Asynchronous Post for 27 may 2021

5/27/2021

We started class together talking about your experiences as a student. And that's important. I can't say this enough times: we teach the way were taught and so it is important that we interrogate our student experience so that we are the best teachers we can be.

Now we are moving towards thinking about the culture for teachers in the US classroom. This is tougher because, for most of you, you've never been in the position of teacher--never had to talk to a parent, master new teaching technology, learn the curricula, design and implement lessons to teach that curricula, or suddenly move all of that to the zoom sphere because of a global pandemic. This asynchronous post is a snapshot of what the experience of the teacher is based on the very unscientific work of finding a bunch of mainstream articles on teaching.

For your asynchronous post today: Please summarize your two articles in 200-300 words. Be sure to identify the major issues as they related to teachers, teaching, and the classroom.

Once you've posted, respond to a colleague: Please identify another classmate who has an article that agrees with, contradicts, or expands/adds to the point your article is making. Respond to that person with the ways you see the article agreeing, contradicting, expanding/adding to your article. You have between 100 and 200 words to do this.

A NOTE: Why did I ask you to locate two articles? You probably know the answer. Any article written after March 2020 will be about teaching in the pandemic. Because that has dominated the classroom, it's important to capture that moment. However, it's not like everything was perfect before we all went online. And so it's important to capture other aspects of what it means to teaching in a classroom, which is why I asked you to locate an essay written before 2020.

REMEMBER: Asynchronous posts are due by Midnight tonight--so 11:59 PM on Thursday, 27 May 2021.

18 Comments

Aliyah Pires

5/27/2021 01:22:11 pm

EDUCATION ARTICLES

2021: How the Pandemic is shaping education

Due to the Coronavirus spread many aspects of schooling had to undergo change. Although the main change for both students and teachers was the move from classrooms to computer screens, it also tested basic ideas about instruction, attendance, testing, funding, the role of technology and the human connections that hold it all together. After a year of these changes many are believe that some of these aspects will stick in the world of education. The pandemic showed a new side to inequities of race, disability and income. We are beginning to see that Learning loss is getting new attention and schools with poor ventilation systems are beginning to receive upgrades and so much more. There are a lot of positives that will happen because of this negative situation. One major aspect that schools are looking into expanding is the remote learning. Although it is proven that most students learn best in a classroom with an actual teacher, they are looking at the positives that remote learning can bring. Some students prefer to be on line and still get the education they need while it also can offer different classes to students at schools who might not have the option to take it. Educators are also looking at the idea that due to students falling back because of remote learning, maybe American Education system gets serious about helping student get where they need to be. Although this pandemic may seem like it caused more negative consequences, it is bringing about the ideas of making them into positives. Educators are enthused about making changes to make sure their students get the education they need to succeed more now than ever.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/03/15/pandemic-school-year-changes/

2019: 3 Simple ways to Improve ELA Instruction

Most teachers think that they should teach in the way that they have been taught. Most have been in a classroom where desks are all in a row, being lectured at for a majority of the class. However, after reading this article it is clear that this teacher saw that her methods of teaching were not effective and that students wanted individualized time. Building a relationship with your class is an important aspect to teaching. It is not all about knowing the material you are teaching them but making sure that you get through to them in a way that they can connect with you and the content they need to know. From a teaching perspective it is important to start the year with taking surveys about your students in order to understand what makes them who they are and where they come from. Once they have established that feeling of safety and welcoming from you, they will be able to understand your content more because they are engaged with what you have to say. Along with getting to know students it is important to make sure that they are being involved in your lessons. As this article states the teacher was able to know when to listen to questions that their students had in order to allow their students to be effective in writing. While this teacher talks about knowing she was not effective in her teaching she saw that she needed to get to know her students in order to know their thinking process and why they work the way they do. Overall being an effective teacher has more to do with how well you engage with your students and how you understand them more than just knowing the content you want to get across.

https://www.edutopia.org/article/3-simple-ways-improve-ela-instruction

Sarah Egan

5/27/2021 01:31:40 pm

You make a really good point about how the pandemic brought along new ideas of making negative situations into more positive ones. I do also believe that our use of technology has improved significantly and that much of it will not go away. Because we’ve had to become more reliant on it, we have also become more comfortable using it. I appreciated this article and the light that it touched upon. My article that I looked at did contradict yours in some way. The one I discussed described the negative effects that online learning has caused for children where English is their second language. For them, it has taken a significant toll on their familiarity with the English language.

