Online School Doesn’t Need to Replicate the Classroom Model
The sudden immersion into distance learning has not been easy for students or teachers. An article last spring in Forbes cites surveys that find that over 75% of high school students hate the experience, while teachers have been largely unprepared for it. Many teachers describe the difficulties and steep learning curve with which they struggle. They can’t get the feel of the classroom, its mood or tenor. They miss the energy and chemistry generated in an actual classroom. They can’t read their students’ body language, the cues they have always relied on–to sense which students are understanding a lesson, which are engaged, which need a bit of encouragement. They suspect that many students are distracted by their phones or other windows on their computer screens. “It’s impossible to tell,” one says. “More than ever, we need to rely on their motivation, and most of them just don’t have any.”
Yet, despite these and several other challenges and difficulties, the current situation provides an extraordinary opportunity. It both highlights the role of motivation in learning and offers tools for creating learning experiences that could deepen student engagement. Instead of using the technology of distance learning for awkward, not-very-satisfying virtual meetings, educators could harness its value for facilitating one-on-one interactions–the sort of personal exchanges for which teachers and students often can’t find time during their normal brick-and-mortar days. Instead of struggling to design inadequate replicas of traditional classrooms and regular daily schedules on Zoom, we might design more powerful individual learning experiences that leverage the computer’s resources for research (Google) and coaching (like Khan Academy) and that would allow individualized study to replace conventional unified classroom instruction.
The opportunity to design distance learning that focuses more on the individual student and less on the classroom experience suggests the possibility of entirely rethinking schools and how teachers are deployed. Perhaps we could consider not just differentiated instruction but differentiated course loads, differentiated curricula, differentiated schedules and differentiated graduation requirements. Perhaps these changes could also result in a more effective manifestation of the 16:1 student:teacher ratio by reducing the number of students each teacher must teach.
Researchers who study how and why people learn explain that people engage with things that are emotionally relevant to them. They think and learn about what matters to them, yet schools continue to insist that students learn what matters to adults. Although part of the job of schools will always include the need to prepare young people to become successful adults and to introduce them to the range of possible fields of study, for schools to be effective they also need to be places where young people can pursue their own interests and genuine questions and make sense of their own life. They need to experience school as a source of personal motivation for learning. Enforced distance learning provides a unique opportunity for creating fundamental change that could transform schools even after the pandemic ends. The most motivated learners will be the most engaged learners whether in school or online, or in life.
The sort of school design that I describe is not a fantasy. I worked in a high school that provided this rare sort of individualized approach–a model that could prove useful for transforming the whole system. It was a school-within-a-school–an independent immersion program (IIP)–that invited any student, regardless of success or failure in a traditional school, to apply. All they needed were an area of genuine interest and the capacity for independent work. If they were accepted to the IIP, all regular requirements were waived: no required English or math or anything else. And there were no grades, not even pass/fail–just narrative assessments.
Each student worked with an advisor and developed an individual curriculum built on that student’s area of interest–astronomy, architecture, writing fiction, music, environmental science, computer science, Spanish literature, radiology, acting, BC calculus, whatever motivated them. One of the core principles was that one thing leads to another. Students deeply interested in theatre, for example, discovered that they needed skills and knowledge traditionally isolated in history or English or science departments. As a result, they found themselves naturally motivated to explore other areas, making connections among them and to their central interest. One student, for example, asked me to work with her on writing personal essays because she felt the skill would improve her songwriting.
The voices of these students capture their motivation:
“I remember feeling like I wanted to give up if I had to follow the standard coursework that was in front of me. I was not engaged, and I desperately needed the physical and emotional freedom that came with a course of study that was created out of my own interests. I went from feeling caged to being freed. I was trusted and respected. I taught in a preschool downtown and worked on my poetry as much as possible with my teacher. I saw school as a place of possibilities for my future instead of past failures. I can’t tell you what this did for my self-confidence!”
“Once I enrolled in IIP, I felt like I was actually pursuing the long-terms goals I had for myself, rather than just getting through the state-imposed mandatory four-year sentence of high school. In other words, prior to IIP, I was waiting for school to end so I could start the real learning and work I wanted to do in my life. All of a sudden in IIP, there weren’t just dreams or ideas or theories; there were real projects, real deadlines, and real consequences than meant much more to me than getting a low grade on a test.”
These are the voices that all teachers long to hear–the voices of young people who are engaged in endeavors that matter to them. As we gird ourselves for another school year in cyberspace, why not consider providing significant and meaningful time for students to pursue their own interests, to direct their own learning? Regardless of what they choose to study, we can help them develop the skills embodied in state standards. If we listen, if we take seriously the unbreakable connection between emotion and learning, if this moment of wrenching disruption magnifies the need for motivation and provides the means to really individualize learning, we can take this opportunity to imagine exciting, effective new models for learning that will last beyond COVID.
Alden Blodget is a mostly retired high school teacher and administrator. He volunteers as a writing teacher at LEAP for Education (Salem, MA), where he will be teaching a writing course online, via Zoom this fall. The course is open to students who have chosen it, regardless of grade level, and who feel a need to improve their writing skills. The curriculum for each student will be designed based on that student’s personal goals.
Blodget has written many articles and two books: Learning, Schooling and the Brain: New Research vs. Old Assumptions and Dead Man Talking.
Like most of the pictures on TeensParentsTeachers, the picture posted with this article is courtesy of a free download from Pixabay.com.