Distance Learning Educators: What It’s Like

For many, the pandemic has slowed the pace of life.  Certainly millions of people have turned to unemployment relief as their jobs have literally evaporated.  But many of those who have maintained their jobs have seen a recalibration of expectations, a shift in what is expected, and, of course, a major downshift in travel.  So if you are “enjoying more time with your kids” or “have had time to pick up a new quarantine hobby,” please consider, for a moment the plight of your children’s teachers.

Just a few months ago, there were memes aplenty, calling for million dollar teacher salaries – and cases of wine alongside.  Now there are unrealistic expectations and a real risk that we will burn out our already shrinking cadre of educators.  

Teachers are social beings.  Even those who are introverts are accustomed to seeking feedback from their students, the vast majority of it non-verbal.

My very first year of teaching a colleague and mentor took me aside and let me know that the very best form of classroom management (with which I was struggling mightily) was an excellent lesson plan.

So began my commitment to plan and organize my way out of the chaos.  And while I was able to both find my sanity – and refocus on what I was supposed to be teaching anyway – the students benefited in ways I hadn’t anticipated.  The environment of my class became one of structure, of clearly anticipated benchmarks.  No surprises.  No “gotcha” tests or quizzes.  Just well-thought out, clearly organized lessons – and assignments.  

Though a social studies teacher by trade, I was teaching very scientifically.  The blueprint for standards-based grading that so many of my colleagues are moving to now was not available to me then, but I would have embraced it fully if it was on my radar.  

My husband, on the other hand, a science teacher, is an artist when it comes to teaching.  He strings ideas together to weave a compelling narrative, drawing on personal stories and connections to make his often abstract content as relevant as possible.  

Both styles of educators – and all those in between – are being negatively impacted by pandemic education.  Being distance learning educators is new for us all.

Seeking Feedback

Whether it’s your first year or your thirty-first year, in 2020 pretty much everyone feels like a new teacher.

In full distance learning, we try to gauge feedback from little blank Zoom squares, constantly wondering if it is more of an issue of glitchy technology, or of teen angst, that prevents them from hitting the video button.  

When screen sharing, it is nearly impossible to see them anyway, let alone read whatever might be coming through in the chat.

In places where schools have reopened fully in person, educators are walking on eggshells, trying to support and connect with kids from literally across the room – or gym, or field or tent.  Feeling committed to their students and yet their health – and that of their families – imperiled by every minute of in-person class time. 

Unless these schools are tiny, with stable cohorts, they are being shut down for quarantines, (as are many colleges and universities without aggressive testing plans).  We are used to being on the front lines of meeting our students academic and social needs – but to risk our health, and that of our communities to do so is unconscionable.  

The Double Whammy of the Hybrid Model

Which is why so many districts have moved toward the hybrid model, touting it as the best of both worlds.  But the hybrid model in typical public secondary school leaves teachers in the worst possible position.  Risking their physical health to teach the kids in front of them, and their mental health in keeping up with the ones at home.  Trying to teach live and via Zoom simultaneously, all with a mask and face shield obscuring their face and voice.  And planning the same content for both in-person and remote learners officially makes a hybrid two jobs in one – with no pay increase.  

In the spring, we were “building the plane while we were flying it” In the summer, we were waiting on pins and needles, for school boards and governors to determine our fate. And now, with no breather, we are here, hurtling through fall.  

Your kids’ teachers started this year tired and stretched thin.  If you want them to be able to function in the spring, or next fall, or for the next crop of kids, you need to take your foot off the gas – and put in on the brake.  

Julie Mason has done an incomparable job here making a case for why this year isn’t – and can’t be – normal.  Running our teachers into the ground shouldn’t be normal either.  

Educators are Overachievers

Most teachers are overachievers- the career that chose us, however, does not compensate us accordingly.  While we feed our hearts, minds and souls with our work, we often do so at the expense of the cash in our wallets, the hours of sleep we get, and our overall well/being. 

