With the Warren County School System offering virtual instruction only through Jan. 15, teachers are midway through what they hope to be a successful two weeks of learning.
Kirsten Cunningham, sixth-grade English teacher at Warren County Middle School, says that as her school has used all-virtual instruction on two separate occasions this academic year, teachers there were not caught flat-footed.
“We’re a little more prepared,” Cunningham said, conceding that virtual learning can be challenging for young students. It can also be challenging for teachers, who are less able to forge personal connections with students while teaching through a computer screen.
Cunningham does see some bright spots when it comes to virtual instruction. One is more utilization of Google Classroom, which she says makes students’ submission of assignments and the teacher’s evaluation of said assignments more seamless, swift, and convenient.
Cunningham also commends the school system’s efforts to equip students with the online access they need to be successful in a virtual academic environment.
“Our district has done a really great job of getting access to the internet out to all the students,” Cunningham says.
Michelle Chisam, who teaches Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics classes in the school system and who will be at Eastside School this academic quarter, says teaching STEM online presents challenges. She says teaching virtually “is hard for the classes where you mainly do handson things.”
Chisam’s STEM classes ordinarily have students doing hands-on, interactive, teamwork- driven activities like making and flying model airplanes, coding, and designing and building bridges. The shift to virtual instruction makes these types of activities impossible to perform.
Chisam has gotten creative to find ways to get students thinking and innovating from their computers. She has created an interactive Google Classroom page, and she loves its efficacy. She plans to use the page for years to come, expanding and fine-tuning it every year for her students’ benefit.
Ultimately, Chisam says, the period of all-virtual instruction, while challenging, will serve to make teachers sharper. “It’s making us all better teachers, that’s for sure,” Chisam says.
Isaac Slatton, who teaches fourth grade mathematics at Centertown School, says his school and the school system at-large are better prepared now to deliver all-online instruction than they were when COVID-19 closed school systems in March 2020.
“A big one last year was having technology in the kids’ hands,” Slatton says, referring to the problem of many students’ not being able to access course materials in the spring, due to lack of Internet access and/ or a computer or device.
Slatton says this time around all students at Centertown have been provided with a laptop. Thus, he reasons, there should be more accountability on the part of students.
Even so, Slatton says, Zoom, the medium through which teachers and students will be engaging with each other, is far from ideal when it comes to being a platform for teaching and learning. “It’s going to take some trial-and-error,” Slatton says.
However, Slatton is optimistic the virtual instruction will be beneficial for teachers and students. As opposed to last spring when the pandemic forced teachers and schools to adjust on the fly, this go-around teachers have had time to prepare.
Slatton has ample experience with Google Classroom, and he loves its capabilities as an organizational tool. “I started using it last year,” he says. Moreover, he says his teaching peers at Centertown have banded together to coordinate instruction to the highest degree possible, in an attempt to minimize the negative impact of the shift to virtual learning.
Chisam sums it up well when she says there have been some bumps in the road in the transition to online teaching and learning, but there will be recognition of mistakes and a retooling happening in real time as well. With that, she says progress and achievement will be realized.
