As we enter this twilight period when governments and Chambers of Commerce are pushing rapid reopenings of economies, schools and other parts of society, it’s important to note who’s been invited to the table to plan + discuss the particular details of said reopening, and who’s been excluded or ignored.
In this case, journalists aren’t even bothering to mention that teachers, school staff and support workers’ interests and concerns aren’t even being considered or entertained, as top-down leaders + elite, hand-picked committees (often with dubious educational + health credentials) are being paraded as experts in preferred models of remote learning, blended learning, etc.
Glaringly absent are comments + input from the seasoned curriculum planners, intructional design coordinators and experienced classroom teachers + school staff. Hence my lamentation and complaint, that we’re not going to successfully reopen our schools, simply by dictating a set of procedures and dates, and then leaving it up to the teachers + parents to connect the dots — this approach risks a massive meltdown, when teachers get sick, parents lose jobs, and kids’ learning goes out the window.
Case in point, here’s the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, in one of Florida’s most densely-populated counties, Broward County, treating the entire issue of reopening the schools as a matter that fails to include those most affected by the changes: the TEACHERS!!!
“Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie said one option being considered for the upcoming school year is a blended learning model.
Here’s how that might work — 50% of students in a class may go to school on Mondays and Thursdays. On Tuesdays and Fridays, they will distance learn at home. The situation will be reversed for the other 50% of students in that class. On Wednesdays, the district might do deep cleaning at schools, provide necessary social emotional counseling while students distance learn at home.
Under this plan, students get back into the classroom and back into the school environment albeit on a limited basis with emphasis on social distancing.”
Glaring omissions in every discussion about post-Covid-19 learning models:
1) the health + well-being of instructors, admin + staff; for example, Florida schools have chronic teacher shortage, and classrooms are frequently taught by elderly, retired substitute teachers, going years without a permanent, fulltime classroom teachers. What happens when these mostly 60+ year old, at risk vulnerable population teachers stay home, and refuse to work in classrooms + schools that conveniently overlook the asymptomatic spreader risks of children-to-adults of the Covid-19 virus? Where are the voices of these teachers in the reopening plans?
2) the logistics of simultaneously conducting video classes while also maintaining in-person classroom control; Teachers were ordered to invent massive and immediate short-term workaround lesson plans and digital classroom functional solutions within days or weeks as the 1st wave of infections + shelter-in-places orders were imposed nationwide. Learning benchmarks, teaching goals and measurements of student assessments post-transfer to (Emergency) Remote Learning have been ignored or submersed under other more pressing needs, i.e., helping students cope with change and cope with attendance and technology crises related to home study, etc.
Now, various catchphrases are being tossed around by politicians and school boards, with little idea or explanation of what they mean, including ‘blended learning’, ‘hybrid learning configurations’, etc. The idea here is that schools need to open so that parents can go back to work, so that parents can pay taxes that in turn support the schools’ operation.
To accomplish this goal, while also acknowledging that a single infection could shutdown an entire elementary, middle or high school for weeks of months, once the schools do actually reopen, admin and politicians are proposing staggered classes with fewer students, and also suggesting that teachers will somehow be able to juggle the simultaneously demands of maintaining classroom order, while also transmitting video lessons for those students assigned to stay home of certain, alternating days, etc.
Does this mean the teachers will work longer hours? Does this mean systems will hire more teachers to support teaching the same lesson to smaller student groups, presumably from dusk to dawn? Where will these teachers come from, and who will pay for the longer hours of work?
3) Training + equipment costs reinbursements to teachers who work from home. Courts and authorities in European + Asian countries have already ruled that systems that order workers (including teachers) to work from home, must reimburse these workers for costs + expenses of working from a home office, including paying for WiFi, modems, computers, office furniture costs, home taxes, etc. How long before underpaid USA teachers demand that they be supplied laptops + training needed to cope with the newly imposed ‘Blended Learning’ model expenses? Finally, what consideration is actually being given to the effectiveness of these models, in learning + teaching of our kids?
Dottore Mark 