Hello and welcome to the Education section of ExecConcepts! My name is Dave and I’ve been teaching History for almost twenty years at a nationally recognized school on Long Island in the state of New York.  This is the first of what I hope to be many articles that will help you deal with the practical side of not only finding the right technology for you and your students but helping you build successful outcomes with it.  Like me, I am sure you have been faced with implementing a ton of new technologies and strategies as a result of the pandemic.  Of course, you most likely received a modicum of training and are expected to become an expert overnight.  “Make it work” has been the buzzword in your school for months now.  Well, what I hope is to be able to help you make sense of all this new stuff, to help you not only find what you may need through exec concepts but to help you utilize it to its full extent.  In this inaugural article, I would like to do give you a little history as to how we have reached this point and what you could do going forward.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, school districts across the U.S. and indeed the world have been forced to adapt or replace teaching models and strategies that have been in place for generations.  Overnight, many of us, especially here in hard-hit New York not only found ourselves under strict quarantine, worrying about whether or not we (or our families) were going to get the virus (after all, schools are breeding grounds for all types of illness) and what we could do to protect ourselves.  Although schools were closed, the process of teaching and learning did not simply stop.  After all, no one knew (and still does not know) how long the pandemic will last.  Many districts found themselves faced with a crisis like no other and something needed to be done and done quickly.

As you are no doubt aware, most districts adopted some form of remote learning.  To say it was an experience would be an understatement.  Speaking from personal experience, we literally had to adapt to this new reality overnight.  Our teaching models had to change immediately.  It was akin to building an airplane while it was in flight.  As the quarantine dragged on, the remote learning model evolved.  At first, the teachers in my district utilized the google classroom platform.  While it is certainly good, it does have its limitations.  Eventually, video conferencing was tried, but from personal experience, I thought this was a disaster.  If you have ever been on a big conference call or video chat you understand the limitations.  Now add to that confusion large groups of very chatty adolescents who have been cooped up in their houses for weeks on end and you have a recipe for disaster.  The vast majority of my colleagues felt the same way.

Another reason remote learning was a complete failure (in my opinion) was the complete lack of any real way to measure progress.  Participation varied widely (especially when the pass/fail score system was introduced) and there was no accountability.  There was no way to give formal assessments either.  Perhaps one of the issues that many teachers faced was the wide variety of technology.  Not only does the level of technology vary from district to district, but it also varies from student to student.  Districts such as my own are luckier than most.  There are smart boards in every classroom.  WIFI is readily available in every building.  Every student and teacher has been given a chrome book with camera/microphone capability.  As you are no doubt aware, not all districts have this capability, nor have the money to implement should they so choose.  Somehow, someway, our teachers and our students got through it.  After a few weeks of rest (with nowhere to go) schools were finally given the green light to open, sort of.

In New York, each district had recently been asked to submit one of the following options for re-opening their schools in September.  As each district in my state has local autonomy over school affairs, the state Board of Education gave each district one of three choices for opening schools in September.  Your school district most likely faced a similar dilemma.

 The first choice was what I will call normal re-opening. Children return to school in September as usual.  As a rule, health restrictions will be in place.  Children and teachers will be expected to social distance and wear masks.  Sneeze guards will be on every desk.  There would be no restrictions on the number of students per class. For me, that means that I could have up to 30 students in a class on any given period.  This is unlikely to work and would most likely cause a spike in the virus. Why? Kids (who generally believe they are immortal) will have great difficulty coping with the new guidelines and will most likely resist the many restrictions, especially in secondary school settings.  As an example, I can already envision students running around pulling other student's masks off, or deliberately coughing on each other, and so on.  There are many students, parents/caregivers, and teachers who were against this plan as they were no doubt afraid that they themselves would catch the virus as a result.  Unless there is strict enforcement of the new rules (with tough disciplinary measures) this plan would likely meet with limited success at best.  On the other hand, it is the best in terms of learning outcomes.

The second option was to go to a full remote learning model, which varies little from what we forced to implement back in March when the pandemic hit with full force. With this option, all students would remain at home and not return to school.  All learning would be completed using current technology.  Problems that occurred during the lockdown would return but on an even larger scale.  The reason for this is simple.  When our district went into lockdown, I already knew my students. I knew their expectations, their capabilities, and so on. As a teacher, I would “know” almost instinctively if a student understood a complex concept or not. Going forward, every teacher will have 100-137 brand new students that they do not know. This will make an already difficult task even more difficult.  This situation has already begun to unfold, and we are only four weeks into the school year.

The third and final option was to adopt a hybrid model, which is what most districts in New York have opted for. This is simply a blending of the two approaches. It works like this:  Students whose last name begins with A through K will attend class in person on Mondays and Tuesdays. This is known as cohort A.  Cohort B, which contains students whose last name begins with L through Z would attend class in person on Thursday and Friday.  Wednesday, the schools would be closed, and all students would attend classes remotely. This is the path my district has decided on.

In theory, hybrid learning could work.  Students would attend their classes remotely just as they would be there in the building.  In reality, however, it presents major problems.  In essence, you are running two classes at the same time, one remote, one “live.” I myself have been forced to jump back and forth between the two, between attendance, answering questions, and so on.  This distracts you from the students that are in front of you.

A major issue I have found is that I find it difficult at best to keep remote students engaged.  I’ve asked every single one of my students (I have over a 100) and perhaps 5 said they like remote learning.  The rest want to be in school. (Never thought I would hear that in my career!)  To give an example of just how disengaged students are, we were told that on our all remote day we need to teach a lesson live and on camera.  The goal was to create a more interactive experience.  It was a disaster.  When I finished my “live lesson” I switched back to camera view and all I saw were ceiling fans, ceiling lights, and kids with heads down on keyboards!  After finally getting everyone back, I attempted to begin a discussion and got absolutely nowhere.

Another issue with remote learning, whether it be hybrid or full remote is that it is difficult at best to have any amount of accountability.  After all, in this day and age, it’s very easy for students to cheat.  With no one standing over the screen, the likelihood of this happening grows exponentially.

In addition to the human problems that come with hybrid learning, there are technological issues as well.  If your district has Wi-Fi, it becomes very taxed and lags when multiple classes are “running” at the same time. In many cases, the systems were not designed to handle such heavy loads.  I get countless emails from students telling me that they were knocked off our classroom.  Even I have been knocked off on several occasions.

Finally, there is the matter of knowing the tech that you have.  Having good software and hardware is great, but what good is it if you do not know how to fully utilize it? When we went to our conference days program after the program was thrown at us.  Each new program was peddled as a panacea for all our remote learning problems.  While that may be true, you still would need extensive training to fully implement all the features in any program.  Although it was really no one’s fault, the training was brief and basic.

This is where we are at right now.  So, what can you do?  Here at ExecConcepts, we want to provide you with whatever equipment you need to do your job and do it well.  Through this and future articles, I can help guide you through all this new technology to help you decide what is best for you and your students.  Whether we like it or not, this new style of learning is here to stay. As teachers, it is our job to adapt to it so that our students can continue to excel.  I hope, in my small way, that I can help you do just that.

Writer: David Moglia

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