This is a profession that is dominated by women, many of whom still maintain a disproportionate responsibility for the day to day functioning of our homes.  And with utmost respect to our comrades in scrubs, save for that week of Million Dollar Teacher memes we have been somewhat invisible compared to nurses as we navigate this new landscape.  

We have been going above and beyond for so long that no one remembers what the baseline is – or should be.

As in all professional areas, there are a handful of individuals who are phoning it in – but they are the exception, not the rule.

The vast majority of educators are feeling the pressure of meeting an ever-increasing academic demand while simultaneously meeting the social-emotional needs of a diverse, often evolving, classroom population.  

Time for a Change

Though it was published in 2013, Amanda Ripley’s, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way is still a seminal work is this area. Her findings continue to resonate today.

We “do” more school – and more homework than many other industrialized countries, particularly those with more highly ranked educational systems.  We want teens to master time management yet we offer few opportunities to practice that skill – instead they complain of boredom, “trapped” in class. We over-focus on standardized tests, at the wrong times, when it’s clear that students who are taught well do well on these tests as a byproduct of their learning, not the sole purpose of it.

Perhaps shorter days should be the new norm for elementary schools.  Perhaps fewer days of each class per week should be the model going forward for secondary schools.  Perhaps everyone should do – and therefore grade – less homework.

For years, we have heard “don’t sweat the small stuff,” for months we have heard “less is more,” but until we actually allow our educators the time and space to breathe and recalibrate our curriculum and , we will undoubtedly end up burning out many along the way.

Related Posts:

When Reopening Schools Hybrid Model is Not Sustainable: 6 Important Concerns

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When Reopening Schools Hybrid Model is not Sustainable is part of an occasional series including educator perspectives on distance learning and reopening schools.

A Hybrid Model of Reopening Schools is Not Sustainable

Let me be clear, distance learning is not ideal.  I do not know a single educator who has spent their training or career desiring to teach TK-12 students remotely.  (Pre-2020, there were a handful of folks who chose this pathway, often instructing students with medical conditions, or in rural areas I just don’t know any personally, nor are they close to being a majority of educators nationwide.)  

In March and April 2020, in the first weeks of at-home learning and pandemic-related lockdowns, social media feeds were filled to the brim with memes and videos advocating for million dollar teacher salaries, and admitting copious day-drinking on the part of a new breed of parent-teachers.  Just six months later, teachers are front-line workers, being advised to buy scrubs (news flash:  we didn’t choose to attend medical school, nor are we compensated the same as our friends who did), mask up, and get behind plexiglass shields.  

Reopening schools prematurely means putting at risk not only staff and students, but also those with whom they all live, creating a much more precarious situation.  But “children and teens need social interaction,” you say.  True, they do, but short of full school reopening, this interaction can come in the form of affinity groups meeting, with voluntary supervision, to practice debate, or soccer, or music, ideally outdoors.  This moment requires creativity and innovation.

Consider this, for grade cohorts with a primary teacher, the hybrid model is only a viable option if staffing permits true “bubble cohorts” of 16 individuals, including the teacher. If a teacher is engaged in in-person instruction of more than one cohort, the bubble is broken from the beginning.

And for secondary schools with students seeing multiple teachers daily, the concerns grow. There are safety concerns if students continue to switch classes, and there are pedagogical ones if they are grouped, or have access to live instruction only once per week per class. As we see more TK-8 campuses opening classes, there will be a cry for secondary schools to return as well. Here is why should hold off.

Safety

Common practices (and why they won’t work)

Temperature checks at the door?  This is a possibility for self-contained buildings – but an absolute nightmare for campuses with numerous points of access – a reality in many warmer climates, especially in the western US.  

Masks: they won’t wear them with fidelity (or can’t) – just ask a science teacher how many times per class period they have to say “goggles on” during a lab – and multiply this times 6-7 classes a day, 180 days a year.   (There are also mask concerns for staff: we won’t want to wear them for several hours a day straight – plus how/where will we safely eat/drink?  Most of us barely do those things at healthy levels during a typical school day anyway, let alone with our mouths covered much of the day.)

