Search

For many teachers, distance learning is a constant fight to get students to engage - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Science teacher Mickey Sullivan teaches about 100 middle school students from her kitchen table.

Every school day Sullivan dresses, fixes her hair and puts on earrings as if she were going to school in-person.

Her school, Fulton K-8 in the Skyline neighborhood, is part of San Diego Unified and is closed to in-person instruction indefinitely, as COVID-19 soars to unprecedented levels in California. At least four out of five students at Fulton are socioeconomically disadvantaged.

Last Wednesday morning, Sullivan started her workday at 7:15 a.m., prepping for her 8 a.m. eighth-grade science class.

“We’ll see if they show up early. You just never know,” Sullivan said.

At 7:52 a.m., her first student showed up in the Zoom session. Sullivan gave a cheerful “Good morning!” and waved at her laptop screen.

By 8:01 a.m., seven of the 22 students in the class had logged into class.

From the beginning of class, not one student turned on his or her camera. Sometimes Sullivan asked the class a question, then answered it herself because nobody responded.

At 8:10 a.m., a late student pinged into the Zoom room. Another came in at 8:27 a.m.

“Can you hear me?” Sullivan said to the student. “I see you but I can’t hear you. Can you at least type in the chat so I know you’re here?”

Another student arrived at 8:34 a.m., then one more at 8:52 a.m.

“I’m so glad you made it,” Sullivan said to the student who arrived at 8:52. Sullivan asked the student how she’s doing, and the student responded after a pause: “Goo-oo-oo-d,” her voice distorted by a poor internet connection.

Another student arrived at 8:59 a.m. “Can you hear me?” Sullivan asked the student, who didn’t respond on audio but typed in the Zoom chat: “I can.”

At 9:06 a.m., the last student to arrive showed up.

“Oh my gosh, this kid’s showing up now. We have 20 minutes left,” Sullivan said aloud to herself. The student told her they had been kicked out of the Zoom and was trying to get back in.

For many teachers like Sullivan, distance learning is a constant fight to find all their students and just have them come to class. They’re trying anything from jokes to poetry to being more forgiving in grading.

“I’m trying my best to just keep them coming back, keep them looking forward to something, even if it’s laughing at their history teacher’s corny jokes,” said Don Dumas, a U.S. history teacher at Bonita Vista High in the Sweetwater Union High School District.

Most districts in San Diego County have reopened schools for at least part-time in-person instruction.

But San Diego Unified, South County districts like Sweetwater and a few others remain closed, largely due to higher COVID levels in those areas. It may be months before those districts reopen, and as the pandemic worsens week by week, the possibility they will return soon is likely shrinking.

Teachers engaged in distance learning say they are struggling to balance a need for “grace” and understanding for what their students are going through with the worry and frustration of not seeing or hearing from several students often, or at all.

Students could be missing online classes for any number of reasons.

It could be that students don’t have enough bandwidth to sustain videoconferencing, or they could lack internet entirely, despite widespread efforts from school districts to provide hotspots and devices. It could be that students lack stable housing, food or adult help at home.

Because distance learning takes away nearly all the social aspects of school, boredom, lack of motivation, Zoom fatigue, and even anxiety and depression are likely playing a role, teachers and experts said.

“I think the most difficult thing is you have to have patience,” said Norma Reyes, an English as a Second Language teacher at Lincoln High in San Diego. “You really, really have to stop and think that there’s tons of factors as to why students may not be participating as much as you would like.”

Sullivan said she can’t know what’s happening with all of her students, so she gives all of them the benefit of the doubt — regardless of whether they’re not working because they can’t or they don’t want to.

“I don’t want to lose them,” Sullivan said. “I want to empower them and make them feel like they’ve got a chance, especially this year. Because it would be so easy for them to just give up and play video games or watch Tik Tok all day.”

Four out of five


Teachers on average have been able to get in contact with four out of five students this fall, according to a recent nationally representative survey of educators by RAND. Most schools included in the survey are providing partial or full remote instruction.

The teachers reported that 69 percent of students have completed most or all of their assignments so far. That average is lower among high-poverty schools, schools serving mostly students of color, and schools where students are in distance learning full-time.

The disconnect in school participation — which experts say is sometimes outside a student’s control — is manifesting in poor grades. School districts across the country and across the county are reporting surges in D and F grades.

Many students have lost motivation to participate in distance learning, teachers said.

Ruby Baker, a third- and fourth-grade teacher at Silver Wing Elementary in Chula Vista, said it wasn’t until a month and a half into the school year that she could consistently get her 20 students to show up to online class. She sees a lot of anxiety among her students, some of whom have had family members contract COVID-19.

Baker said only two of her students can read at grade level.

“I think most teachers will tell you this honestly, that the demands of what we’re able to ask from them has really gone down,” Baker said. “I have to be able to accept a little less so that I can get them, hook them in, and bring them back and make them feel like we’re gonna be fine.”

