Teachers, administrators work to make virtual learning a reality

Huntley, Il – Videoconferencing has just experienced a seismic shift in its customer base and a growth spurt that brought millions of new users logging in from their home desks, dining room tables, the family couch, or their beds.

Young users have been drawn away from a spring and summer of video games, YouTube, Instagram, a loop of cartoons and super-hero movies, or relationships based on an endless texting thread. Some may have been reading books.

Zoom, Google Hangouts, or any other group conferencing software just added a new use to virtual meetings among coronavirus shut-in adults with millions of students from kindergarten through college rejoining their classmates and teachers by jumping into the deep end of virtual learning. The 2020-21 new school year will be remembered as the New School Year.

Most of the young people are safely sheltered in their own homes or the houses of family, friends, or neighbors. Some are in larger rooms with other masked children under the watch of park district or church employees, or retired or former teachers, allowing their parents to return to work instead of staying home to keep an eye on the kids.

On the other end of the digital exchange, teachers and administrators at schools like District 158’s Marlowe Middle School have been preparing for remote learning since their impromptu sessions ended last spring. The district has purchased a slew of Logitech ConferenceCam Connect devices, at around $400 each, and placed one in each classroom that wasn’t already connected through the teacher’s laptop or desktop. The camera/microphone/speaker combinations allow the teacher to speak to students in Zoom rooms and show them diagrams or videos, a digital chalk board for remote learning.

With 1,300 students from sixth through eighth grade, Marlowe is in the midst of orientation week for sixth-graders after spending the last week handing out everything from old-fashioned textbooks to Chromebooks. Among the book boxes, there were even science-experiments-in-a-bag with instructions not to peek until eighth-grade science class on Tuesday. The students and their parents stayed secure inside a constant line of vehicles as masked student support aides and administrators gathered their books and supplies and handed them through opened windows.

“Now that we’ve moved to fully remote instruction, we want to make sure that our students have any necessary supplies and resources for their classes,” Marlowe Principal Anthony Venetico said. “We want to make sure that even though students are learning in a remote environment, that we’re still providing the same level of high expectations in the curriculum.”

While the seventh- and eighth-graders are in their Zoom classrooms, the sixth-graders will be welcomed into Marlowe from their various elementary schools and will physically come into the school in socially-distanced groups of six students to meet their teachers and a handful of classmates masked face to masked face.

In the spring, approaches to remote learning varied widely according to the teacher. With those lessons learned and the introduction of new technology, the district is stressing a more structured experience for students. At Marlowe, that means a 7:25 a.m. beginning to the school day and a 2:25 p.m. end. Throughout their day, classes are organized into periods as the students would experience if they were inside the building.
“We learned from last year some things we know we could improve on to make remote learning better,” Venetico said. “I really think this is going to be a great experience for our kids.”
Teachers have translated their curriculum to present it online and will deliver their lessons live a minimum of two times per week, per class. All students will be in their Zoom classroom live with their classmates and teachers, unlike in the spring when they could simply check out the video lessons left for them at whatever time of day they finally got out of bed.
“So, tomorrow at 7:30 in the morning, our students are going to be out of bed on their Chromebooks, live with their first period class as if they showed up here tomorrow morning,” Venetico said. While there are not requirements for what students wear, he sent a message home to students and parents about the importance of taking school seriously, dressing appropriately in a space that is conducive to learning “to really get that routine going.”

Jill Cross, an 18-year veteran teacher in her second year at Marlowe as sixth-grade literacy teacher, said teachers have been busy with more computer prepping this summer, working their way through the resources offered by the district to help make live virtual learning work.

“I think it’s going to take some getting used to,” Cross said of the idea of being in the classroom by herself with a computer screen filled with images of her students. “…I think it’s going to take a little more creativity to connect with students than we would normally do in the classroom.” She said teachers would be “much more intentional” in how they build relationships with students.

Cross said she learned a lot from the experiences of the spring, when the spread of COVID-19 in mid-March suddenly transformed teachers from in-person to remote instruction. She stressed the importance of “having kids online and engaged in the learning” this year, rather than teachers’ pushing information to students and making themselves available to answer questions and explain things.

“Now, we’re going to actually be talking, having conversations, having breakout rooms, simulating what an actual classroom would be like, just doing it virtually,” Cross said.

The premium version of Zoom that the district purchased will allow teachers to address the class as a whole but also separate students into smaller, break-out groups for discussions and activities, before reforming the class into a whole again. Venetico said the virtual presentation should replicate closely what would occur in an actual classroom.

Marlowe was able to hold on to educational specials that help many students appreciate and enjoy their time at school. For one of those specials, all students will be assigned to a period of physical education. Team leader Ryan Frederick said activities would be presented live by instructors in the school’s fitness center or gym, and would concentrate over the first few weeks on flexibility, muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular, and body composition. Instructors will be able to see the students on Zoom and will lead them through warm-ups before getting into the activities.
“We’re going to make it fun for them, as fun as we can,” Frederick said. “We’re going to put some emotional learning into it and try to get them into their individual spots where they can work out…away from the computer. We want them…where they can just get some fresh air to give them some energy to get through the day.”

The lessons taught by teachers at Marlowe and across the district will be recorded and available for students to review if they had difficulties getting to their virtual class, although Venetico said the school understands the importance of having their students interacting live with teachers and other students. Either way, he said, the lessons, the teachers and the school will be there for them.

“We want to make sure our families know we’re going support students the same we would if they were here,” Venetico said.