Hand washing: most public schools don’t have enough sinks – for staff or students – and few, if any, have hot water.  

Bathrooms: see above.

Hand sanitizer: do we have access to the gallons upon gallons necessary to send millions of youth back to school?

Wipes: If each wipe can wipe one desk, and each classroom has 30 desks and 5 classes per day – you do the math.  And with more than 75 millions students in school in the US, not only would the cost would be prohibitive, but I don’t even think that many wipes exist.  Not to mention the long-term environmental impact.

Scheduling

Split schedule – in a high school, this still means some level of changing classes (which brings us back to the wipes).

Students stay in one group all day – if anyone can argue that keeping the same group of high school students in the same room all day for in-person instruction ALL subjects would be beneficial for their learning OR their social interaction, then you clearly have not set foot in a typical American high school in quite awhile.  

Students change classes not for the exercise of doing so, but to access classes that meet their interest and ability levels – and to not spend all day grating on each other in some sort of endless Breakfast Club scenario.  

Staffing

Parent voices often raise many opinions about the qualifications of their students’ teachers. Which do they want, expertise or babysitting?

Most hybrid models rest on a foundation of one cohort of students learning in person, while the other learns remotely.  The other days (or week) depending on the model, the cohorts switch.  Which means that teachers must now plan each of their lessons twice- once for students who will learn it in-person, with the ability to ask questions (albeit through masks and plexiglass) AND that exact same lesson must be recorded and posted and provided to students to learn without direct instruction and without the ability to ask in-the-moment questions.  

Which means in order for a hybrid model to happen with any sort of pedagogical fidelity, we need at least twice the teaching staff – one teacher for each cohort.  Increasing staffing would address both safety concerns (if a teacher is in contact with multiple cohorts, he or she can potentially be a carrier between the groups) and pedagogical ones (teachers are live with their cohort AND available to help when they are at home).  However, the financial cost of doubling (or tripling) staffing is untenable, never mind there aren’t enough teachers as it is.  

And returning teachers to in-person schools will increase the need for substitutes – already a category of school employee typically in short supply. In many parts of the country, substitute pools are almost entirely comprised of retired teachers, which puts many of them in a higher-risk category for covid. And if a suitable substitute is identified, there is still the issue of introducing a new individual to the cohort. If a teacher is out for 14 days (or more) due to a covid diagnosis or quarantine, then the likelihood of finding a sub willing and able to cover that entire time diminishes even further.

Sustainability

A wake-up call for those of you who are supporting distance learning with your class of one or two or even four kids at home – you may be working hard, but your kids’ teachers are working harder.  We are already facing a teacher shortage as a cohort of teachers near retirement age; pressuring staff to return too soon will cause others to choose early retirement.  

There are educators with compromised immune systems.  There are educators who care for aging parents.  There are educators who are juggling their own kids’ complex schedules while trying to do their jobs.  And there are our new teachers.  A cohort of recent graduates who are launching their careers in a surreal world of Zoom and Loom and Peardeck, without a literal shoulder to cry on – or next door neighbor to have lunch with – which every rookie educator desperately needs.  And they are doing this without the benefit of tenure to protect them from sometimes draconian administrative directives.  That does nothing to encourage these new teachers into a long-term career.

We have long been in an age of teacher martyrdom – an implicit (or sometimes explicit) competition of who can work longer hours, grade more papers, or be more devoted. This must end. Educators must learn to – and be given grace to – walk the walk with everything we implore our students to do. We preach balance, self-care, and not sweating the small stuff, yet our professional cohort is under-slept, overworked, and mired down in the minutiae of tracking Zoom attendance on multiple platforms. Our current health crisis has pushed our nation’s educators to the brink. There just does not seem to be a pathway to opening American schools without burning out our supply of one our most precious resources:  our educators. 

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The Effects of Distance Learning: What Once Was and is No Longer

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