The last few years have brough a lot of changes to the classroom, many of which are having lasting effects.
Massive amounts of schools and classes moved online in what many labelled "triage." Yet years later many schools have not moved past this triage stage. Teaching online is very different from teaching face to face. Perhaps the similest difference is in the prep. In face to face classes, many teachers/professors will rough out what they want to discuss or cover and then the bulk of the class is determined by the students, their interests, their discussions. Online classes are generally planned out, built, posted, as a whole. So the workload shifts to before the class starts.
Online teaching also requires different approaches to direct instruction, engagement, and feedback. In my opinion, online teaching is also, in many ways, knowing how to counter the bad pedagogy baked into learning management systems like an overreliance on due dates, arbitrary due dates, depending on activity streams and calendar reminders rather than working through a course. Arbitrary requirements for discussion boards. An overreliance on rubrics and grades rather than feedback and growth.
But several years into the pandemic, many online classes have compounded the issues of the initial triage. PDFs are just dumped in the course. Many rpofessors still are not comfortable posting assignments, readings, lessons, in a timely manner. Instructions are confusing.
Face to face classes have their own sets of issues. While Covid made some professors realize the ableism in their attendance polcicies, there are issues too with rarely attending class, and the sweet spot of stressing the importance of attending class with the grace of understanding things happen where students need to miss class is still illusive to many.
Likewise, I know many face to face teachers are also struggling with the balance between accessibility, making lessons, assignments, resources, available online, and the reality that students may not see the reason to come to class if everything is online.
All of this needs to be placed in the larger context of the loss of understanding of what the role of education is in 2023. Is education simply a set of content and skills to learn? Boxes to check? Have all classes become modern day correspondence classes where students work at their own pace, in their own place, where the teacher is superfluous after they create and post the content? Does education always have to be tied to career skills or jobs? Or is there still any place for education to be exposure to art, literature, learn new things, time to think about new things students have never considered? How are these two educations gendered? Classed? Who gets to determine who gets what education?
And where are our students in all this?
Practically, the first year students in college in fall 2023 have spent their almost their entire high school experience under Covid conditions. This often means that their experience varies wildly depending on where they came from- were they in big cities with larger outbreaks and higher Covid deaths and sickness? Did their schools have a lot of instability as teachers were out, large numbers of classes were out, and more and more time was spent combining several classes under a teacher who may or may not be educated and trained in the class they're supervising?
How much teaching and learning is going on when there is still a bus driver shortage, there are still students who ride buses who are missing the first part of their day?
How many students had access to computers and internet? How many teachers were trained in teaching online? How did everyone- teachers, students, staff, families, experience the beginning and ongoing aspects of the pandemic? What resources did they have for loss? Grief? Disability? How have families, students, faculty and staff been affected by massive systems clearly indicating that they did not care about their individual needs, wants, hurts? What is the effect on students who have seen jobs, money, the economy, prioritized over THEM?
Then there's the horrifying reality that so many have chosen misinformation over reality and that few if any public institutions are doing anything about it.
- Covid is airborne
- Many schools, workplaces, made no changes to systems to improve air quality or filtration
- Vaccines work
- But vaccines only lower your chances of being hospitalized or dying
- They do NOT prevent you from getting, or spreading, Covid
- You have to have access to vaccines for them to work
- Easy access is key
- People need access to tests, rapid ones at home, PCR tests at larger
- People need access to data to make decisions
- People need access to early treatments
- People need access to accurate information about best practices for recovery
- How most people think of social distancing does not reflect the reality that Covid is airborne
- Yes, avoiding indoor, crowded places, helps you mitigate risk
- But standing 6' away from someone does nothing
- Masks lower the amount of virus in the air, so makes places safer
- They keep you safer by blocking the majority of particles you breathe in
- They keep other people safer from you in case you have the virus
So these are the students in your classroom. They often have unresolved mental health issues, most commonly anxiety, depression, and suicide. Many lost someone to the pandemic. The last few years computers, phones, became students' only connection to the outside world so now these devices act as woobies, safety objects, for them. This also means that socializing, introducing self, talking in groups, are skills that students don't have, or have not used in a while. What about the students who have learning disabilities? What support did they have the last few years? What support are they getting now in college? What serves our students best?
