With the COVID-19 pandemic nearly reaching its first anniversary, educators continue struggling to provide students with the best instruction they can during these challenging times.
Despite their best efforts, as the school year wears on, academic gaps continue to widen, said Dorean Dow, the assistant superintendent of curriculum, instruction and assessment for the De Soto School District.
Dow said at De Soto High School, 908 failing grades have been posted for students this school year, compared with 381 at this time last year.
“That’s the data, and the data doesn’t lie, but it doesn’t tell the whole story, either,” said Dow, who will leave De Soto at the end of the school year to become the assistant superintendent of secondary education at the Northwest School District.
Dow said in the past, failing grades mainly indicated students were struggling to master what was being taught.
“But there’s a different set of problems this year, and your responses can’t be the same if the causes aren’t the same,” she said.
Dow said many of the high school failing grades – and similar problems at the junior high and elementary levels – are caused by some virtual students not completing assignments or even attending online classes, but that’s not the only problem.
“I was surprised that many of those grades were from our in-seat students,” she said. “What we’ve found is that there’s not a one-size fits all solution, and in education, there rarely is. But these are not normal times. And, what we’re finding, even in our in-seat students who are struggling, is they’re dealing with a lot of barriers.
“In the past, a teacher would take a handful of students who need individual help to a kidney-shaped table in the back of the room and work with them. They can’t do that today. Today we have masks and Plexiglas. And at home, a lot of our parents are out of work and just trying to make ends meet. There’s stress there. Many of us adults know the stress of working at home, but we make it work because we have executive-level skills. We know that kids are resilient, but we just can’t assume they’re just going to roll with it, because some of them aren’t.”
Dow said teachers and administrators in the district have been discussing alternative ways of looking at grading.
“We’re used to looking at our gradebooks and seeing how many assignments have been completed, and looking at it that way, because to some extent, that’s how it works in the adult world. If you don’t do the work, you don’t get paid. But we’re having to consider taking into account whether a student has learned the skills they need, not whether they logged onto a Google Classroom meeting.
“We’re speaking with teachers, especially when posting assignments online, whether students have a chance to access them later. When we’re talking about elementary children, sometimes they’re at a daycare that doesn’t allow them to log on. Can they do the assignment later? For the older kids, maybe they’re working during the day at a job because times are tough at home. Maybe they’re baby-sitting their younger siblings, getting them to sign on, and can’t log on when they need to.”
Dow said another strategy being discussed is using smaller-scale assessments.
“We’re not talking entrance or final exams, or even chapter tests,” she said. “A 50-question test is a lot to wrap your head around. But if you’re able to ask four questions at the end of the day, you have feedback on what you need to work on tomorrow or whether you can move forward.”
Dow said plans are being formulated for summer school that may help fill in some of the learning gaps.
“At the secondary level, grades seven through 12, we’re considering having two sessions – one in June and another in July,” she said.
“The one in June would be in-person classes only for credit recovery,” she said. “They’d be in-seat because it’s been obvious that for some students, virtual learning isn’t something they’re coping with very well and need personalized instruction.”
The July sessions, she said, would be a mix of virtual and in-seat classes, both for credit recovery and for students wanting to take additional courses.
At the elementary level, she said, there would only be a late-July, in-class session.
“These would be both recovery and enrichment classes,” Dow said. “We feel the littles need a little break, which is why we’re not looking at June. Late July would be like a boot camp, a ‘let’s-get-ready-for-school-again’ thing. The (incoming) kindergartners need to learn how to line up, how to act in a social setting. Well, some of our students who haven’t been in a school building for a year will need a refresher course on those skills as well.”
Dow said she’s been encouraged by the number of teachers who are willing to teach into the summer.
“After the year they’ve had – we’ve all had – it would be easy for them to say, ‘I need the time off.’ But they know more than anyone what’s at stake here.”
Dow and Superintendent Josh
Isaacson discussed the problem at the Feb. 18 De Soto Board of Education meeting.
“We’re almost a year into this, and some kids (whose parents chose to educate them virtually) haven’t logged on,” Isaacson said. “All schools in the county, in the state, even around the country, are in the same situation. What are we going to do?”
Isaacson said a big problem is no one knows what the next school year will look like.
“We’re planners, and we need to start planning for next year. But we don’t have the answers we need yet, and we don’t know when we’re going to get those answers. How are we going to go through next year if we’re in the same boat?”
Isaacson said it’s not possible right now to know how many Jefferson County residents will be immunized, and even if they are, how effective those vaccinations will be and how long they will last.
“We have people who are on their third or fourth quarantine,” he said. “There’s a frustration level setting in.”
He said strategies used this year, such as allowing the district to have Monday as a virtual learning day and having in-class instruction the other four days of the week, may not be allowed next fall.
Not knowing what will be possible makes planning ahead perilous.
“It’s certainly not our intention to try to replicate this school year,” Dow said.