You Have an Expert in Us
Before transitioning to his current role as an Earth science teacher at an urban Michigan high school, Mr. Smith taught online at the community college and university levels. His familiarity with online teaching led him to post his high school curriculum on a self-created website and make it available for public use. So when COVID launched most of the nation into virtual instruction in 2020, Mr. Smith was prepared.
I had taught classes online at both a community college near me as well as a university near me, so for me to go online was actually very easy. Most of my subject matter is out there anyway on my site for public use.
Mr. Smith’s school district strongly encouraged teachers to use Google Classroom to host their online instructional materials. However, Mr. Smith chose not to use Google Classroom because it did not work well with many websites and materials he was already using. Additionally, he did not think it was worth the time and effort to move materials from his current platform (Weebly) to a new platform. However, this decision was not well received by the administration, who envisioned more uniform online resources for students.
I use Weebly for all of my online instruction. I’ve had a web presence, no joke, with my class since 1996. So as far as having that information out there available to students, it was always there. I had online labs already geared up for just such an emergency. I personally did not go with Google Classroom. That did not make for a lot of friends downtown. They all wanted everybody on one platform. The problem was with Google Classroom. It was very restrictive, and it really didn’t want to play nice with a lot of NSF or American Meteorological Society, AMS labs.
Despite this pushback, Mr. Smith forged ahead with online instruction. However, he quickly noticed that the existing gap between higher- and lower-achieving students was continuing to grow in this new learning format.
For the most part, those students that did well face-to-face did well during the first couple months of the pandemic. Those students that typically didn’t come to class anyway, they didn’t come to virtual. Those students that didn’t do homework, they still didn’t do homework virtually.
As online learning continued into the 2020–21 school year, Mr. Smith saw a major, “longtime coming” change in the school district—a 1:1 initiative that provided all students with a device to use at home and a hotspot to those with limited wi-fi access.
The district finally went to a 1:1 initiative with technology. That immediately helped everybody. Now normally, with a 1:1, people always bring up the access to the internet. The school district also provided hotspots for all those students that didn’t have internet access. They finally figured it out. I have been preaching for 20 years that we need to do this. But once COVID hit, [the district said] we need to do this now. But that was a major positive. So now students actually have the technology and have a way at home to deal with the technology.
With technology needs addressed, Mr. Smith found that his students had a much more consistent online presence and were comfortable learning virtually, two things that many of them had not previously experienced.
Those students that were online phobic, that went away. So now when the students come in and see my websites and see everything is listed, no problems whatsoever. I’ll be honest with you, I was the only science teacher out of 20 that had something like that pre-pandemic. So the students usually had culture shock to somebody that was actually online technology wise. That student anxiety is all gone now.
However, while he felt very comfortable teaching online, Mr. Smith realized that other teachers were struggling. In particular, he started to notice differences between veteran teachers who had an online presence and those who were newer to the profession, especially when it came to new grading software that was being recommended by the administration.
The veteran teachers, we just said, “We’re not dealing with this. We’ve had our online presence. We know how to do this. We’re just going to deal with the craft of teaching.” It was really those teachers that had 10 or less years of experience that had a complete meltdown due to malfunctioning software.
Moving into the 2021–22 school year, the district decided to have teachers and students return to the classroom, a decision that Mr. Smith explained was largely driven by monetary incentives.
The district released that they were getting $6.3 million from the federal government to go back to face-to-face, but it just didn’t sit well with the veterans. It’s like your life, students’ lives, long COVID symptoms, or money. And that’s literally what it boiled down to just plain and simple.
This controversial decision to return to in-person instruction led many of the experienced teachers in Mr. Smith’s school to transfer to a virtual high school in the district.
Once they tied money to seat time in class, that was it. There were a lot of staff that said, “We’re just going to go to the virtual high school. We’re not dealing with this anymore.” The list of transfers was half a mile long, and that’s not an exaggeration. People said, “No, we don’t want to get in front of the kids. We’re too old. Most of us have medical issues. We don’t want to get COVID.”
For those teachers who remained, the rapidly shifting district suggestions and mandates were increasingly frustrating. For example, the return to in-person instruction prompted a host of safety policies and procedures that largely fell on the shoulders of teachers to enforce and carry out.
To be honest with you, COVID was first and foremost the first day of school. When you come in, here is your bottle of hand sanitizer. Everybody’s going to use it. If you use the bathroom pass, everybody’s going to hand sanitize as soon as you come through the door. If you want to go to the bathroom next time, you’re hand sanitizing. As far as desks go, instead of having the students clean their desks, when I would notice that there was somebody out with COVID, I would clean their desk just so it wasn’t going to transmit between one class the next.
Yet, despite this focus on COVID precautions, the district experienced record numbers of COVID cases, with up to 30 percent of students absent at any given time. Mr. Smith explained how difficult it was for him to watch his students go through round after round of illness and quarantine, especially when his school could have made the choice to continue remote learning.
So that was more impactful going back face-to-face, not because I couldn’t do it or anything like that. It was just literally watching the students drop like flies. And it’s a little disturbing when we could have stayed mobile, when we could have stayed at home.
Above all, Mr. Smith wished that the district had relied on teachers and valued their opinions as the pandemic unfolded. Although teachers were the ones interacting with students on a daily basis, they were not consulted or asked to provide input on what would be best for them and their students.
They hired somebody with a doctorate that was supposed to make the decisions, but they didn’t have the experience in the classroom. They didn’t have the experience in the school district, and they were doing things left and right. And there were a lot of us that had the experience and were never consulted. The district said, “Nope, we have an expert.” But you have an expert in us. And that was really the most disheartening part about it. Those of us that had a clue, those of us that already taught online, those of us that had years of experience were just pushed aside.
