An Expanding Reach Misses a Personal Touch

Executive Perspective

There is still time to register for this year’s Virtual National Conference on Education. One of the conference themes is remote instruction, the theme for this month’s School Administrator.

Back in the 1970s when I worked for the research division of the Nassau Board of Cooperative Educational Services in New York, distance learning was a promising innovation. Rural school systems and districts in remote areas of the country seized it as an opportunity for their students to take courses that would otherwise not be available, such as foreign languages, advanced mathematics and science or subjects the school did not have credentialed personnel to teach.

The process back then involved a classroom television and a phone. If the facility had the right antenna, the school could receive the course being broadcast over airwaves. The telephone allowed for interaction between the students and the teacher. It was awkward, but it provided instruction that students would not have had otherwise. Similar to asynchronous instruction today, the course sometimes was a television program with no interaction between students and teachers.

Early Advent

We have come a long way today, yet there is no doubt when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived last March, schools were not prepared to abandon in-person learning for online instruction. Had it occurred in the ’70s, there would not have been any alternative to in-person learning. Schools would have shut down with no option other than home instruction.

In the early days of the 21st century, remote learning began to achieve popularity in our schools. In the late ’90s, Mantua Elementary School in Fairfax County, Va., achieved notoriety as one of the first to provide every student with a laptop. The legal settlement over an oil spill in the area had given the school the financial means to provide the laptops as well as a broadcasting studio.

During my first visit to the school as the new district superintendent, I recall feeling as if I had stepped into the future. Inside the studio, members of a class were interacting live with a group of students in Ireland. As I visited the school’s classrooms, I saw students engaged on their laptops as the teacher walked around checking on their work. It took many years before I would notice this kind of instruction in other schools nationwide.

In recent years, the technological advances and the move toward personalized learning has made the Mantua experience more typical. Prior to the pandemic, many students already had access to a laptop. The one-to-one initiative had spread to many school systems in America. Visiting a classroom where the students are engaged with their laptops while the teacher walks around the room providing support as needed is no longer the exception to the rule. This is online learning, but it is going on in the classroom under the teacher’s supervision.

Pre-pandemic, many high schools already offered remote learning with students holding the option to take courses online. How-ever, most schools were not ready to make the switch to full-time remote learning when COVID-19 arrived. We immediately became aware that millions of students did not have laptops and many did not have internet access in their homes. Many teachers were familiar with the advantages of the classroom technology but not in a situation where they would be teaching remotely full-time.

There are students who favor remote learning because they have the opportunity to learn at their own pace and proceed onto an advanced level. But others who are not independent learners require the in-person guidance and supervision for them to achieve. During the first semester of 2020-21, thousands of students disappeared. Thousands more became “ghosts,” signing in for the class by turning on their computer but not participating at all. This has been a frustrating experience for teachers who are helpless to assist those students as they would in a face-to-face environment.

Inadequate Substitute

There is no substitute for in-person instruction for the many students who require it. This includes our special education students, early childhood pupils, English language learners, students with weak academic backgrounds and many others. In the years ahead, remote learning will be an integral part of instruction but never a full-time replacement for the students who need the personal touch.