Learning from Home

Pandemic forces schools to adapt to an online learning environment

By Kalen McCain
Posted 5/14/20

Daily school life has changed drastically for students and teachers alike as work-from-home conditions have swept the state.

Social distancing measures have replaced day-to-day socialization, …

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Learning from Home

Pandemic forces schools to adapt to an online learning environment

Posted

Daily school life has changed drastically for students and teachers alike as work-from-home conditions have swept the state.

Social distancing measures have replaced day-to-day socialization, interaction, and assignments with Zoom calls, emails and Google Classroom posts during the home stretch of the 2019-20 school year, especially for those schools that opted for mandatory distance learning.

“I think communication is a challenge,” said Jay Strickland, principal at Mid-Prairie High School. “We’re used to being able to meet with students one-on-one and in smaller groups and face-to-face contact is really hard to replace in an online format. I think were missing some of those connections and I think that’s been a little bit of a challenge but we’re still doing everything we can from an online perspective.”

Strickland said the at-home format has also inhibited work-life balance for students and staff.

Many students work and help with childcare at home and balancing those responsibilities with educational ones without separate spaces to do so has been difficult.

This has been especially troublesome for families with multiple people working and learning from home, which makes holding a steady internet connection and finding a quiet place to call from difficult.

At Hillcrest Academy, principal Dwight Gingerich said they were trying to emphasize “engagement over content.”

The school has encouraged teachers to scale back homework and assessments from what they would normally issue at this time of year in order to decrease students’ workload as they take on additional responsibilities.

“It’s an emergency remote learning approach,” Gingerich said. “We can’t expect the level of homework that we have generally.”

Attendance has thankfully posed minimal problems under the new system.

At Pathway Christian School – another school that opted for mandatory distance learning – the students benefit from a curriculum already set up with distance learning options.

“The curriculum that Pathway uses, Bob Jones University, has video lessons available for each class and subject,” Wanda Stutzman said. “Our families are currently homeschooling but using the tools BJ Press has provided. Our teachers are also grading tests as soon as the students complete them and send them in.”

Strickland said that while some students struggle to keep consistent contact, the problem isn’t notably worse than during in-person classes as the district continues to strive for contact with students and their families.

For teachers, the switch has meant adapting lesson plans on short notice.

“We have to determine what are the most important activities and present them in a way that works online,” said Erin Cavanagh, Mid-Prairie High School English teacher, in an email to The News. “I love everything I teach and the supplemental activities I have created, so having to abandon most of that was hard for me at first.”

But adapt they have. In the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, schools and students have strived to maintain excellence despite the difficulties of online education.

“Any time we are faced with a challenge it is an opportunity for growth,” Cavanagh said.

News editor James Jennings contributed to this story.