3 minute read
Virtual Learning: What We Learned from the Lockdown
by: Bevan Koch
In the spring of 2019, when COVID-19 began to spread across the globe, schools and businesses everywhere were shuttered, and people were told to work from home. Teachers and their students transitioned to online learning. Westview teachers had never before been tasked with teaching their students from a distance.
Advertisement
After spring break, all learning for The Westview School was remote. Teachers quickly explored online elements of their curricula and learned how to meet students via Zoom. Ancillary teachers recorded videos to push to students and periodically popped into virtual classes for a visit. Teachers spent hours working to find materials and activities to use with their students; they worked around the clock and found it difficult to distinguish between home life and work life.
At the end of the school year, administrators surveyed parents about their experiences. Fifty-two families provided feedback.
Our parents appreciated having access to teachers via Zoom and curricular materials that were either mailed or available online.
Still, they longed for more oneon-one support from teachers and opportunities for their children to engage socially with their classmates. Similarly, we asked teachers to reflect on their experiences. It was not at all surprising that their impressions were closely aligned with feedback from families. One teacher stated, “Once we all got the hang of Zoom, we had scheduled meetings daily. We made the best out of a crazy situation.”
When asked, “If you had a ‘do-over,’ is there something that you would do differently?” one teacher responded, “I would start by having my small groups for ELA and Math every day, just like I do in the classroom. It took me a few weeks to figure out that one Zoom meeting a day wasn’t working well and how to make it more beneficial for everyone.”
This observation and many others reflected a desire to deliver an online program that more closely resembles the personal attention that students at The Westview School receive in the event we have to pivot to remote learning again. Thus, this goal would be at the forefront when developing a more robust plan for virtual school. The Remote Learning Plan, developed over the summer, responds to feedback from families and reflections from teachers. The team who authored the plan spent considerable time and energy researching best practices in online and blended learning and the technology needed to support those efforts. As Westview revealed the plan to staff and families, we realized that we could launch a modified version of the plan at the beginning of the school year to meet the needs of those students and families whose circumstances warranted a delay in returning to campus.
Westview surveyed each family for their preference for beginning the school year, and when the school opened in the fall, we had 11 students who started remotely. We asked each family to commit to blocks of four weeks to minimize the number of transitions happening in the classroom. Every day our virtual learners are engaged with academic instruction, live ancillary classes, and social interaction in real-time. Also, each student has a one-on-one checkin with their teacher or teaching assistant every week. At the end of each interval, the administration checks in to gather feedback on their experience. The reviews have been fantastic!
One family noted, “We are delighted with the remote learning experience. We appreciate how responsive the teachers have been to our questions and how they are allowing our son to engage with his friends.”
Another observed, “We are most appreciative of the teachers’ efforts to keep our son engaged with his classmates and moving along academically.”
