In her 19 years of teaching, she had never felt so ill-equipped.
AP English teacher Kimberly Dill, and many teachers like her, had a rough first week with the new tools given for digital education.
She wondered why she had to click so much, why the system wasn’t as intuitive as other digital applications.
She wondered why it was taking so long for the various digital problems to get fixed.
The new digital format simply made it much harder for Dill to do her job.
Much harder to adapt.
“Teaching is meant to be in-person – building relationships is an important part of that – reading students’ faces when they get it or don’t,” Dill said. “Yes, I can build relationships and teach through a screen, but it makes it much more difficult when systems have not been put in place or teachers are staring at black screens instead of faces.”
This new format is Schoology, and it has replaced Google Classroom as the new system of learning in Dill’s district.
For the 2020-21 school year, Northside chose the system as the new main digital hub for distance learning, picking it over another system Canvas.
Vice-principal Melissa Hurst explains that the Schoology system was chosen to curb digital problems from last year.
“The district recognized the need for a more robust, for lack of a better term, learning management system,” Hurst said. “Many, many people lodged complaints about the Google Classroom in the Spring.”
She expresses her thoughts on Schoology so far.
“It’s been a little rough on the front end getting the systems to sync correctly in some instances,” Hurst said. “But I think in the end it will prove to be a much more powerful tool [than Google Classroom].”
AP English teacher Cameron Yarborough has seen this syncing problem firsthand.
“The big problem really is that we are asking Schoology to talk to a lot of other systems. Our portal, the grade book, Google,” Yarborough said.”And that sometimes makes it a crowded conversation and not everyone hears each other so well.”
Regardless of the syncing issues, AP History teacher Lauren Bartell likes the way she can organize
folders and info on Schoology.
While Google Classroom was just a list or stream of announcements, she feels this new organization is better for students in the long term, especially for the information they may need all year in AP classes.
“Students [need to] find things,” Bartell said. “This might sound crazy but there is a lot of brain research that says you need to be able to categorize info you put into your brain so you can retrieve it later. That’s why I’m big on making sure students understand what unit, world region, and time period we are studying at all times.”
“Hopefully it will aid their memory on assessments if the info is organized well from the beginning. In WHAP it’s always difficult for students to be able to see the big picture, or where events fall in the history of the world and relate to each other. If they can see that this is happening in China and Africa at the same time, hopefully that helps them make connections.”
“On Google Classroom, it was just a list or stream of announcements, but on Schoology, we can make folders and organize info which I think is better for students in the long term, especially in AP classes when you need access to the information all year. [Although], one positive of Google Classroom was how easy it was to use Google Docs and Slides. which has had a learning curve on Schoology.”
Yarborough feels the digital-learning format is well-suited for his specific area of instruction.
“For a writing class, the online class is much better,” Yarborough said. “Everything you do is written, discussions with peers, questions you ask in class. It forces a student to write for many different purposes and that’s what we teach in composition anyway.”
Yarborough adds that teaching AP classes has worked well digitally.
“Because [AP] is designed more like a college course,” Yarborough said. “They translate well to the digital environment because it allows the students to work independently, apart from a controlled classroom environment with a teacher watching over their work-time.”
Bartell holds a similar opinion, but has difficulty getting her students to discuss.
“They translate as well as any course, Bartell said. “[But] courses that are based around discussion, like Art History AP, don’t translate as well because it is hard to get students to want to talk on zoom and really discuss. In World History AP, the work of the course translates well, but I don’t feel like I have a good grasp on who is ‘getting it’ and who isn’t.”
This differs greatly from education before the COVID pandemic.
“Normally as a teacher, you can just walk around the room and pick up on who is understanding the lesson and who isn’t,” Bartell explained. “That isn’t so possible on Zoom, especially since most students have their cameras off. The students have to be a lot more responsible for their own learning which I know is challenging.”
It is safe to say many things in education have differed because of the pandemic, as academic dean Jill Hackney explains the problem in how to handle cheating in a digital format.
“I don’t know how we could alleviate concerns for cheating,” Hackney said. “Unfortunately, that is something that has been around long before we became a virtual school. Testing is being handled differently by each level of teachers. The way Algebra 1 is testing may look very different than how the US History teachers are giving exams.
“We are allowing teachers to develop what they believe will work best for their students. I think our teachers just need to continue what they are doing – explaining the need for high academic integrity and creating assessments in which students can demonstrate learning possibly in different ways than they have ‘traditionally.”
Additionally, Clark will use a hybrid schedule for students wanting to back to in-person learning. This hybrid schedule has had Clark rolling out a different group of kids each week, releasing all remaining kids choosing to go back on October 5th. Students with last names A-L will go on A days and students with last names M-Z will go on B days.
Hurst explains Clark’s regard for safety with the new hybrid schedule.
“We are going class by class, period by period to ensure that the breakdown we designate for each group will not exceed the classroom maximum daily,” Hurst said. “We are hopeful to have continued success with the procedures and processes we have put in place. We want everyone back, but we want to do it slowly and controlled so we keep students and staff safe.”
Along with a new schedule, Hurst expands on the numerous changes her school has seen the past few months alone.
“Summers are usually extremely busy with projects,” Hurst points out. “The pandemic caused some of those projects to take longer than anticipated to complete, sometimes because of supply shortages or people shortages. In addition to the track and grass on the field being replaced, the district is replacing the existing card readers, finishing the demo of the old alarm system, and replacing the cores on all the doors on campus. Whew! There is a lot going on.”
Hurst comments on the new arrival of a new principal at Clark, Steve Zimmerman.
“Thankfully, Mr. Zimmerman was a sitting principal at a 6A high school prior to coming to Clark, ” Hurst said. “He had leadership experience at the beginning of the pandemic, so for him it is a matter of learning and improving on the Clark way.”
With changes to be seen all over Clark, Northside, and education as a whole, Yarborough gives advice to students progressing forward in this changing environment.
“ My advice would be the same as my advice given to teachers, to adapt,” Yarborough says. “You know, we really don’t have a choice. I would rather have students at their desks; I miss the conversations, miss the human interaction.
However, we can still form the kind of student-teacher relationships that help all of us be successful. So much more is being put on our students’ shoulders right now. It’s probably harder for a student to be motivated but for the moment, but we have to adapt, find a way, and that’s really what progress is, being able to adapt.”