Your second article was also an interesting read. It is exciting to see how much our education system has transformed over time. I also agree with your statement, “Building a relationship with your class is an important aspect to teaching.” We talked about that when we told the class out best and worst experiences in a classroom.

Alexis Medeiros

5/27/2021 01:34:45 pm

As a building base substitute I can totally relate to the struggles that the pandemic has put on students. I know that the building that I am at has awful ventilation, I ended up passing out in the heat of August because there was no air flow and it was 90 degree weather outside and of course we all had our masks on. I know first hand the horror stories of the ventilation, it stinks. Learning has been completely lost, it’s hard for students to pay attention now that they are fully in person because they were forced to watch us through a screen with the various distractions that are in their home life. I know as a student I prefer to be online, I don’t miss the stress of commenting to Bridgewater, I don’t miss talking to strangers, I don’t miss the anxiety I had trying to walk 5 miles to the other side of campus in the pouring rain trying to make it in between the 15 minute gap of classes. I also know that it is crucial for the younger grades to be emerged into a daily school routine because they need that structure. Hopefully through this pandemic we can all make a change for the better and suite the needs and comforts of all learners.

tenneh

5/27/2021 03:32:07 pm

I would say that same thing, but not online is for everyone. Some people want to have in person class than online. To be honest this zoom, blackborad, etc is getting bored at some point,

5/27/2021 01:24:25 pm

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/world/remote-schooling-brings-bigger-losses-for-children-still-learning-to-speak-english.html?searchResultPosition=12

Since COVID shut down in person learning and students were forced to turn to remote- learning, students’ learning abilities suffered significantly. They became out of practice with school routines and lost skills that assisted them in their learning. Students from immigrant homes where English is not spoken that much have especially faced difficulty with remote learning because their ability to understand English hasn’t been practiced properly. In person learning is so important for students who don’t normally practice English in their homes. With learning in person, these children see facial expressions and can observe the way other students respond to directions. Teachers also rely on seeing their students so they can determine how to best support them. Remote learning makes things like this much more difficult.

These students too also learn much of their English vocabulary through interacting with others. Slang is something that children learn through each other rather than being taught it in a general curriculum classroom. Children practice and strengthen their vocabulary skills in school and remote learning has taken a significant toll on that. Children do not have conversations with each other in hallways or on playgrounds. These students are falling behind.

It is alarming to see how damaging remote learning has been for a majority of students. It has taken a toll on skills that were only practiced in a school setting. The author of this article makes a good point that children with English as their second language practice their vocabulary especially outside of the classroom; they thrive off of interacting with their peers on the playground or in the hallway. The author also strengthens their argument by including facts such as, “In Connecticut, attendance is becoming a larger issue for English learners, who were second only to homeless students in their drop in attendance in virtual and in-person classes”. Seeing connections to the real world helps the audience to understand how significant the issue is.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/01/29/era-spellcheck-autocorrect-does-it-matter-that-my-son-cant-spell/

In this article, Rebekah Denn discusses how poor her son’s writing skills are. She explains that her and husband had gotten their son tested for disabilities, tried practicing with flash cards, got a computerized spelling tutor, and tried to play games such as Scrabble to help strengthen. When the son entered middle school, Denn realized that many of his friends had difficulty with spelling as well. She goes on to explain that, “In an age where we LOL and ROFL, where we transmit through Siri and Alexa instead of typing, where auto-correct both fixes and generates errors in our written work, we have to wonder: Can anyone spell anymore, and does it even matter?”. As technology has improved, it has allowed people to have to put less thought in to things such as writing. Researchers fear that spelling is disappearing from general curriculum just like cursive did. Spelling errors don’t affect grades or even play a role in the essay portion of the SAT. Siri, Alexa, and Grammarly are resources that people use to help spell out words or correct a mistyped word.

