Adjusting our expectations for students learning online
We’re all doing the best we can with what we’ve got. (Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians)
When a student is working online, remotely, we don’t measure their progress the same way we would in the classroom.
Learning to do online school (or remote work) requires a person to learn to stick to one tab at a time, wean oneself off of continuous notifications, and demonstrate evidence of actual work being done. The person has to practice reaching out for help and feedback instead of waiting passively.
Suddenly, it’s not about “butt in seat” time and simply showing up — it’s about participating in a meaningful way, with results to show for it. Making this shift is a process, and parents and teachers need to pay attention to a student’s progress in learning these self-management skills, not just learning the content of assignments.
Online school is, ideally, streamlined to the essentials, meaning that most of the student’s time is spent working as opposed to listening, waiting, and hiding. Therefore, for the first time, they may be facing schoolwork head-on instead of avoiding it. They might have to admit for the first time that they don’t know how to do something. They have to get used to sticking with an assignment until it’s done, rather than simply accepting a zero and escaping.
Because of this streamlining, students in online should only have to spend two to four hours per day in focused work mode, depending on how quickly they work. However, because students are conditioned to a six- or seven-hour school day, they unconsciously draw out their work to take allllllll dayyyyyy lonnnnnnng. This gets frustrating and demoralizing for everyone involved.
In our current circumstances, the challenges are even more pronounced. In the midst of a global pandemic that is still ramping up, it is hard to even think of school as important. Many families are focused on sheer survival.
I believe that school is important if it’s an option, though not because of the specific content kids are learning. For kids who have the necessities of life (including WiFi), school provides an opportunity to persist in the face of a challenge (perhaps the way kids who don’t have the necessities of life must do). This is a skill that has never been more necessary.
That doesn’t mean that teachers need to create challenges for students. There are hardships aplenty already. We don’t need to set a high bar. Instead, teachers need to determine a student’s current level of functioning and build from there.
Traditionally, schools aren’t set up to adapt to the level of a student’s current capability, but it’s especially essential right now. One student who had been struggling with depression and failing to do any work was able to overcome her difficulty and design a beautiful card for a beloved community member. She was engaged in this work for over an hour. For this student, that represents a huge win to be celebrated. Instead of pushing her (“Great, now you can do math”), we can figure out what it was about this assignment that worked for her and give her something similar.
This is the level of adaptation and collaboration that I espouse even when we’re not in crisis mode as a society. Generally, when someone is struggling, they are in crisis. Students arrive at school from all kinds of situations, and online school means that teachers need to work harder to establish a personal connection that helps them to feel invested in the process.
We need to be patient as students adjust to a new mode of learning. We need to look for little successes and treat our students as individuals. If we want them to care about school, then we have to care about them.