Home School Connection

During the pandemic, teacher and student communications often suffered with the abrupt move from in person to online learning. A free new digital reflection tool, Along, can help teachers create personal relationships with students while allowing each student to feel seen and understood. The service lets teachers send thought-provoking questions to students, who can answer in a range of formats, including audio and video. Perhaps something to pass along as school kicks off, especially since some schools are pivoting to online learning once again given rising Covid case numbers.

Following the social media trend of posting photos of food, school nutrition professionals in Texas' Flour Bluff Independent School District are using social media, including TikTok and Snapchat, to demonstrate how they serve healthy meals for students. Brittany Garcia, the district's school nutrition coordinator and a registered dietitian, said the social media posts help spread the word that students are being served nutritious foods, including fruits and vegetables, and remove the stigma of school meals.

Parents have a love/hate relationship with educational technology, and their views about the pros and cons of using more tech in the classroom and at home have probably been even further cemented after this last year of online teaching. It may be that many parents just wish the technology would go away completely.

How can you communicate with your children’s teachers and open up the lines of communication about technology and learning? If your kids are going to be expected to do work that requires using tech tools or devices at home, then teachers will have some obligation to provide parents and caregivers with some level of support. For example, if your kids are being asked to complete a Flipgrid, a popular discussion and presentation tool for students, teachers need to be sure that both students and their parents have access to a short instructional video on how to use Flipgrid. It is hard for teachers to always remember that parents need that kind of support, but a gentle request can help remind them children are still going to be coming to parents to ask for help with their online work.

Using technology to full advantage is a theme for this school year’s recommendations for a better home-school connection. An article on the Edutopia site entitled Teacher-Parent Communication Strategies to Start the Year Off Right focuses on strategies for better communication between teachers and parents and suggests several tech tools and techniques to get the process kicked off. While a good resource for teachers, and one you may want to pass on, many of the ideas are useful for parents who want to communicate better with teachers also.

Teachers say they are taking steps to try to stop cheating during remote instruction, including setting time limits for testing and adopting more written and oral tests, rather than multiple choice. Yet, some parents say some collaboration and looking up answers is OK in this challenging year, saying it may be the only way their children learn in this upended school year. It is a slippery slope and will be interesting to see how it plays out when schools get back to normal.

Parents and students are all too familiar at this point about what it feels like on their end during remote learning during Covid, but what about the impact it has had on  teachers as well? The Chalkbeat site is running a series of articles on just that subject including looking at how teachers are learning to convert classroom lessons to lessons that take advantage of technology. Articles like “No Instruments, No Problem” and “Pencils Down” offer insights on how to cope with technology, stress and remote learning during Covid from a teacher’s point of view.

Both students and teachers report that the shift to remote instruction during the coronavirus pandemic has affected their mental health, with teachers who participated in a survey saying they feel anxious and fearful. Rachel Prince, a high-school teacher in Arizona, says virtual instruction began with some level of excitement but shifted to a constant effort to make students feel better. Students on the other hand have reported constant feelings of missing out.

About 90% of first-grade students at a Washington, D.C., school achieved targets in reading in March, but in the fall -- following a period of remote instruction -- every student was lagging behind in reading, and none read at grade level. Teachers and families are working to recover the learning loss, yet educators and experts say it is an example of the potential long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic on learning.     

Learning from home has been "a roller coaster," according to Samantha Nicole Vicedo, a junior at Luther Burbank High School. In a blog post, Vicedo and other students share what the experience of remote instruction has been for them, including Cheyenne Lo, also a junior, who shares frustrations with technology and teachers who ignore certain time limits. It is a good read for parents who may be having trouble getting kids to describe their issues with remote learning and would like to gain some perspective.

With an end to virtual learning not yet in sight, schools should focus on "access to consistent, high-quality remote or online learning," according to 54% of parents surveyed by the National Parents Union. 37% said they thought a safe return to in-person instruction should be prioritized. The survey also reviews parent opinions on learning loss, state testing and schools’ decision-making processes.