This School Year is Going to Be Mostly Remote. We Have to Do Online Education Better. (Or Families Will Opt Out)

Single laptop on empty table. Photo by Nick Demou from Pexels

In the past three weeks, I have written three essays and been interviewed many times about how we should consider issues of equity and social justice in our efforts to educate students in the time of Covid-19. I’ve argued that we should do everything in our power to provide safe face-to-face instruction for the most marginalized students and families; that this would require regular, rapid, and reliable testing, mandatory mask usage, and other safety protocols that most schools and districts are not currently in a position to implement; that, as a result, most schools will likely need to stay closed for most students; and that we should pay parents and families to stay home with the over 50 million children who will no longer have a place to be cared for during the day. Many school districts across the country are reaching similar conclusions and realizing that education will primarily happen online this fall (and possibly for the entire school year).

What we have not talked enough about is how to actually do remote instruction well. In light of the many challenges we faced when we went remote in the spring, and the many privileged families seeking to create their own school pods to replace public schools, I worry that if remote instruction looks the same way it looked in the spring, families are unlikely to participate — particularly those already facing the greatest barriers. If schooling is going to be mostly online we must INNOVATE! Remote instruction is a different kind of job, and in order to even moderately succeed at it, we will have to do it in a new way.

So what should education leaders consider while trying to do online education better?

1. Do some research

We cannot simply recreate our regular school day in front of a computer screen. Online learning is a different beast that, quite honestly, most educators were not trained for. If we want to do it well, we should look to those doing it well. This will require spending actual time, energy and resources investigating best practices, pitfalls, challenges, and strengths of online learning. There are a number of schools, community colleges, and alternative education programs that have been doing online education well for a long time now and even individual teachers who were quite successful at this in the spring. We should tap into their expertise.

2. Limit screen time

As a parent of young children, I have been hearing cautions about the damage of “screen time” on children for many years now. Ironically, we will now be relying on screen time to teach most children in the nation. While this is the best choice from the list of bad options, it is not realistic or developmentally appropriate to expect students, especially those who are very young, to sit in front of a computer for hours on end. When Covid-19 hit, my colleagues and I at Justice Leaders Collaborative shifted our workshop format from in-person 6-hour days with 20 minute lunch breaks to online two-hour segments with an hour-long lunch break. That was for adults. When my 5-year-old’s school moved online, I quickly discovered that his capacity to pay attention to his innovative teachers, speech therapists, and ASL instructors through a computer screen was about 20 minutes, and that was WITH me sitting right next to him the entire time. If you are planning to have students, especially young students, logged onto their online classroom for the approximate hours of a regular school day you are setting everyone up to fail.

3. Learn from homeschoolers

While I will always advocate for families who are committed to public education utilizing the online offerings of their public schools (rather than opting out to create their own homeschool curriculum), there is a lot public schools could learn from homeschooling practice. For example, most homeschoolers only spend 20–60 minutes per day on direct instruction for young children and 2–4 hours a day for the oldest high school students. Schools should drastically pare down what they are offering, focus on the most important learning goals, and acknowledge that a lot of the time in a normal school day is spent on play, lunch, breaks, bathrooms, and social interactions that will be largely handed off to parents or other caretakers in online formats.

4. Set up flexible systems that work for families

For a lot of students, the reality is that their success will depend on the ability of their adult family members to assist them. Unfortunately, many parents are now being charged with supervising their children during the day while they must also work jobs in and out of their homes. It is imperative that school plans allow as much flexibility as possible so that parents and guardians can assist students in learning during times that work best for them, which might be early mornings, evenings, or even weekends. This might mean that while teachers are doing live instruction (synchronous), they record it and send it to the class so students who need to watch it at an alternative time can do so; or that instruction videos are pre-recorded (asynchronous) with teachers offering scheduled “office hours” for students at times that work for them. For many working parents, it would be easier to know that there is a consistent block during the day when they need to attend to their child’s “schooling” rather than having to log in multiple times over the day. There is no reason why students should miss out on learning because the hours do not align with the needs of their parents. Flexibility of access should be one of the benefits of online education.

5. Consider parents your actual students (especially for younger children)

Not only should we consider parents in terms of the times students can do their work, we should also be focused on what they need to act as effective co-teachers. In speech therapy, early childhood intervention, and other forms of student support, the goal is to help the child largely by working with the parents to develop their skills. Schools could adopt similar models this year, particularly at the elementary level. We should acknowledge the limits of creating engaging lessons for students that can be delivered through computer screens. Educators’ time may be better spent building relationships with and helping parents learn to more successfully assist their children with the curriculum developed by teachers. As a parent, I’d prefer talking to my children’s teacher(s) once or twice a week about how to help my child learn key concepts, instead of sitting with them every day for multiple hours as the teacher tries to engage them through a screen. Teachers and educators have a wealth of expertise. We should think much more creatively about how to best utilize it.

