By: Kayla Del Rosario
It goes without saying that this year has been difficult. So many students are struggling with online school. As a senior myself, I’ve found it difficult to pay attention in class, and I’ve talked with many of my friends who’ve told me that it’s impossible to do their homework with all of the distractions around their house. But another part of school that students are losing is the opportunity to have frank conversations with their teachers and connect with them outside of the essay that they’re supposed to write, or the worksheet that is due tomorrow. So I decided to ask a few teachers what their feelings were about distance learning and the problems they’re encountering.
We’ve all been forced into distance learning because of the pandemic, and we left school so suddenly last year that no one had any time to make plans for how students with limited access to technology could learn from their homes. Doug Benenson, an Earth Science teacher, has run into many of these problems during his teaching this year. Many of his students “have technology issues. They’re either having difficulty with Wi-Fi or they don’t have a camera that works. Many of them have to use the school Chromebooks.” Benenson has realized that although Chromebooks help students without personal computers access their Zoom classes, “Zoom can’t do many of the things on Chromebook that it can do on a regular computer . . . the Chromebooks don’t have the memory, the facility to do the things that we want them to do. And they’re at a disadvantage with that.”
On top of that, the district is struggling to provide enough hotspots to students with poor Internet connections. Students that don’t already have technology at their disposal aren’t able to participate in school in the same way that students with good Wi-Fi networks and laptops are, even with additional school resources. When school is in-person, everyone uses the same computers and the same networks, but when school takes place in a student’s home, they can only do as much as their resources let them. And, during this year’s fire season and power shutoffs, many students didn’t have Internet access for a long period of time. Jim LaFrance, a math teacher, says that one of the “most difficult” things during distance learning for his students is power outages. During the October power outages this year, he saw that “kids that lost power, even if they had generators going, Xfinity and other internet companies were having problems delivering Internet to households, so even with power, they weren’t able to get Internet.” Without access to Google Classroom, students weren’t able to see their assignments or attend Zoom meetings, even if they had Internet access and a working computer before the outages.
As a teacher, LaFrance is grappling with the differences between in-person school and distance learning. According to him, distance learning “takes everything we do in the classroom, and kind of throws a lot of it out the window. I’m finding that students aren’t super comfortable talking in Zoom in a large group format. I’m finding that students are uncomfortable talking in breakout rooms . . . Both of my children are learning this way, and they both report being in breakout rooms where no one’s talking.” Students also aren’t able to learn the same amount of curriculum as they would in person. LaFrance has found that he isn’t able to spend as much time with students describing how math applies to the real world, and has to spend most of his classes just providing students with the basic information of the lesson. He says, “I’m really trying to spend the most time with what the most important stuff is that’s also kind of foundational . . . I have to kind of spend my time every class period trying to maximize my time to get [my students] as ready as [they] can to being able to open up the book and do [their] homework assignment.” But LaFrance says that he’s saddened by distance learning because he feels like his students are “losing some of the fun stuff”. Normally in his classroom, he would teach his students in four or five different ways, by having them do problems on the whiteboard in front of class, show them a video, or play a Kahoot. Distance learning largely makes that impossible.
Some students are also finding it easier to disengage from school during distance learning, and they aren’t learning in the same way that they would if they were at school in person. Another math teacher, Alex Conner, says, “One thing that I’ve noticed a lot is that a lot of students have a hard time being self-motivators. It’s way easier to zone out . . . It’s easier to turn your camera off and not pay attention . . . It’s most difficult for kids to just do what they’re supposed to be doing.” He’s worried that “too many students are going to get left behind. . . my worry is that too many kids either stopped trying--whether it’s motivation or too many [other complications]--and they just give up.” Without a teacher next to them in a classroom, students have a hard time focusing on the lesson. There’s a lot more pressure on them to take charge of their own learning and police themselves because they no longer have a teacher to do it for them. As Conner put it, “There’s a lot more responsibility on students to take care of their own learning--more that they’ve ever had, really, in high school.”
LaFrance believes that the problem is that students have suddenly been thrust into an environment where it is their job to make sure that they’re learning and understanding the material, similar to what students experience in college. He said that distance learning “really is demanding [students] be college kids right now, and some students aren’t ready for that level of maturity.” There’s many students who do well in high school but “aren’t successful in college. And it’s not because they’re not smart enough. It’s because sometimes they don’t have the discipline.” Distance learning puts the burden on students to take charge of their own learning. If they’re struggling with a concept, a teacher won’t be able to recognize that as easily as they would if we attended school in person. Instead, students have to take it upon themselves to go to their teachers’ office hours, or reach out to their teachers through email or text to ask for help.
On top of all the challenges of distance learning itself, annual wildfires and a global health crisis definitely put a strain on students’ mental health. LaFrance recognizes that “after four years of smoke and fires, some anxiety comes up” whenever we have fires or wildfire smoke around us. “There’s a certain part of me that sometimes feels like school isn’t very important when there’s big issues going on in the world around us, and fires are one of those, where it’s hard for me to focus on teaching calculus when I know some of you have anxiety and stress of maybe you did lose your house, maybe your family members lost their house and [that more wildfires bring] it back up for you.” Sometimes, to LaFrance, school “feels insignificant in that moment, and so it’s sometimes hard for some of us to focus on that when some of our basic needs aren’t being met.” Jennifer Fox, a Spanish teacher, also has thought a lot about how difficult it is for students during the wildfire season and during the pandemic. She said, “During these crazy times, we all say that we need to prioritize self-care, and our health and well-being, and our families, and then we get put into these tricky situations. And the truth is, it’s difficult to prioritize one thing over the other when it all feels important . . . I think it puts everyone in a very stressful place.”