As some researchers are opposed to technology that allows for spelling to be corrected or spell out, many believe it is beneficial for shortcutting and getting work done after. They believe that technological advances like this should be used and won’t be a limiting factor in the future.

Though it is exciting to see how much technology has advanced, this article is a good example on how limiting it can be. Growing up, when I wrote papers, teachers emphasized the importance of writing, re-reading, and revising. Spell check is allowing students to only focus on areas where there is a red line under a misspelt word. Because of this, more mistakes when it comes to grammar are being made which is leading to bad habits.

David T Golden

5/27/2021 02:19:15 pm

The article where children are having a more difficult time learning and speaking English because of the pandemic is very interesting. I feel like it is connected to the one I found where students have difficulty managing their time. Students more than anything else desire to be face to face with their peers. That is how they learn and grow, not from Zoom meetings. In the article that you posted the children need that physical contact in order to appropriately learn and because of the pandemic they lost that. I feel like in the future students are going to have to play catch up in order to get back to normal. Everything is not going to go back to the way it was immediately.

5/27/2021 07:33:52 pm

It is interesting to see the different ways that educators are looking at the effects of the pandemic. In the article I summarized they were mainly focusing on the ideas that technology and other learning strategies that had to come into play are now possibly staying because of how successful they can be in developing students learning. This concepts contradicts your article, saying that many english language learners are struggling to learn effectively. I can see both sides of it and I think there is no one right answer. The pandemic has brought a lot of change to the way educators will go about their job. It all ultimately depends on the students they are encountered with.

5/27/2021 01:26:52 pm

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-04/how-covid-distance-learning-hurt-california-english-learners

This article is centered around Aida Vega’s 13 year old daughter who is an English Language Learner in Los Angeles Public Schools. Aida’s daughter has always struggled to read and write and her teachers were trying really hard to achieve a breakthrough, they were suppose to have extra tutoring lesson just as the COVID-19 Pandemic emerged scrapping their plans. Many students like Aida’s daughter found themselves in the same boat. The COVID-19 Pandemic took a turn for the worst for many students but especially ESL students. 20% of California students are English Language Learners. The article states, “One year later, this massive population of students is at great risk of intractable educational loss, experts said.” California reported that only fewer than half of English Language Learners participated in distance learning. As a building base substitute in an Elementary school I noticed the same thing. Before the pandemic English Language Learners were closing the gap but now students were falling behind. Many English Language Learners during the pandemic felt isolated including Jose Pozo’s 6th grade son, Esteban. Esteban was advancing quickly in the school setting but during the pandemic, his English began to downfall as he wasn’t centered around the language as much as he had been before. The article states, “In early March, the district more fully reopened elementary schools. About 50 English learners returned to 450-student Foster Elementary, said Principal Maria Alejandra Monroy.” With schools being fully reopened there is room for growth but there is a lot of catching up to do. It will be a slow start but it won’t be impossible.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/13/metro/mass-pressing-pause-school-accountability/
This article describes how Massachusetts schools are pressing pause on school accountability regarding MCAS. Even though students are still required to take this state exam the schools will not be held accountable in the same ways that they were before regarding this standardized state exam. Last month the Board of education voted that juniors who are set to graduate in 2022 will not have to pass the 10th grade English MCAS exam in order to graduate. This has been a graduation requirement for many years including my own high school career, now students will not be forced to graduate with the passed MCAS exam due to the COVID-19 Virus. The scores for this current Spring MCAS testing will still be posted but they will not affect schools. This means that if schools preform lower on this exam than in recent past years they should not experience reduced funding based on the scores. As a student and current building-base substitute at an Elementary school who had to proctor the MCAS exam it seems a bit absurd that students are still required to take the exam if it will not count for anything. Students should be using the time made available for the exam to actually focus on classroom material rather than take the exam, thats just my opinion and the opinion of my many colleagues.

Elizabeth Cheesman

5/27/2021 02:19:13 pm

Covid pushed English Learners into more stress than before, especially with reading and writing. My articles could actually help solve your English Language Learning story! The students who actually do have access to technology outside of school could zoom in their screens to have larger print. This may relieve anxiety in reading and writing by encouraging them to focus on one sentence at a time. Depending on funds available, if they could borrow large print texts this could also enhance their fluency by working one word at a time. I bet students could zoom in the text on MCAS too!

