is a very real creator of inequality and inequity.

A fifth divisor is the presence or lack of parental supervision and support for at-home learning.  This is a true have and have not division.  The economics of some homes require that adults work full time.  Their need is inarguable.  Children in these homes do not have adult supervision and daily support of their at-home learning.  The economics of other homes allows an adult to be at home.  Children in these homes have adult supervision and support.  However, not all adults are suited for supervising and supporting at-home education.  The lack of an adult at home or an adult who is suited for at-home education leaves at-home students without needed options for their learning supervision and support.

The final divisor lies in the community. Local economies work best in the school year when children are in school and adults are available for work. When COVID forced schools to shift to at-home student learning last fall, local economies suffered. Reopening the economy pushes schools to provide in-school teaching and in-school learning. When educational leaders attend to health data’s indicating the need for at-home student learning, an immediate adversarial relationship erupts between economic and educational interests with small to no options for compromise.

To reclaim needed options for educators, students and parents, we need:

  • Community commitment to following medical guidance that drives the local infection rate to one (1) case per one hundred thousand citizens (100,000) and hold that rate over time.  In our count of less than 100,000 in population, the rate is no more than one (1) new, positive COVID test per day. This requires enforced masking and social distancing mandates.
  • Suspension of school until the above local infection rate is achieved.  The 180 days of school year for all schools, teachers and students will slide back in the chronological calendar until this rate is achieved.  Education will be achieved, just not now and not with the current examples of inequity and inequality.
  • Governmental financing of ubiquitous high speed Internet for every community regardless of population density and commercial subscription. Every aspect of life in a community needs this.
  • State and local financing to employ enough essential school employees to achieve social distancing in all school operations – classroom, transportation, food service. If essential personnel are not available, schools cannot provide in-school teaching and learning.
  • State and local financing to ensure that all areas of a school can be sanitized quickly and effectively is machine and not hand labor. Cleaning builds both the reality and perception of safe school environments.
  • PPP coverage for an adult to be an at-home supervisor and learning supporter for 4K through grade 6 age children.

It is absurd that a nation of such resources should not ensure an equitable and equal education for all children, even in the Time of COVID.  Or, to restate this, it is absurd that a nation of such resources is willing to squander the educated future of a generation of children.