Remote Learning Should Not Be Interrupted: Why I Turned Down that Kindergarten Position.

Here is a link for readers: NYC’s Success Academy staying remote for rest of school year – New York Daily News (nydailynews.com) that comes down in favor of not opening schools this year. I’ve emphasized the fact that we have been shamefully unhelpful about vaccinating teachers, with about half of the United States not prioritizing their vaccinations. I’ve emphasized the impact of illness, the fact that not all adults working in schools will survive re-openings, and that some will end up as long haulers, sick for months or longer. Please look up the long hauler posts.

But let’s forget sick. Let’s forget ventilation, transportation, and scampering students who don’t grasp the CDC protocols. Let’s just look at one practical concern, commonly called “transitions.”

A couple of years ago, a well-paying district offered me a maternity position for a bilingual kindergarten class. I would have spent the fall with a group of new students. The interviewer sunk herself with a few lines:

“You would not spend much time teaching content. When they begin school, it’s all about teaching routines so they know how to be students.”

I had taught middle school and high school students in low-income areas where gang involvement was problematic and prevalent. Not much scared me. However, the idea of a large group of five-year-olds, one or more of whom might cry long and hard each morning because they missed mommy (I had subbed longer-term in a pre-K classroom by then), a group still prone to occasional bathroom accidents… That idea felt intimidating. The crying and diapers I could handle. What stopped me from taking the job was that I recognized how vital it was to hammer home those routines. I did not want that responsibility.

Routines have always been one of my weak points. I’m ADHD and I don’t like routines. I struggle not to break down my own routines. Probably the biggest lesson I had to learn in my first few years of teaching was that my students required the structure of regular procedures, a schedule that could be turned into regular habits. They needed me to define what was expected, and then to keep those expectations in place. The time loss from doing Tuesday differently was likely to be too great to justify impulsive changes just because I wanted to try something new and fun.

It’s all about transitions. It’s always about transitions. Transitions should be smooth, the behaviors that go into them automatic. Well-engineered transitions prevent time loss, which prevents learning loss. It’s about going from Point A to Point B as efficiently as possible. In an ideal world, our students walk into the classroom and get directly to work because they know what to do. They take their writing journal out when they sit down. They log into their software and go straight to the opening activity that is always waiting for them. If they are in pre-K, they wash their hands, identify their name tag, and trace the first letter of their name, which they can decorate if they have time.

One huge problem with opening/closing/opening/closing, remote/in-person/remote/in-person schooling lies in those routines and the resulting transitions. The routines for in-person schooling are only vaguely similar to those for remote learning. When students go back into the building, daily routines must be taught. After a quarantine hiatus, they must be taught again, probably with changes designed to stop another quarantine.

The in-out, now-we-do-this-instead-of-that character of remote/in-person teaching will be trouble. When kids are not certain what comes next, they often turn to a friend to talk or simply sit waiting for instructions. They may go to the kitchen to see if they can get another cherry Pop-Tart.

People who have never taught may not sense how much work goes into getting the train moving and keeping the train on track. I recommend the following short read: How Long Does It Really Take to Form a Habit? 7 Things to Consider (healthline.com) which says “according to a 2009 study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, it takes 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit.” Habits are far from automatic and, for me anyway, easily short-circuited.

Without going off on this tangent, I will observe that I may only need a few days to be able to get my class of middle school students to pull out their journals when the bell rings. Other teachers taught a version of this opening activity in earlier years, so I have a past habit to build on. But if I keep changing those journal expectations, that habit will wither away, at least where my class is concerned. Once students know what to do, upending the day’s process costs valuable minutes. The cost to student peace of mind should not be ignored either. Most kids strongly prefer to know what to expect during their school day. Having a routine makes them feel safe.

Once we get our kids into a working routine, in many cases, we ought to leave them there.

Eduhonesty: Having written this, I see situations where the school doors must be flung open even if they only close again. If large numbers of students are refusing to log-in, for example, then those open-close-open-close schools may still be our best option. Students who cannot manage remote learning well, such as our lowest readers, may also require live instruction in physical classrooms.

Still… I get tired of saying this, but I’ll try again: Why don’t we ask the teachers? Why don’t we ask our teachers how online 2021 is going? Because many educators think that what they are doing is working. They believe that upending the applecart in March will do more harm than good. America’s teachers have their boots on the ground. They can see what is happening as they grade student work. They know if what they are doing has been successful.

Being hell-bent on opening schools does not take into account many factors, like those habits and transitions I just described. Yes, we desperately desire a return to “normal.” But we can’t will normal to happen. We can’t force normal. NCLB, the Common Core, RtI, Race to the Top and other mandates ought to have taught us by now: Brute force seldom improves education.

When we don’t take time to listen to teachers, though, brute force in the form of poorly-thought-out mandates can confuse America’s students quickly, and sometimes irretrievably,

P.S. I strongly suspect that one reason educational and governmental leaders are working to get those student bodies into school is because they want to be able to force students to take this year’s spring standardized tests. Those tests are detrimental to learning in many ways. See A Seldom Discussed Problem with the Common Core, the Standards Movement and Testing | Notes from the Educational Trenches (eduhonesty.com).

Jesus definitely did not help my poor student
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