Lauren Wrigley

5/27/2021 08:55:21 pm

I also read an article on MCAS, but with a slightly different focus. The article I read (published in May 2021) talked about how MCAS testing had been postponed to be taken in late may/early June, and that the reason why they pushed to keep the test at all was to better understand the areas in which students had greatly fallen behind in due to the pandemic. However, these results wouldn't come back until mid-fall, once its too late to efficiently use these scores to shape instruction for these students. Another weakness in this plan involves the amount of stress added to these already stressed students and teachers. I completely agree with your opinion that it seems absurd to test students and burden their mental well-being when it won't "count for anything" in the end.

5/27/2021 02:03:54 pm

Tasha Squires (2020) discovered that books with large print have a positive impact on students’ reading development and engagement. Squires observed that over time, when students were referred to her during the time, they were reading smaller print, she saw abrupt changes in children’s reading progress. For example, stuttering stopped in one child and another student with challenges in fluency began to read with expression and adequate pace (Squires, 2020). Larger print was a stress-free method or approach to reading, as fingers were not used as a visual guide and students could simply look up and magically find their place again (Squires, 2020). Using metacognitive strategies also is an important aspect of English Language Arts development. Julie Hodgson’s New York Times article (2019) provides a description of investigating stories from various perspectives. Hodgson’s approach to reading instruction is encouraging students to find the “why” and meaning beyond the text. She describes this as the “Anatomy of a Scene” (Hodgson, 2019). Students begin to enhance their evaluative and inferential comprehension skills. Moreover, bold text in books, building fluency, can help students foster a deeper understanding of the “why” or meaning behind the book.

Large print and book “anatomy” are compelling to me as both a student and teacher. I tend to understand text more comprehensively when I can zoom in and create larger print. This helps me focus and lessens my anxiety of reading a long chapter. I hope to bring this reading strategy into my classroom as well as focus on finding the “why” in stories. I hope to teach Reading and Writing in Elementary school because I love engaging with students and being investigators to find hidden messages and meanings. Both these articles discuss active learning and I fully support and strive to provide that in my classroom.

Squires:
https://teachmag.com/archives/11375

Hodgson:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/07/learning/reader-idea-learning-to-read-like-writers-with-anatomy-of-a-scene.html

David Golden

5/27/2021 02:08:08 pm

www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-remote-learning-makes-time-management-even-harder/2021/02.

In the article “Remote Learning Makes Time Management Even Harder” written by Emily Rinkema and Stan Williams the issue of time management is raised. Time management is a necessary skill that the article goes into depth. The pandemic has shined a light on the challenge that many students face in acquiring adequate time management skills. The reason is that students who were successful at managing their time in person now are often lagging more and more behind. That can be credited to the removal of peer modeling, teacher reminders, mandated routines, and staff check-ins. In addition, students are more likely to become ill, anxious, hungry, lonely, and depressed while learning exclusively online. Students who were already struggling with how they managed their schoolwork are now facing an even more enormous challenge. Time manage is a skill that secondary education students have not had to really think about. Throughout most of their schooling career many if not all of them had been learning in person. This a new phenomenon that is a once in a lifetime event that the students and teachers were not fully prepared for. The article goes into great lengths to give the educators and the students tips and tricks to thrive in the classroom because time management skills are becoming very much necessary.

In the article "Put Whole Language on Trial" it discusses the approach to reading that many students take. They feel anxious when they have a reading assignment and they have to do deep analysis on it. They feel like their ideas are inadequate and they find difficulty conveying their ideas into words. The article discusses possible solutions towards combating that issue. Teachers should encourage students to continue reading and writing inside and out of the classroom to make them feel comfortable. It is their responsibility as an educator to make their students more aware of their use of language. Reading and writing does not have to be so daunting. Practice makes perfect.

