ADDRESSING THE SECONDARY SERVICES PROVIDED BY SCHOOL
I want to show you a story from the Arizona Republic newspaper that specifically addresses the topic above. But, before doing that, I want to provide some context.
I have been reading and listening to many intelligent arguments, pro and con, about sending kids back to school. In general, the two sides build their cases around competing risks, those for keeping kids at home, those for sending them back into the classroom.
As you read through these arguments, it seems clear that a school location provides secondary value that stretches well beyond the explicit objectives and processes of conventional teaching. Perhaps the first step out from this impasse is to acknowledge this as an unintended consequence of American schooling. While these secondary values cannot be confined to childcare and to meals, these two needs are almost always included in the arguments to get kids back to school.
As I thought through this, I concluded that there was merit to the arguments on both sides of this issue. But we are faced with the practical matter that action is also required, so what should we do?
One approach would be to address this in very specific steps. My analytical model would open with a two-part position to, first, start school 100% remote and, second, figure out what to do about the secondary values that are associated with going to school.
Interestingly, we know how to teach in school and we now know a lot more about how to teach remotely. But we probably have never really focused on the smartest way to provide the secondary values that accompany going to school, especially since some of these services were not imagined when the existing teaching/school paradigm was designed. For example, until COVID-19, you did not explicitly hear people say that our schools are providing, for example, childcare. Now we know, however, that the loss of these services is a very big deal to many, many parents.
What are some of these secondary benefits? Childcare. Meals. Mental health support. The availability of tools, such as computers or pads. Personal safety. What else?
Which of these services are actually important enough to worry about? That is, we are discussing a fundamental re-think of a school’s mission forced on us by COVID-19. This is a very serious and needs very careful thinking. Might it be time to accept that a core reason for going to school is to receive these services?
And if we get by this step, we may need to identify and evaluate any creative alternative that can bring these services to children, both within the school system and without it.
If we were to address this analytically and write up some form of a project plan it might look like this:
First, start schooling remotely.
Second, identify the ten biggest issues associated with remote schooling, for example, the absence of childcare and of food.
Third, build acceptance that these are core issues and that schooling in a COVID-19 age needs to include services that address these issues as much as teaching history, or math, or science.
Fourth, conduct a thorough analysis of these issues and for each find an alternative that works. For example, given the infrastructure and given the teachers and administrators, how can the school specifically accommodate the child-care issue? Can we imagine a new paradigm where such students would, in effect, be studying from home, but their home would be inside the school building, configured to meet CDC guidelines of social distancing? Teacher involvement would be somewhat like parental involvement – navigation of systems. Help with exception situations.
Fifth, analytically work through the top ten list and find the best options for re-purposing the school to address the issue.
The simple fact may be that childcare, food, mental health counseling, technology tools, and other such services may be as essential to the child as what is taught in the classroom. Recognizing this, not as an accident but as a real purpose, would be the first step.
The Arizona school system is apparently already moving in this direction. What follows are major excerpts from today’s edition, August 19, 2020, of the Arizona Republic, page 8A, “Schools across the state open for children who need on-site support”, reported by Lorraine Longhi and Joshua Bowling:
Arizona schools all opened in some capacity Monday, but most offered the minimum level of in-person options the state allowed.
The criteria for students who qualified to take advantage of the in-person services were broad, and many districts and charter operators opened their campuses to any student who needed a safe place to go.
Priority was given to students with disabilities, English-language learners, students who qualify for free and reduced lunch, children in foster care, students without reliable access to technology and students whose parents are essential workers.
The on-site programs are not traditional classroom setups.
The support is intended to provide students with a space to study, a reliable internet connection to access their virtual classes, and adult supervision during normal school hours. The programs are expected to continue until schools reopen for in-person learning. (This was) Arizona’s first day of schools offering support spaces for students to participate in virtual classes.
At Scottsdale’s Coronado High School, the lecture hall was set up for students in sixth through 12th grades who needed a safe, supervised place to learn.
Margaret Serna, the executive director for Title I schools in the district, said the district opened Coronado and Saguaro high schools in south Scottsdale for on-site support because those were the areas that were expected to have the greatest demonstrated need.
Principal Amy Palatucci said that as of May, 76% of the school’s students qualified for free and reduced lunch.
Staff had prepared for up to 100 students to show up. But by 7:30 a.m., none of the 35 students who had registered for a spot at Coronado had arrived.
At 7:12 a.m. Elizabeth Ray watched the bus arrive to pick up her children for the first day of on-site support services at Verrado Middle School in the Litchfield Elementary school district.
Ray has a daughter in first grade and a son in fourth grade, both with Individualized Education Programs. Ray said Monday was the first day since the start of the semester that her son hasn’t thrown a tantrum related to his online schooling.
She described the smile on her son’s face, underneath his protective face shield, as he watched the bus arrive.
