With schools closed for weeks and perhaps months longer, everyone involved in education is facing unfamiliar and sometimes daunting challenges. Just about everyone is in a new, uncomfortable situation.
When schools first closed in mid-March for an expected three weeks, the schoolwork sent home focused on review and enrichment. In this first phase, the goals were for teachers to provide optional work and to stay connected with their students. The result was a well-intentioned flood of information going home to parents, not only from teachers but also from the administrators and specialists.
A return to curriculum
When it became clear schools would have to remain closed for weeks longer, the state education commissioner directed districts to begin a second phase of remote learning, moving ahead with the regular curriculum and introducing new material.
Hildreth Elementary School fourth-grader Chloe Bradley works on a math worksheet. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
In late March, preparing to move into that second phase, Harvard school administrators sent a survey to parents K to 12, asking for feedback on how they could do better. The results showed that parents of elementary school kids were feeling confused and overwhelmed.
Remote learning proved to be much harder at Hildreth Elementary School than at the Bromfield School, said School Superintendent Linda Dwight in a recent phone conversation. Elementary students require more direct parenting than older kids, she said, and they are less independent learners. “It was a rockier, harder road, but we’re learning as we go,” Dwight said.
In response to parental concerns, HES made organizational changes and clarified what is required of students. Dwight worked with Principal Josh Myler to set up an organization more like that of Bromfield. Each teacher now uses the same online template to communicate, and each grade level uses the same template to lay out the week’s work in every subject. It is clear what work is required (a gold star is next to it) and what work is optional. Parents can print out the grade-level weekly chart and check off boxes as the child does the work. And at the parents’ request, specialists are no longer sending separate communications.
Online programs, educational software a challenge
Phoebe Hefron, who has a second-grader and a kindergartner as well as two younger children, said the school sends a weekly spreadsheet of activities for writing, math, reading, science, social studies, art, music, and physical education for her second-grader. But she said it’s sometimes hard to find the online lesson that matches the assignment.
One of the biggest problems is accessing and locating a printable version of the worksheet, she said. “The time my kids spend doing the worksheet is less than my time trying to find it.”
Students are not expected to be working every day, said Dwight. The objective is to move the curriculum forward at a two-fifths pace, so students are working two of the five days each week. Each subject will have two concepts for the week, taken from the state standards. Students are given links to click that will take them to readings or activities for which they have free accounts through the school.
Students are introduced to the new concepts in a number of different ways. The teacher may record a video of herself conducting a lesson; the video may be played over and over, unlike a lesson delivered on Zoom. A student may be referred to a website or a webinar to practice a concept or to create a project.
Elementary students are invited to one Zoom meeting a week with their teacher, Dwight said. This is a venue for socializing, asking questions, reinforcing concepts, or playing a game—it is not for introducing a new concept.
Benefits and drawback of Seesaw
HES is using an online multimedia journal called Seesaw that allows each child to upload work to a personal portfolio, accessible to the student, the teacher, and parents. Myler said one advantage to Seesaw is that people were already somewhat familiar with it, because HES has been using it for a few years to show parents examples of their child’s work. Another advantage is that student work is within an account, not “open to the world,” in Myler’s words.
But some HES parents have found Seesaw difficult to work with. “It’s not the right tool—it’s being asked to do more than it can,” Hefron said.
Another parent, Robin Hu, also mentioned the difficulty of using different apps, links, publishers’ websites, and logins. Hu has a daughter in kindergarten and a toddler, and she said she uses the hour after her children’s bedtime to read all the school emails, charge the iPad, and get the apps for the next day. She explained that her daughter has about 11 activities per week to complete, laid out on the school spreadsheet. But Hu said, “I think it’s doable.”
Gloria Pierce, who has a sixth-grader at Bromfield as well as a fifth-grader at HES, said the educational software “is both the biggest challenge and the biggest help.” She said her sixth-grader had daily Zoom meetings that provided a lot of structure and was able to do most work independently. The fifth-grade work, she said, was less structured and she found it “harder to manage and a lot more stressful.”
Like many parents, Pierce has tried to create structure for her children’s home learning. Originally she scheduled the hours from 9 to 11 a.m. as lesson time, but she said her daughters decided to start earlier. So Pierce says the total time, including afternoon Zoom meetings, comes to about three or four hours of work a day.
Parents appreciate teachers’ work
“The teachers are really doing a good job overall,” Pierce said. Other parents agreed. Hu said teachers have been very responsive and flexible. And Hefron said, “I know the teachers would rather be in their classrooms, and they miss their kids.”
Dwight said teachers had only two days of planning for this new way of teaching. They are scouring websites to glean material and evaluating whether it is best to video themselves giving instruction or to refer students to an interactive site, and trying to figure out how to find balance. At the same time, teachers are at home with their own kids with perhaps no place to really get away to do their own schoolwork.
Dwight said parents familiar with working remotely have suggested ideas that might work in the classroom. She plans to hold a meeting in which they can share ideas.
While the education commissioner suggested evaluation terms like “credit/no credit” or “pass/fail,” Dwight said administrators here preferred the terms “complete” or “incomplete” and plan to use these terms K through 12. Dwight explained that, in contrast to “fail,” the term “incomplete” leaves the door open and encourages the student to keep working at a task.
Special education faces a unique problem in continuing services remotely to kids because of confidentiality issues. Teachers and assistants can hold Zoom meetings with individuals. The state has approved remote skills labs with teachers and assistants where groups of students can get help, provided families are aware that these are open meetings.
From the commissioner on down, schools are putting the well-being of students foremost, Dwight said. Mindful that these times can exacerbate stress and mental health problems, school counselors are holding individual sessions with their students.
Dwight said it’s all a tricky balance. The debate about how much remote learning is the right amount is like the debate over homework. Some parents think there should be no requirements at all, while others think everything should be required, with nothing optional.
Lindsay Burke, whose four children range from pre-K to fifth grade, said: “Every day is a different challenge. The benefit is that my husband and I are much more aware of what the kids are learning. Before, it was just what they chose to tell you at the end of the day.”
Schools Trust makes grants to help at-home learning
This week the School Committee gratefully accepted three grants from the Harvard Schools Trust. All three were aimed at improving Hildreth Elementary School’s remote learning program.
The largest of the grants gave $4,500 to provide all 450 HES students with paperback books. The supplier will send the books directly to student’s homes, avoiding the need for teachers or volunteers to meet at the school to sort, pack, and deliver them. Teachers know that children will be spending more time than usual on electronic devices for lessons and Zoom meetings. But they agreed that time with “real” (i.e., not electronic) books is still crucial. HES Principal Josh Myler says the type of book will vary from grade to grade. Younger readers may get one that offers examples of something they are learning about in reading and writing, like poetry or journals. Older students may get a “mentor text”—a book the whole class reads together and uses as the basis for discussion.
A $625 grant will go toward the purchase of headsets for HES students who must do their online lessons in a noisy setting that makes concentration tough, perhaps with siblings nearby all working on different assignments; the headsets will be given out based on need.
About $880 will be used to buy 10 filming stands for use with smartphones or iPads. Teachers can use them while recording their lesson presentations, instead of awkwardly holding the device at arm’s length.
—Marty Green
