Will Distance Learning Become the ‘New Normal’?
Andrew Thomas B.Ed (Hons) M.Phil NPQH Principal Al Ain English Speaking School For some children, we are now in week 10 of distance learning and there is talk that distance learning may continue for some time into the near future. Various different models have been touted, whereby children may go back to school in the new academic term with 70% in a real class, and 30% in a virtual one, but regardless of percentage splits, could distance learning become the new normal for our students, teachers and parents?
gins. Students are normally given some instruction on the board, a few questions may be asked, and then the students will be given time to answer questions or complete a task. Children in the Primary school will be set differentiated work through the ‘Chilli Challenge,’ where a student who completes the ‘Mild’ work, will then go on to challenge themselves with the ‘Spicy’ one. Students in secondary will also be given differentiated tasks to complete also in a similar manner.
At Al Ain English Speaking school, our own research is telling us that teachers are working longer hours; children are working longer hours; and when we are dealing with younger children, parents are working longer hours to support them too.
You can almost guarantee that during that lesson, a student or two will require the toilet pass, and we have a few more minutes wasted of learning.
“How can this be?”, I hear many people asking me. Surely, apart from parents supporting their children; trying to run a household, and complete their own work, how are children and teachers working longer hours, and more importantly for myself as a Principal, what effects are these having on the school community?
Students will now be working at their own pace. The gifted and talented students will eat the work up and require another challenge, whilst the majority of the other children will make an attempt to complete the work that has been set. There are, of course, those students who struggle, and will need the support of the teacher, and there are students that will also become easily distracted and go off topic, wasting vital seconds that they will never get back.
To answer this, we must understand how a classroom runs, and I mean a real day to day classroom, not one from utopia, but a real time everyday class, where there is a lot of non-learning time, all governed by routines and bells.
As the lesson comes to an end, the packing away of materials, books, pencils etc occurs, where you can probably take at least another minute off the learning which is increased with age and then we have the transition to the next lesson, where the Primary students look to reset the books and materials on the desk for the next topic, and the secondary students walk to their next class. Time is ticking into the next lesson already, but this is reality and has been so for decades.
The ‘top runners’ for non-learning time, include the start and end of a lesson, where children may line up, walk in and then search the depths of their bags for a pencil, protractor, calculator, or whatever implement they need to start the lesson. It’s amazing how big and cavernous those bags can be at times when it comes to the searching of a pen! Naturally there is, at times a need to borrow one from the teacher, or a need to sharpen a pencil, which all takes precious minutes from a lesson. Once settled, the lesson may start, but again, at times, the teacher may need to manage a pupil or two who has become distracted with another. The lesson then beThe Source
With the virtual classroom, and using platforms such as Google Classrooms, there is no clock! Yes, there is to make a ‘live’ online lesson, but once the work is set, all of it is due to be turned in. So, whereas a student may have been set 20 questions of Maths 10