“He was genuinely smiling,” Ray said. “It was a smile that I hadn’t seen since before March.”
Ray said the opportunity for on-site support services has been a blessing, particularly as a parent of two special education students.
The district decided last week to postpone discussions on returning to in-person classes after data metrics from the Arizona Department of Health Services showed no county in the state had met the recommended benchmarks to reopen.
But for parents like Ray, the current model for distance learning is not working.
Ray said Monday was the first day that neither of her children cried during the school day. Her son woke up, knew that he needed to get ready for school and started his routine, she said.
“If this gives my kids some form of control over an otherwise crappy situation…I’m completely okay with it,” she said.
At Lincoln Elementary School in west Mesa, a handful of students and parents were lined up outside of the school at 8 a.m. to take advantage of the school’s services.
Karli Park was among them, dropping off her two children for the day. Park has a son with an IEP and a neurotypical daughter.
Park lives in Chandler, seven miles away from the school, and works full time as a social worker. She said online schooling has been difficult for her family. The online learning model reads out lessons in a “robot voice,” making it particularly difficult for her son to process, she said….
On Monday, she said staff at Lincoln seemed to be keeping the learning area clean and socially distanced, and she was comforted that her children would be sitting together, thanks to a policy by the school to group children from the same family together.
Park said she and her husband would support and empower their children to ultimately make the decision about which learning model they prefer.
But she still said it was a no-win situation, particularly for low-income families and English learners that have less support when making difficult decisions about whether to prioritize their children’s safety or their education.
“I think everyone just needs to understand, just empathy-wise, there are parents that are going to have to make the choice to put their kids in an unsafe situation,” Park said. “Really, we’re pushed into a corner.”
How the services work
Most districts and schools required that parents register their students beforehand, to plan for social distancing requirements.
School instruction is not provided at the on-site support locations. Instead, students receive supervision and assistance with their online classes from support staff. Schools asked that students bring their district-issued device and headphones to complete their online schoolwork.
Students are required to wear masks, though some districts will make exceptions for students in self-contained special education classes, students incapable of physically removing a mask or students with medical conditions preventing them from safely wearing a mask.
Districts are not providing transportation to the on-site support services, except for some districts like Peoria Unified and Litchfield Elementary that are providing transportation for special education students in self-contained, specialized programs.
Many of the districts are providing free and reduced-price lunch for students, or will have breakfast and lunch available to purchase, though some districts have asked parents to provide lunch for their students.
Some only keeping select schools open
Mesa Public Schools, the largest district in the state, opened on-site support centers at 26 of its schools. Registration is accepted until space at each site is filled.
The Chandler Unified School District is providing on-site support at all of its schools Monday through Friday during school hours. Chandler Online Academy students may attend support services at their home school.
Tucson Unified is providing services at all of its schools to “high needs” or “at risk” students, including self-contained Exceptions Education students, McKinney Vento homeless, refugee and foster care students.
All of BASIS charter schools and Legacy Traditional schools opened for on-site support services.
Peter Bezanson, CEO of BASIS, said that demand for on-site support services has been “highly variable,” but that they have seen the greatest demand at schools with a greater number of low-income students, like their south Phoenix location, where 75% of the students qualify for free and reduced lunch.
Have a tip out of schools? Reach the reporter Lorraine Longhi at llonghi@gannett.com or 480-243-4086. Follow her on Twitter @lolonghi.
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A Fifteen-Year-Old Boy Thinks About Remote Schooling
The best thing about on-line schooling is that it is better than a poor teacher. The worst thing about on-line schooling is that it is not nearly as effective as a good teacher.
The on-line learning neutralizes a poor teacher. We are learning on our own. I have friends that were struggling to get Cs with our teacher, and they are now getting As and Bs. In this case, I am describing a biology teacher. She was not that good at it. Since the start of quarantine, she now provides us on-line links to much better materials. I am doing better.
The teacher I really like is in Geometry. When we were in school, I was getting lots of questions answered. I was acing the questions. Now I am being sent a 2-7-minute video on a complicated subject that we might spend 1 ½ hrs. on in school. Trying to figure out the videos is taking lots of extra work and my grade has gone down.
There is no doubt that we are getting asked to do a lot more on our own.
It is also true that on-line just simply works better with some subjects than with others. For example, my English class is what I might call assignment based. In this case, getting on-line homework or assignments, for example reading and then writing, fits pretty well with the on-line tool. But, with geometry and also with biology, where we are working in teams, where we need lot of interaction, where we need the feedback loop, the on-line mode just isn’t cutting it.
I am also taking ASL (American Sign language) as my language. This is really difficult on-line. Our teacher shows us how to practice dialogue. She demonstrates the signs for us. Learning in the classroom is much easier.