Gabriel El Khoury

5/27/2021 03:42:54 pm

It cannot be understated that the pandemic has been challenging for educators and those being educated alike. In your first article, "Remote Learning Makes Time Management Even Harder,” a number of valid observations are raised, such as the increased likelihood for students "to become ill, anxious, hungry, lonely, and depressed while learning exclusively online." While time management may suffer as a consequence of online learning, my article, entitled "Teachers reflect on a year of Covid: students struggling, others thriving,” offers a potential upside to the pandemic: the fact that "[s]ome students have thrived without the social pressures and distractions of in-person school." Like all areas in life, there are upsides and downsides. Going forward, perhaps a synthesis of both online and in-person learning could make for a more robust teaching landscape, catering to the wide range of students' needs.

Emma Healy

5/27/2021 06:57:43 pm

From your first article, it makes complete sense that a removal such as "peer modeling" and "teacher reminders" would lead students to fall behind academically and fail to manage time. No one could have been prepared for the past year, including teachers and students who suffered immensely. My article takes a different approach regarding remote learning in the sense that students are becoming too reliant on technology and enjoyed using the latest and greatest online apps and tools. My article argues it may be a challenge to remove that constant technology aspect that students have endured for a long period of time. There are a lot of unknowns on how students will reenter the classroom after over a year of staring at a teacher in a small zoom square is a definite stressor. While your article is optimistic to get back into the classroom in the hopes students will be better off with time management skills, my article has a little more anxiety with the transition.

tenneh sesay

5/27/2021 03:30:21 pm

I remember when I was volunteer at my old middle school, I noticed that the teacher need to teach remote and in person. They would be few people in class like about 8 students and the rest would be at home. The student was getting bored, tired, and they wasn't in the mood to pay attention through the zoom. Since Covid-19 started learning has been very hard and lost for all the students and not everyone wasn't ready for online learning. Online learning isn't for anyone but iI prefer online then in person. Since I started college all my classes are online depend which classes like science and lab, but beside that all my other class would be online. At this point I'm even get tired of online class and zoom, because I feel these teacher don't care about us a students. They just keep giving us lot of homework without knowing it.

5/27/2021 03:32:58 pm

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/learning/current-events-teaching-resources.html
https://edsource.org/2021/teachers-reflect-on-a-year-of-covid-students-struggling-others-thriving/649705

In “Teaching Resources for Bringing the World Into Your Classroom” (2019), a synthesis of resources are offered to teachers by The Learning Network. With the landscape of teaching constantly changing, new and innovative approaches are being implemented into classrooms at record speed. The article encourages teachers to take advantage of multimedia resources readily available to them, such as Professional Development Webinars and Current Events Conversations.
In "Teachers reflect on a year of Covid: students struggling, others thriving” (2021), there is noted a few surprising "upsides" to the social distanced approach to schooling, such as the lack of social pressures and "the distractions of in-person school." As a consequence of the setbacks the pandemic has imposed upon teachers, many in education have been forced to adopt new strategies, find more interesting ways of engaging their students, thereby revivifying their approaches to teaching, so it is thankfully not all doom and gloom.
Both “Teaching Resources for Bringing the World Into Your Classroom” and “Teachers reflect on a year of Covid: students struggling, others thriving” are articles which speak to the constantly evolving landscape of teaching. Whereas “Teaching Resources for Bringing the World Into Your Classroom” offers teachers ways to make their classrooms more engaging environments for their students, painting a positive picture and encouraging new, exciting approaches to teaching, “Teachers reflect on a year of Covid: students struggling, others thriving” is tonally different, relating the past few years of “frustration, uncertainty, and seemingly endless hours on Zoom” due to the Covid pandemic, which has greatly affected all areas of life, including teaching. Both articles describe the teaching landscape as being volatile, constantly in a state of change. (But when has it not been constantly changing?) Going into the future, the two articles seem to agree that teaching as a field could look dramatically different in the years ahead, and that changes brought about by the pandemic, such as Zoom classrooms, are unlikely simply to disappear. Come what may, one thing can be said for certain: education can always be improved.

