Pandemic Silver Linings
The pandemic has presented numerous education challenges, but not every aspect of it has been negative. Alexandria City High School teachers explain why.
“Sweet are the uses of adversity” wrote William Shakespeare in Act II of As You Like It. Shakespeare knew pandemics and adversity: a pandemic closed the Globe theater he co-owned for several years during his prime as a playwright. The challenges of our pandemic continue with the Omicron variant surge. However, some of the best Alexandria City High School (ACHS) teachers describe silver linings, or unexpected positives, in how students, teachers, administrators and others, notably the ACPS Instructional Technology Services (ITS) department, coped with the pandemic.
A renowned ACHS teacher pointed out that virtual learning benefited students who struggle in large public schools, particularly those who were victims of bullying. This teacher also said that the virtual environment improved students’ time management skills. As in a college environment, students had to be on time for virtual classes without relying on a bell schedule. The teacher said, “The pandemic made me think more about what I was doing and how the content actually connected to students.”
Another respected ACHS teacher points out that, as Joni Mitchell sang in “Big Yellow Taxi,” students often “don’t know what we got ‘til it’s gone.” This teacher noted “…just how excited kids were to be back” in class and observed that students returning to in-person classes “seemed more willing to play along with classroom activities” and that teachers were glad to get back to proven teaching methods of in-person instruction.
An ACHS administrator said that administrators have interacted differently with students since in-person classes resumed. “We are much more focused on the social and emotional needs of students,” the administrator said. “We now concentrate more on the reasons for student behaviors rather than on the behavior itself.”
Public school systems (ACPS is no exception) have been criticized for costly “shiny object” fixations, or serial romances, with the latest education technologies. When ACPS closed on March 13, 2020, the importance of its learning management system, Canvas, to teachers and students ratcheted up immediately. Canvas allows teachers to post course content online, make and receive assignments, and communicate with students individually or in groups through messaging or video.
During the pandemic, Canvas became more than just a place for teachers to post content online. Many teachers started using Canvas in new and different ways and by making their Canvas sites, in the words of an ACHS teacher, “really user friendly.”
The ACPS Instructional Services Technology (ITS) department, headed by Dr. Elizabeth Hoover, was particularly effective in the early stages of the pandemic because ITS personnel worked tirelessly to address each teacher’s need for technology support and advice, no matter how eccentric the request. ITS saw its mission as helping teachers establish an effective online venue for their classes as soon as possible, not in implementing system-wide mandates.
This individualized and flexible approach contrasted with the Fairfax County Public Schools’ (FCPS) top-down response: all schools were closed for weeks and FCPS mandated the use of a single virtual learning platform. The results, as extensively described in The Washington Post and elsewhere, were hacked classes, student and teacher confusion, and parent frustration. Ultimately, the FCPS Assistant Superintendent for the Department of Information Technology “stepped down from her role” according to a press release, and a law firm was hired to investigate FCPS’ virtual learning response to the pandemic. Additional information is available:
ITS encouraged ACPS teachers to interact with students in a virtual environment in other ways, for example, through Nearpod, Padlet and Flipgrid. These online programs sound like typical public education techno-fads. However, they were much more than that in the pandemic and each is readily usable with students in person. Nearpod is essentially an interactive PowerPoint, Padlet is an electronic message board, and Flipgrid is a video discussion tool. Each encourages or compels individual, group or whole class responses in real time (or on a teacher-designed schedule) in virtual or in person environments. They aid teachers in getting students to engage, a precondition to learning. You can find out more:
The best teachers are on a journey of continuous refinement and adjustment in their instructional methods and that journey continued for many teachers during the pandemic. The pandemic was and is unfortunate, especially for students in the primary grades where essential literacy and numeracy skills are acquired. Still, there are some silver linings for those teachers and students that hung in during the pandemic and tried new techniques and approaches.
I have never read or heard of a story about the positives of this terrible pandemic, but reading about how it has helped student-teacher relationships and changed how administrators view poor behavior is extremely refreshing.