I am also taking a class in orchestra. The whole point of orchestra is to play together as a group. With internal latency and no ability to interact in real time, putting together pieces as a group can be particularly challenging.
We have on-line meetings, typically using Zoom. Maybe 7 to 8 kids out of 20 are showing up and the others are blowing off the meetings. Given COVID-19 environment, there isn’t much the teachers can do to control this. Too many excuses. For a lot of students, it is hard for them to develop motivation when not at school.
This Summer and the Fall will be interesting. Some parents are saying: not sending my kid to school. Some people are suggesting that this may not be a big problem and we’ll just go dual track, on-line and in classroom. I wonder about that because the teachers actually spend a lot of time doing the planning, preparations, digital document distributions, document collection, etc. for on-line learning that might be add-on work if they also had to have somewhat different methods for in school teaching. It might take teachers a lot more time to teach a class when half the kids are in school and half are learning on-line.
I can’t wait to get back to school!! I really miss the social aspect – my friends. We are all city kids and we are like a family. We hugely rely on each other, whether we are working, or biking, or just walking to and from school, or to other places.
On-line school is much more dependent on the technology. Way bigger reliance on technology. In a way, it is like going from a child’s use of technology to adult use. Let me explain it this way. Now, we need to be regularly on the look-out for digital messages from our teachers – schedules, assignments, meetings, materials – and if we miss these things we are in trouble. We need to be checking on these commitments all of the time. We are not used to this kind of pressure coming from our digital tools.
Zoom video conferencing is new to us. This has emerged since the quarantine.
I use web-ex in my advisory sessions with some outsiders who are assisting me.
LAUSD has a web site called Schoology which we use to submit assignments back to teachers and for other purposes. Sometimes we record our material on a hard copy and then take a picture of the work which we then transmit digitally.
We also have used Google Classroom and Blackboard.
Net to net: the quarantine sucks and it doesn’t make me feel good about on-line schooling. You cannot overestimate the social dimension of school.
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A Ten-Year-Old Girl thinks about Going to School Remotely
Going to school remotely is much more than a modest difference from being schooled in the classroom.
We use two of three different on-line tools. First, we use the web site my school had before the crisis. Second, we depend on Zoom Teleconferencing. Third, we use Microsoft Teams. We use Zoom much more inter-actively that Teams. My teacher will conduct a class with 60 students over Zoom. Zoom allows all 60 to be shown at the bottom of the screen and alerts us when a student has her hand up. The teacher can select the student. We are not using that kind of capability with Teams.
I have five subjects this year: Reading, Language and Arts, Math, Social Sciences, and Science. Social Sciences and Science have been dropped. Both of these subjects require a lot of student interaction, for example, forming teams for science projects. Thus far, we have not figured out how to do these kinds of things remotely.
Typically, on Sunday evening, my teacher will send out by email a full schedule for the week, including subjects and dates. She will also explain to us what we need to do. She may use Teams for transmission of the information. Usually we will have a Zoom meeting on Monday and Wednesday.
On-line school looks and feels very different. In class, we might actively read a chapter in a book and then have a discussion session. Now, the teacher is assigning us the chapter, which we read on-line, and we are given writing assignments that take 1-2 hours almost every day. This is much harder.
The best thing about on-line school is I can stay in my PJs all day long if I want to. The worst part is that it is harder, I have to do more studying, and it involves a lot more work.
Doing a lot is not necessarily learning. On-line learning is not going to take over from in-school work. In addition to being able to see your friends, regular school is better. You learn more when you can ask your teacher to explain it. At the same time, I have no doubt that we will see more on-line learning complementing in-school when we go back to school full time.
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Teaching the Theatrical / Performance Based Arts
My workplace is in the arena of performance-based college training. While we are teaching online remotely to finish out the current semester, I couldn’t imagine how we would continue to teach performing arts into new semesters, if we weren’t on campus and in classrooms. However, as time has worn on, I am realizing that all of us, even those in lines of work that seem to require person-to-person contact, may have to imagine how we move forward in a different way.
Since the world shut down a month ago, AMDA College and Conservatory of the Performing Arts was quick to throw itself headfirst into the world of remote learning. The musical theatre faculty (roughly eight of us) were in frequent communication, and eventually conference calls via Zoom, learning how to navigate the app’s features and figure out how we wanted to utilize them for our classroom curricula. Understandably, some teachers were on a steeper learning curve than others, and all were relatively new to the technology… let’s face it, none of us were hired for our tech skills! I admitted to feeling very ill-at-ease with the idea of working and teaching online; I worried that with dozens of millennials on the receiving end of my instruction, they’d be frustrated that they had a much more facile knowledge of the tech than their teacher.
However, when I began working with the other teachers, I realized that I am savvier than I thought; some of the faculty were great with Zoom, and some were utterly confounded. I was somewhere in the middle. When remote teaching began, I also discovered that I am on a par with students’ understanding of Zoom and online features, and even out ahead of them in some cases. I began to construct a way to approach the teaching that wouldn’t feel overwhelmingly stressful to me.