Many students are finding it difficult to focus on school because of the unprecedented events that are happening around them. Some of them have evacuated their homes because of wildfires, and some are concerned about or directly affected by the pandemic. It’s a difficult spot to be in, and teachers are simply trying to be as understanding as possible. Teachers have also been affected. During the fires in both 2017 and 2019, Benenson had to evacuate his home, and he stayed in his classroom, which he calls his “home away from home”, for a few days during the evacuation orders. Conner has learned to prepare his lesson plans in advance during the fire season, because he lives in an area that suffers from frequent blackouts, and if he loses power and hasn’t sent his lesson out to his students, then they aren’t able to learn anything from him during the power shutoffs. And LaFrance has also experienced the uncertainty that many Sonoma County residents faced in 2017 when they evacuated from their homes.
Distance learning has been particularly difficult for Conner because he has children, and he’s having to be a father and a teacher at the same time. Sometimes, his daughter might have a problem with Zoom or with her Internet connection during a class, but he’s in the middle of teaching. When that happens, he said, “I have to just tell her, ‘I’ll be there when I can, just do what you can!’ And it breaks my heart, because I know she’s getting upset because she can’t do what she’s supposed to do.” For him, his experience with distance learning right now is the same as his experience with distance learning last spring, when, as he said, “I either felt like I was being a good teacher or I was being a good parent, but I never felt like I could be doing both.” Fox has dealt with a similar situation with her own children. Her children have also had trouble logging onto their Zoom classes and dealing with Internet connection issues. She says that it has been “extremely challenging. Extremely difficult. I see things from both ends, so it gives me a very useful perspective.” She’s able to wear her “mom hat” with some of her students, and apply her experiences as a mom to be understanding of what her students are going through, and she can also wear her “teacher hat” and remind her children what their teachers expect of them. Although she believes that having these two different points of view puts her in a unique position, it’s often difficult for her to be both a mom and a teacher.
As both a father and a teacher, Conner also has a unique perspective of his own on the benefits of distance learning versus in-person school. “As a teacher and a dad, I’m torn on what I think we should be doing. From a teacher perspective, when I’m just thinking about the students, I’m like, ‘Man, it would just be great if we could be back teaching,’ but obviously, I don’t feel it’s safe to do that. I have days where I’m like, ‘I don’t even care how safe it is. We should be back in the classroom.’ For some kids, it’s just not working, And then I have other days where a lesson goes great and it’s like, ‘Oh, this is going to go fine. We’re doing good. It’s definitely not safe to be back. We’re doing exactly what we should be doing!’ In the end, going back comes down to safety, in my opinion. And until it’s safe to go back, we just can’t. But at the same time, distance learning is not ideal by any means.”
But one of the biggest things that teachers feel students are missing out on with distance learning is the social interaction that comes with school. As LaFrance put it, “School is not just about the academics, and I feel like public school in America is so much about introducing you to the wider world out there . . . and that makes me sad that [students] are missing out on that stuff.” He believes that one of the most important parts of school is the small moments of feeling like an adult, and feels as though the pandemic is robbing students of those moments. For example, “it makes you feel like an adult when you can get in your car and drive somewhere with your friends, and no one’s monitoring you, no one picked you up, and those are little moments that you’ll get back. They’ll happen again. But they’re part of those little baby adult moments that start to make you into a more functional adult.” But because of the pandemic, students aren’t able to have those experiences like they normally would. LaFrance believes that the pandemic is “socially isolating for students. Teenagers really need to break free from their parents and this is the time that a lot of people are doing that, and [students are] stuck at home.” He remembers that his sophomore year in particular was an important transitional time for him, and he’s incredibly sad that current high school students can’t experience that. He thinks that “it’s tough” that high school students today aren’t able to experience that same growth that they normally would, and said, “It makes me upset even just having this conversation."
Fox also believes that a tradeoff of distance learning “is that we aren’t going to be able to teach a lot of general skills . . . that are super valuable and perhaps more valuable than content ever is. And those are things like resilience, and time management, and organization, self-advocacy--for students to know that if you’re struggling, you need to ask for help and you need to contact your teacher and be communicative about those needs.” If students are learning through a computer and an Internet connection, they aren’t able to have the same social interactions that they would otherwise have with in-person learning, and they will miss out on the life skills that they would have learned inside and outside of the classroom.
Both Benenson and Fox also miss the personal connections that they normally form with their students. Benenson said, “The biggest problems I’ve run into is connecting with [my students] on a one-on-one level, personally. It’s just almost impossible to do that. And I’m really one of those teachers that really becomes close with my students.” Similarly, Fox said, “We didn’t sign up to be online teachers . . . we like working with kids, in person. I have been through a bit of an identity crisis as a teacher because I am so all over the classroom, and dynamic, and I never sit down when I teach. And now I am sitting down all day long in front of a screen, and I don’t get the energy back from the kids in the same way. That’s honestly probably been the most difficult challenge for me to overcome.”
With the pandemic and fire season, LaFrance recognizes that “the challenges are real. . . this is definitely a trying time, and this is the most trying time in my life . . . And I think that you as students are going to look back at this for decades. And I think it’s going to continue to hit you as to what you lived with.” But despite the challenges of this year, Fox believes that it’s not okay for people to give up on this year, because she can already see how much progress her students have made. “If we all have some resilience and try to make the best of it, there are things to be gained. We are working more closely together as colleagues than ever before to help each other, we share things and we’re growing our knowledge about technology tools that will serve us in the classroom whenever we’re back. For teachers, for students, I think that there’s plenty to be gained this year, if everyone’s just willing to give it a shot.”
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