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Normally I’d let stuff like this go, but there’s a syllogistic fallacy that’s driving me bananas.
Bad teachers might be bad in all contexts.
But someone who flounders in Zoom is not necessarily a bad teacher. https://twitter.com/chrisemdin/status/1250234410521198593
Bad teachers might be bad in all contexts.
But someone who flounders in Zoom is not necessarily a bad teacher. https://twitter.com/chrisemdin/status/1250234410521198593
I work with families in public and private schools in MD, DC, and VA. I’ve peeked into a few online school platforms and heard a lot about students’ distance learning this past month.
My clients spent days just trying to make logging in a smooth experience. Children don’t understand how distance from the WiFi router affects connection quality. They had to learn to mind their battery levels and how to mute/unmute themselves. Hosting servers crashed.
Those who logged on successfully were crushed with boredom waiting for everyone else to get stable connections. Then Zoom-bombing and other tech management issues started.
Amazing classroom managers couldn’t always foresee these new types of problems in new environments to head them off. That’s not because they’re doing a poor job; it’s due to being inexperienced and equipped with imperfect tools.
Teachers’ planning time is now divided between caring for their own families, tracking down students who need help/supplies, troubleshooting tech, rewriting old lessons for online, rewriting curriculum for extraordinary times/shortened teaching yr, & learning new tech.
I think it’s unlikely that people in any professional field do their jobs just as well with less time available for key tasks. Divided attention, grief, and existential concerns are not performance enhancing either.
That doesn’t mean teachers are always bad at their jobs.
That doesn’t mean teachers are always bad at their jobs.
The kids are frustrated with the new tools. Most of the younger ones don’t type well. Nor can they write well using mouse-controlled annotation tools. Yet, not all can print and scan materials at home. Everything we used to write in classrooms just got S-L-O-W.
Students also see less from their screens than they could in face-to-face instruction. In the before times, teachers could speak and write (or project) instructions on the board while students also looked at several documents and/or manipulatives on their desks.
It’s really hard to cram all that info. into a laptop screen at once, particularly with the video window open.
Materials organization is also frustrating. I’ve been in so many great classrooms with color-coded folders and bins of resources for students. In even the most organized Google Classroom settings, it’s not as easy for students to find this stuff, particularly for LD kids.
Classroom management is bonkers. The students can navigate away from lessons in a second. The best strategy is to keep them all constantly busy with meaningful work —no easy task with 25-40 students who all work at different paces.
An instructor might hear out-of-place key clicks, messaging alerts, or game noises. S/he might see flickering video lights on a student’s face. Yet, it’s hard to address in real time, and harder still to think of fair or meaningful deterrence for off-task behavior.
Meanwhile, teachers have lost many accommodations for students with learning differences. For example, there’s no online way to minimize environmental distractions for the ADHD kid or seat him/her close to the teacher.
One of the most valuable tools for seeing that a child was stuck was noticing a blank page or computer screen. A teacher could then “drive by” and help a student initiate or sustain work. It’s much harder to surveil dozens of screens remotely.
While I have been focusing on some difficulties, I will say that I know many teachers doing great work in spite of the challenges. I also see creative ideas for online teaching showing up online all the time.
And, sure, there are bad teachers in every context.
But, no, someone struggling with a new tool set under stressful life circumstances while dividing their attention among new tasks isn’t necessarily bad at his or her job, especially if that person just suddenly lost many of their tools for doing that job well.
Maybe I’m silly for letting the virality of a throw-away thought get under my skin, particularly as short tweets don’t elucidate complex ideas well.
I just hope that educators can do more to support each other than criticize. Just like our students, adults find it easier to be successful than to fail, but sometimes they need help achieving that success.