Perhaps the largest part of the challenge for educators, whether you're K-12 or higher education, is that so many of these factors are beyond our control. We cannot do anything about students' home environment, whether that's with their families or dorm rooms. We cannot do anything about access to mental and physical health resources. We cannot do anything about the growing hate in the outside world.
As of writing, most research seems to say that Long Covid affects one in five people who have had Covid and 25% of people with Long Covid have their lives significantly impacted. We know that every time someone gets Covid their chances of getting Long Covid goes up. We know that every time you get Covid it damages your systems, and we just don't have any idea how bad, or what the long terms effects are.
Science is still catching up with the effects of Long Covid. We know it effects the entire body. We know that people who were athletes, perfectly healthy, recovered, are still dropping dead of heart attacks and strokes.
Yet schools are not requiring masks, or testing, or quarantines. Educators may have noticed that a lot of their students are sick, but it's all become anecdotal in the absence of any data or tracking.
Anecdotally, educators say across disciplines, states, grades, that they are seeing similar issues in their students. One study says that that overall these effects last 125 days. Most school years are 180 days for reference, and we don't yet know what continued exposure does.
- A hard time understanding directions, often needing them repeated and reinforced (written and oral)
- A hard time comprehending what they're reading
- Inability to focus, pay attention
- Issues in executive function
- Inability to process information, or slower processing speeds
- Problems prioritizing information
- Absenteeism is still high, so there are weeks of class missed, not just days
- Sleep disturbance, incomnis
- Delirium
- Loss of memory
- Mood changes
- Irritability
- Depression
- Exhaustion, chronic fatiruq
There's a lot of use of the term "learning loss" and very little recognition that it's not just due to a loss of "seat time" in school, it has to do with cognitive impairment due to repeated exposure to Covid. We simply do not know what the long term effects are on growing brains. The above study does argue that stress and anxiety make the above symptoms worse. As does asthma, allergies.
It's also important to note that these are the "mild" aftereffects of Covid, and are impacting educators too, our ability to teach, plan, be in class.
If we make our whole class accessible, if we make our content accessible, ourselves as resources accessible, then everyone benefits. What does this look like in the larger context of labor issues? Unpaid emotional labor? How all of this is gendered and racial?
There is no one good answer and each eduator, each school, should be working together to determine what works best for their areas, their environments. Generally, it seems as though whatever the answer is, it is a combination of factors.
- School administration should communicate the most up to date information
- There should be access to information, testing, treatment for all
- Schools need to lessen the work load on faculty and staff
- Educators need to be educated on what accessibility looks like and what accommodations can address all of the above issues
- Stop focusing on seat time, compliance, "loss"
- Model accessibility and accommodations
- Reconceive what you think learning looks like
- There is content students need to memorize, content for fields, jobs, classes, that you're expected to know
- There is content you need to know where to find, look up
- There are skills and content you need to be able to apply
- Reconceive what you think the demonstration of learning looks like
- Written documents are not the best, only assessment
- Students may be better at orally describing things, drawing items, or producing products or models
- Students may do better with annotating, responding to models, than creating their own
- Cut the amount of content you're covering
- Classes need to be built with the understanding that students will miss massive amounts of class- weeks at a time, and on either side of these absences, may not be fully comprehending
- Have explicit lessons about how to read, interact with, use, the content you're covering
- Provide online resources, materials, that replicate the information in class for reinforcement, but also so students can reference outside of class, use as reminders
- Provide templates for work, writing, projects, as well as how to read and respond to content
- Build patterns into your class- for doing work, responding, completing work, so students can learn the pattern then apply it
- Change how you present concepts. Introduce it, then revisit it, then ask students what they remember, then provide reinforcement through audio, video, written
- Use concepts and work as building blocks. Start with foundational items, them revisit, review, build on these
- Focus on skills, learning them, applying them (like critical thinking) over content
