The newest terrible idea

So lately John and I haven’t agreed on a lot.  I’ve taken issue with a lot of what he has written and promoted.  But not today.  I agree with every word that John has written.  In fact, I’d go even further and ask the question of why this keeps happening?

In the report entitled Understanding Pandemic Pedagogy: Differences between Emergency Remote, Remote, and Online Teaching that I co-authored near the beginning of the pandemic, where we wrote on pages 8 and 9:

distance and online learning has regularly been suggested for much of the past decade as an option to maintain instructional time during short term school closures such as snow days (Haugen, 2015; Hua et al., 2017; Milman, 2014; Morones, 2014; Swetlik et al., 2015). Many have also called for schools, districts, and systems to engage in planning for instructional continuity through distance and online learning to address longer school closures for the past decade. Barbour (2010) illustrated the planning required for remote teaching when he wrote:

in Singapore online and blended learning was so pervasive that teaching in online and virtual environments was a required course in their teacher education programs and schools are annually closed for week-long periods to prepare the K-12 system for pandemic or natural disaster forced closures. (p. 310).

In fact, the use of distance learning to address issues of instructional continuity during a pandemic is not a new concept. McCracken (2020) described how during the Spanish flu pandemic the telephone – a technology only 40 years old at the time – was being used for high school students in Long Beach. According to the author, “the fact that California students were using it as an educational device was so novel that it made the papers” (para. 2). Another example was the polio epidemic in New Zealand in 1948, which closed all of that country’s schools (Te Kura, 2018). At the time the Correspondence School – now Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu – used traditional correspondence education to send lessons to every household, as well as using educational radio to broadcast lessons during the first semester of the school year.

More recently, Barbour et al. (2011) reported that following high levels of absenteeism during the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009, a number of private schools in Boliva developed their own virtual classrooms and trained teachers on how to teach in that environment. The report specifically noted that this trend did not translate within the public school system as it had in places like Hong Kong and Singapore. With respect to Hong Kong, Alpert (2011) described how online learning helped facilitate continued access to instruction in 2003 when schools had to close due to the SARS outbreak. While the SARS closure was consistent with the emergency remote teaching we have seen in North America with the current COVD-19 pandemic, following the outbreak school began to implement planning for a more formal use of online learning for future school disruptions. This planning was evident during the H1N1 outbreak in 2008, when 9 remote teaching allowed approximately 560,000 to continue learning during that pandemic induced school closure (Latchem and Jung, 2009).

Extended school closures due to pandemics have not been the only potential source of guidance. For example, a school or district could use the lessons learned in a case described by Mackey et al. (2012), who outlined “the immediate post-earthquake challenges of redesigning courses using different blends of face-to-face and online activities to meet the needs of on-campus, regional campus, and distance pre-service teacher education students” (p. 122), to plan for remote teaching. Rush et al. (2016) described many of the aspects that schools should plan for in case they found themselves in the position of having to transition to remote teaching to “sustaining school operations when a disaster makes school buildings inaccessible or inoperable for an extended period of time” (p. 188). The list of topics included issues surrounding connectivity, device distribution, teacher preparation, instructional modalities, content creation/curation, etc.. While only published in April of this year, using interviews and focus groups conducted in 2017 and 2018, Schwartz et al. (2020) described the lessons learned following the 2017 hurricane season on how distance learning could be used as “a way to continue instruction in emergencies and can support social distancing” (p. 2).

How many more examples do we need to add to that narrative before school districts, departments of education, and teacher education programs begin to take emergency planning around alternative modes of educational delivery seriously.  In the case of this example that John is discussing, this Ohio school district has spent the last two and a half years engaged in various forms of emergency remote learning, remote learning, and online learning.  And given that we’re still in the midst of the pandemic, why didn’t this school district have a better plan?  I mean at some point the district should have planned for the potential that a large percentage, potentially even a majority of teachers in the district could have been out of the classroom due to COVID.  Was this the best plan they had at the time for that kind of contingency?

Why can’t these authorities engage in better planning to address short-term and long-term school closures?

 

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BY JOHN WATSON It’s well understood in digital learning circles that emergency remote instruction during the pandemic was both the best option when schools had to be closed, and a bad reflection on learning online. District and school leaders, teachers, and everyone else did the best they could on short notice, but it’s clear that emergency remote instruction was neither highly successful nor did it represent, in most cases, best practices in online instruction. We’re now seeing the first of what may be a new trend that would be an even worse reflection on online learning. The Columbus (OH) school district is facing a teachers’ strike, and is planning to shift to online instruction using substitute teachers. (Before I write further about this, I want to be clear that nothing I’m writing is intended as commentary on the legitimacy of the strike, the district response in general, or any other union/management issues. I haven’t look into the details of the strike, and in any case I have never dug into work disputes in education.) From a Columbus Dispatch article on August 11: Columbus City Schools announced plans Thursday for remote learning using non-union substitute teachers if the Columbus Education Association follows through on its formal notice to the State Employment Relations Board to strike if it does not reach a new contract agreement before school starts Aug. 24. If the CEA does set up picket lines, the district will move to “synchronous and asynchronous remote learning” and the district’s buildings will be closed to students and community members, according to information on a district webpage Superintendent Talisa Dixon sent to district families Thursday afternoon. “The District Administration will send parents and students correspondence regarding the procedures to begin the remote learning program before the first day of school,” according to the district.  Did anyone think this was going to go well? If they did, they’ve been proven wrong. From an article on August 24: Columbus City Schools superintendent Talisa Dixon admits ‘technology challenges’ Columbus City Schools Superintendent Talisa Dixon on Wednesday morning said the district has had “technology challenges” and asked for patience. “We know this is not ideal,” Dixon said. “We know our families are stressed and not happy with the decisions to move forward, but we have to open up schools and provide additional supports to our students and our families. I understand their frustrations. I am very optimistic that we will resolve this as soon as possible to get them back in school face-to-face with their teachers.” As mentioned earlier, I have no position on the labor dispute in Columbus. But I do have a position on how digital learning advocates should react, if asked. This is not online instruction. This is unlikely to produce learning gains in students. “Addressing labor disputes” should not be among the reasons that a district considers adding digital learning options. Aside from work stoppages, other circumstances arise (snow days, natural disasters, pandemics, etc.) where teachers and students may not be able to meet in person. Districts would benefit by being prepared with a plan for transitioning to high quality online learning options in these situations. Providing all teachers, families, and stakeholders with communication plans and some training, based on researched best practices, for teaching and learning in online learning environments are a necessity for ensuring continuity of learning during these temporary circumstances.

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