What Is Quarantined Education Teaching Us? Part 1

After two of my students emailed me to say that they were being more productive during their time of e-learning, I became curious.  These were not the highest performing students in class, and their comments came unsolicited.  One even admitted that he tended to distract other people and that other people distracted him at school, hence the greater productivity at home.  My curiosity led me to ask my AP students during one of our Zoom sessions, and they had a variety of thoughts on what was working well, what was not, and why.  It was time, I decided, to dig a little deeper.

For one week my students had access to a survey in which they responded to a range of questions about e-learning and in-person instruction.  Then came the fun part of thinking through their responses, both on my own and with colleagues.  What follows are the questions I asked and some initial thoughts and conclusions.  There will undoubtedly be more as I continue to discuss this with other educators.

Survey Questions

1.  Which grade are you currently in?

2.  Which class is working best for you during e-learning days?

• Math

• English

• World Language

• Humanities

• Science

• Performing Arts

• Art

• Other (please specify)

3.  What is working well in this particular class?

4.  Which class is working least well during e-learning?

• Math

• English

• World Language

• Humanities

• Science

• Performing Arts

• Art

• Other (please specify)

5.  What is not working well in this class?

6.  If there is a class that is working better for you as an e-learning class than an in-person class, which class is that and why?

7.  If there is a class that works better for you as an in-person class than an e-learning class, which class is that and why?

8.  Do you find yourself more or less productive during e-learning than in traditional, in-person learning?  Why do you think that is?

9.  Please share any other comments about e-learning that you think would be helpful to teachers and administrators.

Although I had been prompted to study the e-learning experiences of my students by two emails that spoke of greater productivity at home, their experience was not indicative of the whole.  Of those who felt strongly one way or the other, 73% said they were less productive at home, whereas 35% said they were more productive.

We must be careful about attempting to draw too firm a conclusion about anything from an unscientific survey such as this, but its results can direct us to further questions and reasonable speculation by those with long experience and a background of deep study in education.  One such person is my wife, Melissa Perkins, who holds both bachelor's and master's degrees in education and has spent thirty years as a teacher and administrator in K-12 public and private schools.  She observed that those who felt less productive during e-learning at home had not been sufficiently prepared for that level of independent learning.  This, she suggested, stemmed from an increasingly scripted and routinized learning experience in our schools, and I agreed.

And why should that not be the case?  With the increased emphasis on testing in all forms and for all reasons, testing that includes A.P. tests, I.B. tests, end-of-course assessments, state-mandated exams, and more, and with the close linking of student performance on exams with teacher pay, it is unlikely and unreasonable to expect that adults will entrust their livelihood and that of their families to the vagaries of independent learning.  The outline and the study packet become unquestioned necessities.  Many colleagues and I have remarked on the anxiety-filled question we receive more and more at the end of a semester, "When will we get our study guide?"

We have an unprecedented opportunity to study the nature of education and how and why we do it.  We also have a chance to explore new ways of leading students on that shared journey of discovery.  Already ideas are beginning to surface, and I will explore some of those in the next part of this series.

Love In The Time of Pandemic

One of my own high school teachers once said, "It is our responsibility as educators to provide a sound education based on ethical principles.  Innate within every human being is first the desire to be noticed and to be loved, then comes the need to be taught to learn how to learn.  It is the role of the teacher to notice and yes, to love the student so much that he is ready to learn, and in turn develop all of his potential."  I have always been aware of the necessary, as in logically prerequisite, quality of love for true education to take place, but perhaps never so keenly as when I recently filmed my empty classroom.

As I say in the video, I could see the faces of my students, remembering where each one sat, and I missed them.  I missed them because of their jokes and their laughter each day.  I missed them because of the deep insights and questions they brought to our studies.  I missed them, in short, because I love them.

In Latin I we explore what can be learned about a culture by looking at its language.  Latin has many synonyms for the verb "to kill," which was perhaps appropriate for a people who conquered much of the known world.  English contains many, often colorful, ways to say that someone is inebriated, but when it comes to love, we are lexically impoverished.  I use the same, one-syllable, four-letter word to describe how I feel about God, my wife and children, a classic rock album, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts when they have just come off the line.  No word should be forced to do that much work.  Greek is a help to us here with its multiple words that can be translated "love," and three of them capture the love of this teacher for his students.

First, there is storge, which is the love between parents and children, and this seems only right, for according to law, teachers act in loco parentis, which is Latin for "in the place of a parent."  This is the love that allows me to be amused by quirky personalities and to see the gifts and potential in my students that they may not yet see in themselves.  It is the love that makes me genuinely excited when my students get the job or scholarship for which they had applied and that makes me always eager to receive messages from them after graduation in which they tell me of all they are achieving.

Next is philos.  This word can also mean "friend" and captures the idea of one who is beloved and cherished.  This is the love that causes me to spring into action when a student is in need, and in this regard is certainly related to storge.  If a student lacks the money for lunch or another activity, I want to assure her that all well be well.  When a student is in any way harassed, whether by peers or other teachers, my first move is to protection and then to resolution.  Yet it is also the love that fuels the impossibly deep and rich conversations that take place during passing periods or conference periods or support hours after school, conversations that seem to be less between teacher and student and more between friends seeking truth together.

Finally there is agape, which was once translated "charity" before that English word took on too limited a meaning.  This is sacrificial love.  It is the love that prompts me to pull out my best, even in this time of distance learning, so that students will have the closest thing possible to the rich and full exploration they would otherwise have with the history and wisdom and poetry of the Latin literature they read.  I don't want to slap together simple activities just to fill their time, but I also do not want to burden them beyond the scope of what e-learning makes reasonable, and so I must carefully plan and craft what we will do.  It takes time thinking through and recording the many videos that accompany their readings and language practice, and I do so because I want them to get the most out of their studies.

John Cougar Mellencamp once sang of "a million young poets, just screamin' out their words to a world full of people, just livin' to be heard."  More than that are sharing their thoughts and feelings about our current days, but as a teacher, I had to take a moment to say something about love in the time of pandemic.