5/27/2021 06:42:16 pm

The first article, “Schools Already Struggled To Teach Reading Right: Now They Have to Do It Online” was written by Benjamin Herold in 2020. Since the pandemic hit, teachers have faced an even greater challenge which is teaching to a bunch of small squares on a computer screen. This is especially challenging for the younger children who need that in person interaction with teachers to learn to read and write. A lot of teachers have transitioned to using online apps and tools as new forms of teaching because they didn’t really have other options during the pandemic. Now, a lot of teachers are reliant on these apps, even with schools opening up across the United States. The article discusses the benefits of technology that arose from the pandemic, but also the unequal distribution of technology across the country based on economic and racial status. Technology was necessary during this difficult year, but now the question is are children too dependent on it for academic purposes and thinking less independently? The school zoom aspect is also tricky because it isn’t guaranteed every student is as actively engaged as they may be in an actual classroom where the teacher has more control in person. This was a testing world we have lived for over a year, and the article stresses the unknowns regarding how students who previously struggled with reading will adapt back into in person classrooms and what technology will look like in classrooms as well.
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/schools-already-struggled-to-teach-reading-right-now-they-have-to-do-it-online/2020/09
The second article, “50 Ways Schools Can Support Early Literacy” was written by Lindsay Barrett in September 2018, prior to the pandemic. This article emphasizes the critical role literacy plays in the early childhood years. A lot of professionals go into the field of education to lay the foundation of literacy knowing how crucial it is for their students’ futures. Being a proficient reader and writer correlates to academic and career success in the future, while also proving to prevent any economic struggles. There are endless benefits to nailing down literacy before the third grade. The article assists educators by giving numerous ways in which literacy can be supported. The importance of oral literacy is vital to expand a students’ knowledge of reading and writing. This could be through story telling or read alouds. Inviting students to be active and engaging learners, while being mindful of how each individual student's learning differs. The article wants teachers to supply students with correct phonics instruction, so they build good literacy behaviors from the beginning. As opposed to the other article, this doesn’t involve a lot of technological aspects in the classroom. This article focuses more so on the face to face interactions that students reap the benefits from, way before we knew a world pandemic would shake the core of our educational systems that wasn't so dependent on zoom calls. Overall, the article highlights the necessity for literacy and how to effectively get it across at the earliest possible grade levels.
https://www.weareteachers.com/support-early-literacy/

5/27/2021 08:28:59 pm

When searching for these articles, I tried to find a common theme. In this case, the commonality was standardized testing. The first article was from 2019 and discussed U.S. students’ performance on an international exam. According to Lauren Camera, the results from these international assessments placed the U.S. in top ranks compared to other countries, and this ranking had also improved since previous years. Yet, while many saw these results as a reason to celebrate, in actuality, students had actually not improved at all in their scores, and only appear to be scoring higher than other countries; In other words, other countries have dropped in ranking. Realigning the audience’s focus on individual progress, further attention displayed a performance gap that occurs in these results, specifically in reading. The remainder of the article explores possible influences for this gap, including socioeconomic factors and school resources. Essentially, the main purpose f this article was to acknowledge that, while the U.S. may appear to be performing well academically in comparison to other countries, the closer focus must be placed on individual student progress, including why issues such as performance gaps occur and ways in which this problem might be solved.

The second article I read was about MCAS testing, specifically in relation to the pandemic and whether it’s a process that students and educators should really have to experience under the circumstances of COVID-19. Written in May 2021, this article not only reignites a familiar conversation about standardized testing, it specifically highlights the illegitimacy behind the plan to test students after spending a year remote learning. After canceling testing last year, DESE has decided to postpone MCAS testing until later in the year. This solution causes several problems as results wouldn’t become available until the fall (once it’s too late) and more importantly, the MCAS is known to be a stressful experience for students, and most educators believe that after the amount of stress that students have endured throughout the pandemic, creating additional stressful situations would just not be right. Rather than wasting already limited time and resources on standardized testing that won’t efficiently measure students’ progress, many educators believe these efforts should be shifted toward resources that will actually help students improve their performances.

I found reading these two articles in the same context interesting because they both focus on improving student’s academic performances, yet one seems to favor standardized testing over the other. The first (older) article focuses on relying on these scores to help improve students’ performance, whereas the latter article shifts this focus to finding alternative ways to measure and improve students’ progress. After experiencing a global pandemic, people seem to more carefully consider the mental wellness of students and teachers, such as acknowledging the type of stress students feel toward these tests.

Asynchronous Post for 27 may 2021

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Asynchronous Post for 27 may 2021

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