Freshmen Suri Sakhai, Olivia Bond and Lila Biffle collaborate on a project in biology class. After online learning ended, collaborative learning returned to normal. "Group projects are fun, and I am happy to be together with friends in person instead of in breakout rooms," Sakhai said. Photo by Matteo Winandy
By Cecilia Knutson
The clock hits 8:10 a.m. and students begin straggling onto their Google Meets, their faceless profiles popping up onto the screen.
The teacher begins the lesson, not knowing if anybody is even at their laptop, hoping that their students will be able to learn something. This was what education looked like during the height of the coronavirus pandemic as online learning spread.
“I remember leaving school for spring break and I heard people saying 'take everything you need, you won't be coming back.'”
AP English teacher Linder O’Rourke remembers the beginning of the pandemic vividly.
“I remember leaving school for spring break and I heard people saying 'take everything you need, you won't be coming back,'” O’Rouke said. “I didn't know what to expect.”
Within a short time frame, teachers and students had to adjust to online education to follow the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s orders. They began instructing classes through Google Meets and Google Classroom comments. These changes left some teachers feeling lost.
“We were not prepared for what we were seeing,” O’Rourke said.
Both O’Rourke and AP World History teacher Kevin Finn explained that student attendance and engagement greatly decreased during the pandemic, and consequently, student performance and understanding of course material also decreased.
“It is much easier to make connections with students and classes and assess their learning when they are in the classroom,” Finn said.
World Geography and AP European History teacher Alexandra Murchison believed that for the most part, student dedication towards learning decreased because of the pandemic.
“I think work ethic became challenging in the midst of COVID-19, but students are overall returning to a typical level of work ethic,” Murchison said.
Finn, on the other hand, recognizes how more independent learning encouraged some students.
“I think work ethic is an individual characteristic for each student,” he said. “I don't think stereotyping a large group of students is a good idea.”
For many teachers, COVID-19 meant a rapid shift from using paper to working mostly online, which created difficulties with learning simple skills. O’Rourke has become concerned that being online for so long caused students to lose basic skills.
“We're losing the skills that come because of it, like capitalization, punctuation, spelling, indenting paragraphs and all kinds of skills that we took for granted before COVID-19 came,” O’Rourke said.
In order to adapt to the new environment and try and fix the problems that arose, O’Rouke had to be open to learning as well.
“I had to learn how to stand and look at the screen in the classroom and my laptop and students all at the same time. While trying to coordinate all of these activities and maintain students' attention and deliver information and activities and try to make sense out of all of it,” O’Rourke said.
“We were not prepared for what we were seeing.”
She says having to iron out technology issues has been a challenge, but she does not expect there to be a decline in online schooling in the foreseeable future. She emphasizes that it's important that there be a balance between relying on online resources for teaching and the more traditional, physical learning.
“We can’t all sit silently for 180 days a year, in all of our classes, glued to a screen,” O’Rourke said.
On the other hand, Murchison believes that education would still shift to a more digital format, even if the pandemic had never happened. Unlike O’Rourke, she sees this as a positive effect on classrooms
“This will ultimately benefit students in college and careers later on if they can become comfortable with technology,” Murchison said.
Murchison struggled in the early days of online learning, but in the end, she saw it as a valuable experience. She says she and her students gained a lot and were able to turn what was once a less than pleasant situation into something they could all learn from.
“I think the shift to technology has definitely created a challenge for teachers, but overall, it has been a fun experience getting to learn new technological skills and applying them in the classroom,” Murchison said.
Despite all the challenges that O’Rourke and other educators faced throughout online learning, O’Rouke believes that the issue of finding a balance with technology in the classroom can be resolved over time.
“With our team effort and agreeing to work in different ways and supporting each other,” O’Rourke said. “I think it's making more sense as we go.”