I’m Annie Rothenberg, a third year teacher of first and second graders and a former librarian. In the current school year I have been teaching the students whose families opted to learn fully virtually and this has been both a tremendous challenge and a huge learning experience for me. As I begin the final course in my Education and Innovation Master’s program, I have been learning about DLT and its potential to impact education in the future. Last week, I shared these thoughts in a class discussion forum:
“I can see the broad potential for DLT to impact education but I’m also seeing the limitations which are the same ones I’ve run against time and again in this past year. I teach first and second graders; this year I am teaching first grade. I am in a small school district. We have 6 first grade teachers/classes for the whole district. For the current school year, I am teaching the students whose families selected fully virtual learning for the entire school year. Many school districts have done this and have been able to dedicate teachers to adapting their own school curriculum to a virtual platform. My district, however, chose a different path. Because our curriculum did not already exist in a virtual platform and the district is too small to dedicate teachers to accomplishing this task quickly, they elected to purchase a third party platform and use local teachers (including me) to deliver the curriculum. The platform our district chose is one of a handful that are approved by the state of Missouri and although it may “meet the standards,” it is woefully inadequate compared to the robust curriculum I am used to providing to my students. My year’s work has been in improving what is provided as much as I can to deliver a somewhat equitable education for my students compared to what their peers who are learning in person are receiving. When I began on this path, I found myself thinking time and again, there must be something better out there for young children to learn remotely. I did some quick research on the options approved by MO DESE and was disappointed again and again. There are decent options for older children but I am teaching 6 year olds. Most of them cannot read or navigate a computer independently. The pandemic has revealed a lack of quality fully virtual learning programs for young children. I suspect this is the direction I will take with my final project for this course. I’m curious to learn more about DLT’s potential to address the problem but I’m not terribly encouraged after reading a few articles that address DLT in education that are highly focused on its potential with older students who are largely independent learners.”
Our instructor, Dr. Rodney, responded and pointed out some of the high quality virtual learning tools that do exist and shared his positive experience with fully virtual learning for his child prior to the pandemic. Over the course of the past week, I have been researching and learning more about fully virtual programs available here in Missouri. In this week’s class discussion, I posted the following:
“Over the last week, I spent time looking at the options currently approved by MO DESE and the list has grown to include several new options that look far more promising (MOCAP course catalog, n.d.). I have not yet looked closely at all of the options but it still seems to me that there is still a lack of fully virtual programs for young students that do not require a large amount of parent/adult support.”
I investigated further the program that I believe Dr. Rodney’s family used for their young daughter in the past. While it does look to be a higher quality program than that my district has been using, it still requires a large amount of parent/adult support. The following is from the Missouri Virtual Academy’s website:
“Parent/Learning Coach involvement is critical for the success of the student but the level of involvement may vary per child and grade level. The initial 4–8 weeks can be intensive, as families settle into a routine.
Grades K–2: Parent/Learning Coach daily involvement is critical and approximately 10–15 percent of this time is online
Grades 3–5: Students begin to have increased independence, but parent/Learning Coach involvement is essential for about 70–80 percent of school time and approximately 15–25 percent of this time is online” (How It Works (K-5), n.d.)
Although the program doesn’t state exactly how much time “parent/Learning Coach” involvement is necessary for K-2, it is presumably more than the 70-80% of school time for grades 3-5. This is what I’ve seen in all the programs that I’ve looked at and it is understandable. Schooling for young children requires a lot of teacher involvement and a lot of responsive adaptations to students and their needs. Students who are still learning to read, write, type, and operate technology, are not able to independently move through a fully virtual program without adult help in the same way that older students are able to. The fully virtual programs that exist depend on that adult help coming from parents or guardians provided by the student’s family. Before the pandemic, fully virtual programs were not used extensively by young children. When they were used, the choice was presumably made by families who were able to provide the necessary at home support.
When my school district and others choose these programs for families selecting fully virtual learning, they placed a tremendous burden on families who were in some cases not prepared for the amount of time they would need to devote to the program. While older students were able to get tech and academic support they needed from their teachers, the same thing was not possible for young students who could not yet read or navigate computers independently. Initially, my teaching assistant and I did lean heavily on students’ adult support but found many students were falling behind quickly when the adults were simply not able to provide the necessary support. We have made a number of adjustments to our class structure and have finally arrived at a decent structure that supports all families. My time is split between meeting with small academic groups and working on the curriculum platform that is provided. It takes considerable time to match the pacing of the standards to our school curriculum and to redo inadequate lessons. My teaching assistant’s time is now spent entirely on helping students through their lessons in our platform. Some students do have adult support at home and prefer to do things on their own schedule. However, about half of the class takes advantage of my TA’s support to get their lessons completed and their families have been tremendously appreciative of this adjustment. In this way, we are finally able to provide a mostly equitable education to those students who are learning in the hybrid model and that meets the needs of our students both with and without adult support at home.
As I begin to plan for my final project for the capstone course of my Master’s program, I am struggling a bit to narrow down on a focus. In a way, I feel like my work of the past school year has been a tremendous lift in innovation to support students and families in an unprecedented situation. However, I know there is room for improvement both in what I am doing and in what is available to schools and families. I also know there is a high likelihood that some future pandemic will land us in this spot again and we need to be prepared for it. My research over the past week has shown me that many companies are already rising to meet the needs which leaves me a bit uncertain about what need I should focus on. I would appreciate any insights, opinions, or guidance!
References
How it works (K-5). (n.d.). Missouri Virtual Academy. https://mova.k12.com/how-it-works/k-5.html
MOCAP course catalog. (n.d.). Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Retrieved March 24, 2021, from https://mocap.mo.gov/catalog/