Turning Obstacles Into Positives
Ms. Meier was teaching chemistry and physics courses at a rural high school in Illinois when the COVID pandemic swept through the nation. In March 2020, her school transitioned to fully remote instruction in an effort to slow the spread of the virus and stayed that way for the remainder of the school year. At the beginning of the 2020–21 school year, the school shifted to a hybrid schedule where students who elected to receive in-person instruction came to the school building in the morning, and students that elected to receive remote instruction were taught during the second half of the school day. Ms. Meier noted that remote and hybrid instruction brought about a number of significant obstacles. One of the biggest was a lack of student access to reliable technology and internet service.
Our students were really disconnected. We’re a very rural community for the most part. And therefore, some students didn’t have any access to online learning. The district had not provided any technology tools to our students. We had not provided any laptops. We had not provided any iPads or anything like that.
Another obstacle Ms. Meier and her colleagues faced were the limited capabilities of the free online platform (Google) that her school adopted, limitations she suggested might not have been so apparent had her school chosen to invest in software specifically designed for remote learning.
We didn’t have any platform. As instructors, we didn’t know what to do or how to do things. We were told via email and correspondence that we should be using Google platforms like Google classroom, Google docs, et cetera. . . . I really felt our district, and I think a lot of districts around tried to take the free way out for a lot of platforms rather than saying, “Look, we’re going to invest since this is now our new teaching method for the year. We’re going to invest in Blackboard or we’re going to invest in Canvas, or we’re going to invest in something that’s an educational software meant for remote learning.” They didn’t do that. I’m not bashing on Google. It was free. It was better than nothing. But with free often comes a lot of limitations on support and limitations on how to put different types of assessment and different types of assignments out there.
Although this free platform provided difficulties for many teachers, Ms. Meier found its limitations were particularly problematic for her chemistry instruction. In particular, the platform was not conductive to entering, using, and manipulating accurate chemical equations.
A lot of the software that we had doesn’t allow for superscripts and subscripts. And so when you’re trying to write chemical formulas and chemical equations and math equations, it doesn’t accept what you want. And two C and C squared are not the same thing. So there were a lot of formatting issues.
Although the online platform itself was challenging, Ms. Meier also had to devote a significant amount of time to finding online resources that aligned with the content she was required to cover, and she had to adapt these resources for remote and hybrid learning. And even when she found an appropriate online resource, she usually needed to modify it so that her remote instruction was consistent with her in-person instruction.
Oh, [planning time] doubled it without a doubt. Because to deliver in person, you can do it on the fly. You can say, “These are the things I’m going to cover, but the students are going to lead the discussion, and we’re going to go from there.” You can’t do any of that remote. So not only did I have to figure out how I was going to do my in person and deal with the management of that because of COVID restrictions, but then to the other side of it, the remote learning was horrific. You could say, “Okay, we’re going to look at a Khan Academy video,” but those don’t necessarily match up with what you’re teaching in class. So you have to decide, am I going to go with Khan and add this other stuff in for them or remove things because they don’t cover it, or am I going to nitpick that apart? . . . It was just really hard because it doesn’t fit perfectly.
In the 2021–22 school year, Ms. Meier’s school transitioned back to in-person instruction for all students. Although she was glad for a more “normal” set of teaching circumstances, Ms. Meier realized that many of the obstacles she had faced eventually turned into positives. For one, she gained an appreciation of the benefits of technology and became much more comfortable using technology for various tasks.
My own use of computers has improved. . . . I don’t mind using them. I’ve used them for spreadsheets and data processing and making documents and those kinds of things. And I wasn’t afraid of doing this Zoom call today, but had you asked me about a Zoom meeting two and a half years ago, I’d have been like, “A what? A who?”
Second, online learning pushed Ms. Meier to find engaging resources that her students could interact with in a virtual environment. Although these resources were essential for online and hybrid instruction, they continued to be valuable once students were back in person. For example, some resources provided opportunities for students to orient to hands-on labs they would eventually be performing in the classroom, while others engaged students in activities that aren’t possible in the classroom due to lack of materials or safety concerns.
I was able to find some online resources for virtual labs, for doing some things that are a little less risky that kids can experiment with and play with before we actually go into a wet lab situation for chemistry. My Chem 2 kids like that because I’ve been able to find a few that use equipment we don’t have, so they get to see what it would be like.
Despite the stress and difficulties brought about by the pandemic, Ms. Meier reflected on the experience as an unexpected opportunity for growth. While this professional growth might not have been something she was prepared for, she acknowledged that it will help her be a better and more effective teacher in the future.
Growth is good. Experiencing new things is good. As a teacher, I’ve always tried to participate in things that would help me grow my profession, grow my content area. That’s been important to me throughout all of my teaching. . . . But anything that makes us grow and helps us better use the tools around us is a positive.