Sullivan said she struggles to get her students to turn in assignments. She gives her students no homework and only asks them to work on in-class assignments.

Even then, some students do not turn in assignments for weeks. Sullivan makes turning in assignments as easy as she can, extending submission deadlines and posting videos of herself showing how to submit them.

Teachers say one of the hardest things about distance teaching is they usually cannot see all their students in Zoom. Many students don’t turn on their cameras.

Not being able to see students’ faces robs teachers of a crucial tool they need to communicate with students and help them learn.

For example, in a classroom Dumas said he would notice the little cues — nods of affirmation, raised eyebrows — that would show him who is understanding the content and who needs help. Also, in a classroom Sullivan would be able to see if a student is not feeling well or if they are laying their head on their desk.

Now with distance learning, because many students don’t turn on their cameras, teachers have limited knowledge of how well their students are doing. Baker said there are some students whose faces she hasn’t seen all year.

“Essentially you’re just looking at letters, their initials,” Dumas said. “You’re kind of staring at a blank screen.”

Many districts, including San Diego Unified, do not require students to turn on their cameras, partly because students may lack the internet bandwidth to do so.

Sullivan said she thinks some of her students keep cameras off because they may be embarrassed or don’t want others to see where they are.

Sullivan speculates that some of her students go to work with their parents, because she has heard what sounded like construction noises or large machinery in the background when some students turned off mute. Some students have briefly turned on their video cameras and Sullivan saw that they were working from what seemed to be a garage or a warehouse.

Sullivan speculates that one student is distance learning from a farm, because she hears multiple roosters crowing in the background every time he unmutes. One student told Sullivan he was doing distance learning while holding and taking care of his baby sibling.

One of Sullivan’s students has never shown up for class, and Sullivan has never heard from the student or their family. Sullivan was told the student is likely homeless, but Sullivan doesn’t know whether the student is sheltered or unsheltered. Every time Sullivan tried contacting the family, she got no response.

Despite the fact that the student never showed up for class, Sullivan was told to grade the student.

“I was forced to give the child a grade,” Sullivan said. “That sucked.”

Taking a toll


The hardships of distance learning and the pandemic are taking a toll on teachers as well as students.

In the RAND survey, four out of five teachers reported burnout is a moderate or major concern.

A quarter of teachers said they are likely to leave the teaching profession, and most of those teachers said they were unlikely to leave before the pandemic.

More than half of the teachers in the survey reported working more hours per week than they did before the pandemic.

Teachers say distance learning eats up more time that isn’t necessarily spent teaching content.

It takes time to troubleshoot technical difficulties, walk through how to submit assignments online, take attendance virtually and wait for students to respond in a virtual class. It also takes more time to write out feedback for every student, whereas in a classroom teachers can simply walk up to a student, look at the student’s work and give them immediate feedback.

Baker said she starts working at 6 a.m. preparing for class, and it takes her four hours to prepare for four hours of teaching online — that includes setting up documents and breakout rooms, searching for content and making curriculum digitally accessible.

Sullivan said she often works until 8, 9 or 10 p.m. during the week. She has gotten phone calls from families over the weekend and as late as 11 p.m. on weeknights.

As a single mother of two high school sophomores, Sullivan tries to make enough food on the weekends to have leftovers last through the week, because she knows she may not have time to cook during the week.

One weeknight, her kids told her after 11 p.m. that they were going to bed, and she realized she had forgotten to make them dinner.

“I didn’t even notice they were getting snacks. That’s embarrassing,” Sullivan said.

“For remote teaching, there are pros and cons. The biggest con is that I’m not a good mother to my own children.”

As difficult as remote teaching is, several teachers said they would rather continue distance learning than go back to in-person instruction with the current COVID-19 levels.

“Yes, this is difficult, but it would be more difficult to have to bury my in-laws or a student or a colleague, one of my elderly colleagues, because of it,” Dumas said. “So we’re doing the best we can ... We might complain about it along the way, but it is infinitely better for our communities to be safe and at home.”

Sullivan said she hopes COVID-19 conditions will improve soon so it’s safe enough to return to school. In the meantime, she tries to stay positive for her students, telling them this is an adventure that they’ll be able to tell stories about 15 years from now.

“We’re all being healthy, and we hope we can be back soon if everybody can just stay in and follow the rules for a couple weeks,” Sullivan said. “We’ll get through this together. If we all fail, fine, but let’s just come out of this healthy.”

Let's block ads! (Why?)



"Many" - Google News
December 06, 2020 at 09:00PM
https://ift.tt/3lUwCJG

For many teachers, distance learning is a constant fight to get students to engage - The San Diego Union-Tribune
"Many" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2QsfYVa
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update

Bagikan Berita Ini

Related Posts :

0 Response to "For many teachers, distance learning is a constant fight to get students to engage - The San Diego Union-Tribune"

Post a Comment

Powered by Blogger.