People say this every year, but this school year truly is like no other. Although students learn in-person, masks are mandatory. Lunch doesn’t resemble the chaotic free-for-all of past school years. Hand sanitizer is everywhere.
Along with all these changes for students, teachers have also faced similar shifts. In an informal survey conducted by the ECHO, 25 out of 26 teachers said that their experiences with remote learning have led to changes in their teaching.
After a year of remote learning, many teachers say they are overjoyed to be back in school. Not every teacher experienced remote learning the same way, but certain features of their experience are widespread. For example, teachers were often forced to cover less material due to less class time last year.
On average, the 26 surveyed teachers rated their remote-teaching experience as 6.15 out of 10, where 10 is the most positive score.
English teacher Kathryn Edelstein said that remote learning gave rise to an ongoing “attitude of all hands on deck. Everyone is having to do jobs they didn’t normally do before.”
Regarding the return from remote learning, Edelstein said, “We’re all sort of deconditioned, so I think we’re all adjusting to being here for a seven-period day, five days a week.”
However, because she has gained a greater appreciation of her job, Edelstein believes that her students who have had her both before and after COVID will notice that she is particularly enthusiastic to be with them now.
Edelstein, like many other teachers, has also changed specific elements of teaching as a result of remote learning.
“Being forced to take a step back from quantity, and really just zoom in on quality, like close reading and in-depth discussions, instead of assigning three chapters in a night has permanently changed my teaching,” Edelstein said.
History teacher Molly Matthews said she found EdPuzzle—a tool in which students watch videos that have been broken up into smaller segments—particularly useful during remote learning, so she will continue using it in her classes this year.
EdPuzzle isn’t the only tool to have become popular among teachers as a result of remote learning. Engineering teacher Bill Vincent says that online school required him to improve the resources in his Canvas classrooms, which he can now use this year and in future years.
“A lot of teachers spent a lot of time producing really good material, because they had to,” said mathematics teacher Nick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald considers many of the materials in AP Central to have been “a real bonus” in terms of preparing students for the AP exams.
For Fitzgerald, remote learning also made him rethink the length of his assessments. While his AP Calculus class formerly had two-day assessments, he now thinks that shorter assessments can also work to demonstrate knowledge of the material.
Many teachers have indicated that one of the greatest takeaways of the pandemic has been increased use of surveys and similar tools to gauge how students are doing, both academically and personally. In the ECHO survey, 61.5 percent of teachers who responded said they were making greater use of personal check-ins with students as a result of their remote learning experience.
Ceramics teacher Melissa Vrooman is one of the teachers who has continued to use surveys now that school is back in-person.
“I’m asking them how things are going, how they’re feeling emotionally, how the workload is, if there are other private things they might want to share with me,” she said.
Edelstein said that she thought that checking in with students during remote learning could require taking up most of a period of school. However, she now thinks that she can check in with students but also work efficiently.
Senior Lael Blass said that now that school is in-person, “I think there’s more emphasis on just doing what you can get through and not just loading reading on.”
There are also many things which teachers are glad to return to which were not an option during remote learning.
“I really want to take a step back from screens in my class, because I can,” Edelstein said. “I can say here’s your novel, here’s your notebook, here’s your pen. These are our tools.”
For Vrooman, ceramics was particularly hard to teach online. Students needed to stop by the school in order to pick up and fire clay. In contrast, she now finds it easier to see what her students are working on when they are in the classroom.
Meanwhile, Fitzgerald cautions that this school year isn’t yet back to like it was before COVID. For him, the new schedule that gives teachers less time to talk to students individually and provides no time for clubs means that the school day doesn’t count as “normal.”
In the end, remote learning has changed education at East. Regardless of the ongoing effects of last year’s virtual model, though, there is a sense of relief and excitement among many students and staff for getting back in the building.
“The minute I came back,” Edelstein said, “I was reminded of how important it is to be with the kids, for those connections to happen.”
Photo by Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford/The ECHO.