6. Get teachers high quality training and professional development

Remote learning is asking most teachers to do jobs they were not trained for. If we want them to do it well, we should be actively seeking out and providing high quality professional development to all educators who will be tasked with converting their practice in this way. Just as we should not introduce a new math or reading curriculum or ask educators to do more socially just and equitable practice without training, we should not assume they can move online without support. Teachers should be deft at using the platform they are teaching through, including how to use tools like chat, breakout groups, and shared documents to engage students at various age levels.

7. Limit the number of students taught at one time

One of the major challenges of online learning is that you cannot interact with friends, peers, and students naturally. For example, if there are 20 people on a screen, it is not easy for two people to have a side conversation during a break. When anyone speaks, everyone else in the “room” can hear them which likely makes it harder for students to ask questions. There are also limitations to how many faces can fit on a screen. And because of how online meeting apps work, it is never clear who anyone else can see or who they are looking at, which throws most of our natural social cues out the window. Good online teaching takes great care with how students are grouped and taught together considering all of the limitations of screens and generally requires much smaller groupings of students.

8. Get all students and educators computer devices and reliable internet

One of the biggest problems with online learning this spring was that some students did not have reliable internet or electronic devices. And guess what, some teachers and staff don’t either. Schools have to get innovative in getting everyone the technology they need to succeed. Many districts have done this. If you haven’t, look to them for ideas about how. It should also be noted that some students, families and even teachers will need a bit of training about how to set up and use their devices. Consider a help line or hiring more folks to do tech support.

9. Don’t get distracted by things that don’t matter

If your district is spending any time whatsoever focused on things like whether students are wearing pajamas on zoom, stop and refocus — now. This is a distraction and has nothing to do with learning or safety. If your district is demanding that teachers be in the building to teach instead of allowing them to work from home, you are not only putting them at greater risk for Covid-19, you are denying them the ability to care for and support their own children and families (who are likely also learning online), which isn’t moral or just. If you find yourself trying to micromanage the bodies of students or adults, just stop. There is enough to do and we have no time or energy to waste on such things.

10. Just commit; And then help parents organize to meet their childcare needs

Stop spending all of your energy making hybrid plans that likely won’t happen. If you keep assuming that in just a couple of weeks or months we’ll return to the classroom, you are not allowing teachers to focus on how to do online instruction well. Yes, some vocal parents are clamoring for a return to in-person instruction, but kicking the can down the road a few weeks at a time both strings them along and does everyone else a disservice. Focus on doing remote learning well, and commit for the entire semester or year. And then spend the energy you were using on making hybrid face-to-face schedules helping families meet their childcare needs. In this atmosphere of uncertainty, some (mostly privileged) parents are putting a lot of energy into setting up pandemic pods, which probably won’t include the children who need them the most. Some schools are helping create a structure for parents to organize within, which could both help pods be more inclusive and work more cohesively with the district curriculum. So long as students are not physically in buildings, schools should be trying to help families solve this unprecedented childcare crisis in ways that are as just and equitable as possible.

Online schooling is happening. Instead of spending our time figuring out how to avoid or limit it, we should be focused on trying to meet the needs of students, families, and educators as best we can. In addition to everything listed above, this means centering the social and emotional needs of everyone involved. This is the year to privilege “connection over content” and “relevance over rigor.” We should spend this year not only learning how to teach online, but also helping students better understand and process their feelings about the major social and political events of our time. Covid-19, Black Lives Matter, relationship-building, restorative practices, and psychological and emotional health should be at the center of our lessons.

Online education is what we are doing. And I believe we can do it better. We have to let go of our traditional notions of what “school” and “education” are and develop models that are more engaging, more relevant to our current social and political moment, and more aligned with the needs of all families and students.

Here are some helpful resources that educators I work with have vouched for. Feel free to add your own in the comments:

9 Ways Online Teaching Should be Different From Face to Face

Lost Summer: How Schools Missed a Chance to Fix Remote Learning

What if we Radically Reimagined the New School Year?

The National Standards for Quality Online Learning

Kindness Goes a Long Way in Distance Learning

Pennsylvania Department of Education Rubric Assessment: Online Educators (aligned with Danielson Model)

*Originally published on Medium

- Written by Shayla R. Griffin, Ph.D., co-founder of Justice Leaders Collaborative