I've been thinking a lot about synchronous/asynchronous, and I've realized that most (obviously frustrated because a pandemic! of course!) parents asking for synchronous instruction were last in schools, say, 20 years ago, when school was mostly park and bark. /1

I don't think they realize that education is now a rich, inquiry-based, feedback loop that works when teachers give a few minutes of instructions and then support students as they figure the answers out for themselves. It's a type of teaching that requires a lot of expertise /2

And subject knowledge, and is not a teaching style that is easy to replicate from home when students don't have their peers to bounce ideas off of as they move through the inquiry. This is a legit knowledge/skill gap between teachers and parents /3

that I don't know how to begin solving. But I do know that synchronous instruction of the task isn't it. Years ago we were pushed towards flipped classrooms, where the students taught the lessons to themselves and then were supported by teachers moving through the task /4

I think that real-time responding to email questions and phone calls clarifying tasks and offering feedback is more valuable than me doing the ten minute lecture live. I am hoping that we can help manage this disconnect between what some parents think classrooms look like and /5

what classrooms actually look like. Because I lecture for maybe 15 minutes a week. And the rest of the time, I support inquiry and give feedback, to each student or group of students, one at a time. And I think that's how many teachers function. So maybe it becomes less /6

about enforcing synchronous vs. asynchronous learning, and more about teachers reaching out to parents and vice versa to figure out where the disconnect is? Because synchronous lessons will NOT help me support my students through inquiry. 7/7