Every time I think about who doesn’t benefit from distance learning I think about my younger brother who is in the first grade. When NYC public schools announced that they would be canceling in-person classes and switching to distance learning, my family and I had to figure out how to adjust. Since my brother didn’t have a laptop of his own we grabbed an old Chromebook that was semi-functioning and hoped that it would be enough for him to do his classes on.
“How did you feel when you heard you were going to have classes online?” I asked
“I felt excited.” My brother mentioned. I tried to get more out of him but I don’t think he fully understands why we all have to stay home and transition our learning remotely and how that affects his learning. Personally, I think that he was just excited because all his siblings were going to be home and that he can play games all day afterward.
Daily Schedule
Every day, he wakes up around 8:30 to get ready for his 9 am class. Before he started distance learning, his school printed out all the packets that were planning to use during this quarantine. At 9 am, all the students log on to Zoom and work through the packets with their teachers.
Typically around the 9:45 am, he has a 15-minute break. If he was in school this break would have been used to talk to his classmates but immediately after the teacher turns off Zoom he goes and plays some games. This might not seem like a big deal but over time, I’ve noticed that my brother looked forward to his breaks more than learning. When I asked him what he missed about physically being in school, he mentioned that he missed his friends and gym class.
While Zoom is great for helping teachers deliver content to their students, it lacks the ability to connect the students in the class. One time the side panel, where you are able to see other participants, went away from his screen he immediately came into my room and said, “can you help me fix something, I can’t see my friends.” I told him that I’ll put it back up during his break and for him to just focus on the teacher because he can still see them. He didn’t let it go and insisted I fix it. This is the sad part of distance learning he has no way of communicating directly with his classmates so seeing them, in a way, makes up for that with him. Unlike older students with cellphones and social media, younger students don’t have a medium to communicate with their friends. Breaks during class time, lunchtime, and the bus ride home were times where students are able to socialize outside of the classroom setting.
Pacing
Since all the classwork is in packets, students often flip back and forth between different packets depending on the lesson being taught. I’ve noticed that, particularly with my brother's teachers, was that they moved really quickly. If they are doing writing the teacher would quickly mention for everyone to go back to the writing they did two weeks ago. This puts my brother in a panic because he has to shift through all the packets to get out his writing assignments. I feel like part of the panic is that the teachers expect the students to already know where the packet is so when they are moving forward and he is still looking for the packet he feels left behind.
Turning In Assignments Online
When teachers want students to send in an assignment they would email the parents and have them take a picture of the assignment to send it to them. Both of my parents are still working during this time, so when the teachers give them a certain deadline, for example at 6 pm when my parents aren’t available, and my parents didn’t turn it in he would get a zero. In the phrasing of the email, ‘if you don’t turn it in by this time then your child will get a zero’. I understand that they want to see what students are doing but I think that teachers should be considerate about the circumstances that younger students are in especially since they are not in the position to upload their own assignments online. I feel like there is a lot of pressure on students on things that they cannot control.
These times are strange and confusing and I wouldn’t expect distance learning to be perfect. As someone who is in college, distance learning is not far off to what I am used to. For younger students, it’s really different how a classroom operates. In class, the teachers essentially handhold the students through the work but since they are not in that environment I wonder what the longterm effects on students’ education would be if this were to continue indefinitely. I realized what made elementary school and middle school great was my friends and students right now are missing out on the socializing that happens in school.
My hope for the rest of the school year is that teachers are patient with students and to communicate with parents what they need from them so that we can make distance learning as seamless as possible for students.