But the main problem remains- how do you continue a curriculum that by nature requires in-person, hands-on experiential training?
My courses this semester presented a particular challenge. Many of my colleagues are teaching courses this semester that are primarily solo teaching classes- techniques, audition preparation, etc. In other words, the coursework involves working with students one at a time. But I teach three upper-level classes this term: Scenes, Roles and Readings, and Showcase. Two of these courses involve scene work between students; in fact, that is the courses’ central focus. Scenes- well, the title of the class makes the course goals obvious. Roles and Readings is a senior course where each student learns how to prepare and be directed in a role, with others in the class “cast” in each other’s shows and working in repertory, culminating in a final performance for public at course’s end. Showcase is for graduating seniors, a fully directed, produced show for their families and friends performed the weekend of their graduation.
These courses are taken for credit, obviously- even the showcase- so they must be seen through this semester, even remotely. It has been largely up to us as faculty to figure out how that happens. Without going into details, I can share that I have figured out a way to move their training forward in two of the classes. But in both of these classes, the way I usually work with them and move their training forward has been severely compromised. I can still assign them the research, the paperwork, all the things they must do to understand their material. I can talk character motivation, break down scenes, and even work with them on their individual part of a song on their physicality, choices, bad habits, etc. But I can’t do real scene work. They can’t work on how to relate to another actor, how to break intimacy barriers… basically, so much of teaching acting is examining behavior. There is only so much behavior I can address through a box on a screen. It is a real stopping point, and growth can only go so far.
If this social distancing mandate continues, our work will be very challenging because it is hard to imagine how the essence of what the school offers could be executed remotely. It is “performance-based training”. Imagine how the dance department feels- everything about dance training happens in a classroom, at a barre, in front of a mirror, with a teacher offering constant adjustments to bodies. Onstage training is very similar. You can only “talk” acting so much.
But what if we have no choice? What if the institution either adapts, or dies? My prediction is that it will choose to adapt, if it can… if students still sign up. Will we see a surge of artists suddenly choosing a more “practical” college path, because conservatory training cannot be adequately done online? How do we adjust?
- We need a better app than Zoom, or an improvement. There are sound issues with Zoom that make duets, trios, group vocals of any kind very difficult. There is an app called Acapella that I hear is more geared for musicians and music work, but AMDA has not yet made that available to us. We would certainly have to shift to something that works better, if we were doing this for the long term.
- We would need more definitive training on how to navigate the programs we’re working with. Some teachers are computer savvy, some (like me) are getting by, a few are completely lost. So many people are being forced to get proficient at this, but in order to feel confident and offer the most options to our students, we need to understand it better.
- One huge challenge when dealing with students is that we must make room (right now, a LOT of room) for different living situations, limitations of each individual’s ability to isolate themselves for optimum classroom learning, and in some extreme cases, some students even have no access to devices. I haven’t personally run into that, but have seen many problems in dealing with the drawbacks of everyone trying to train at home (where do they go? Bedroom? Some don’t have their own room.)
One of my students is in charge of her siblings’ home school so she has to tutor them while also in my class. One family is re-doing their floors, another’s family is still asleep, and those students had to go sing outside. And then there are the family pets. (Don’t get me started). Needless to say, when you’re in an in-person classroom environment, the teacher sets a tone for learning: quiet room, phones away, no food/drink, no distractions, accountability. As soon as you do at-home learning, that control goes out the window. We need certain basic “classroom” requirements, and also need to be able to make accommodations for special circumstances. Better systems need to be in place.
- Is there a world where we could return to campus, but distance ourselves? That option should also be explored before it’s scrapped. Dancers could split into smaller groups in order to be more spread out in a classroom. In my case, how could I teach in person but keep people at a distance? For my classes that involve scene work, I’m not sure. It really leaves out the grit of performing with other actors- so much of it is physical, close, intimate. But it probably can be done. I don’t think it’s a deal-breaker. In my opinion, being in the same room together is better than at home as far as the training goes… even if we must stay six feet apart. Showcase would be a cinch. Everybody would perform at a distance. The bigger issue for a performance is, how does the audience view it if they cannot sit in a theater together?
These are questions Actor’s Equity Association is asking every day right now. Thousands of stage actors are out of work. It is feasible that the film industry might get back to work at some point in the not-so-distant future… closed sets, careful attention to health, etc. But live theater is at risk the same way sports is at risk, because of the spectators. Actors Equity is facing bankruptcy in the very near future. Live theater could become an endangered species.
These are the ideas popping around in my brain. Thanks for asking me to share them. In every walk of life, the name of the game is thinking outside the box… because quite literally, we’re not allowed inside that box right now.
