Roll back the clock to April of last year, and the world was adapting for the first time in generations to public lock-downs in order to battle the progress of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was unsettling, unprecedented, and previously unimaginable, and the work of those in the front-line combating the virus, developing a vaccine, or just caring for loved ones was inspiring. For all of those not directly affected by loss or illness, there was also something novel and intriguing. What would be the next internet craze for how to pass the time? How would creative educators adapt their work to the video conference world they found themselves in? How would we keep students fit, engaged, and distract them from the enforced distance from their friends and their schools?
Aside from the novelty aspect, the warm and sunny Spring weather last April made a huge difference. Days were lighter and longer, crêpes and Bratwürst did a roaring trade in the Clara-Zetkin Park and elsewhere, and there was a palpable sense of joie de vivre despite the health war raging around us. Some people even privately remarked that the enforced slowing down of the incessant pace of 21st Century life was a good thing.
And this brings us to today, the 19th January, 2021. As Federal State leaders meet today to discuss the successes and disappointments of the current lock-down measures, and plan perhaps to extend them longer, enforce them harder, and cut contact deeper, we all worry for the well-being of our children. I joked to a colleague yesterday that, for me, the coronavirus has only mandated what I have been practicing for years: spending time at home with my wife and children, reading books, playing games and watching Netflix – social distancing is a term I used to use to pretend my inability to acquire an invitation to a social gathering was a matter of choice and policy! But for our children, it represents a greater challenge.
For them, like us, the novelty has certainly worn off. In the Secondary School, access to digital classrooms and progression with their learning, while no substitute for the real thing, has meant students can continue to develop and learn. A gentle covering of snow has helped, also, to sweeten the bitter pill of the dark mornings and early evenings. However, staring at a screen all day and not having the opportunity to interact with friends in and around the school building is certainly starting to take its toll.
We have opted for a model of blended synchronous and asynchronous learning in the Secondary School. Teachers are expected to deliver at least one (perhaps two) video lessons during the course of a week. While it is not the same and particular skills of managing the students’ engagement gets lost in transfer, it is perfectly possible still to structure a good teaching and learning sequence using a video conference. However, despite starting the term in January with every lesson a video lesson (to account for the first week back being a short week, and for the fact that many classes were needing to start new units of work), we don’t believe asking students to sit behind video lessons for the whole day, however well they are structured, is good for their well-being. Days quickly become long, sedentary, and lacking in those real-world interactions such as a look and a joke with a friend across the room, even moving from class to class, that make school the communal experience that it has always and will always be.
We believe it to be imperative for students to plan their week – developing the IB’s self-management skills – in order to have time to enjoy the daylight, the fresh air, some exercise, and some down-time. With every lesson behind their screens, this is impossible. For this reason, teachers have been actively encouraged not to make every lesson a video conference, remembering that there is no point in teaching the material if there is no one willing and capable of learning it. Moreover, the asynchronous learning – the additional, independent work scaffolded and structured in such a way that students can complete it on their own to develop their learning – is supposed to be shared on or before Monday morning, to allow the students to plan their week of work accordingly, even to organise video conferences with their friends to work through the material and support each other collaboratively.
Getting this balance right is difficult – some tasks we think will take less time take a lot longer, and when we’re not in the classroom and able to immediately identify this and intervene accordingly, it is a lot more difficult to judge. It is crucial that students feel empowered to speak and write to their teachers about this, or that you as parents contact teachers directly if you have concerns that there is too much work and the students are unable to get any sort of balance. We, as school leaders, are actively seeking information from students and sharing it with teachers to assist in this process, since it seems even easier than in the classroom to double-up, and have lessons taking longer, with less collaborative, productive work in class, and then students having more work to do “at home” than usual. It is not an exact science, but as with all skill-sets we are getting better at it the longer this goes on. Let’s hope it doesn’t go on long enough for us to achieve true mastery.
In an IB Conference I was leading five years ago, there was a segue into a conversation among teachers and educational leaders about educational technology and the future of learning. Having made my claim that the art of effective teaching had not changed much, in essence, from the days of Ancient Greece, and that great practice involved relationships, engagement, and inspiration, I was told that my ideas were a little outdated and that students individually engaged with their screens and the enormous potential of online collaboration was the future. The suggestion was that schools should be built purely around common spaces with all students given laptops, flexible timetabling opportunities based mainly on their choosing what to work on whenever, and indeed universities would merely involve youngsters in living quarters all working in their rooms and connecting with tutors and peers online. I have first-hand teaching experience of the former in an environment in which not only were the learning outcomes inferior, but also students were mostly a combination of bored, disengaged, and even depressed by the lack of human interaction and inspiration. The latter, about universities, was doubtless true before COVID struck and is certainly the case now. It can also be seen in E.M. Forster’s marvelous dystopian short-story, The Machine Stops, written in 1909, in which the lock-downs of 2020 and 2021 were predicted as the end-game of human nature and the limits of progress.
If there is to be a positive to take away from the past twelve months, it might be that this idea of less human connection and more virtual connection being something to aspire to is put to bed forever. In the meantime, we need to do all we can, at school and at home, to engage and interact with the children as much as possible. Otherwise, what they are missing in personal contact will have detrimental effects on their well-being the longer this crisis continues.
N. Allen 19-1-2021