New Challenges Teachers Face in Pandemic Times & How Should We Respond to Those Challenges
~ 9-minute read ~
On April 14, 2021, India Today, published a validating post for most teachers today, Challenges for teachers which never existed before (1). The article discusses the challenges teachers are experiencing as they provide education during Pandemic times and transitions.
With little notice back in the first quarter of 2020, teachers felt the weight of getting instruction and learning to move seamlessly inside a digital environment. Most teachers did not feel the confidence or have the competence in technology to respond with few trials and errors in the process and sometimes, in the midst of high expectations, from administrators, parents, and students.
The new challenges stated in the article teachers face since the Pandemic began are:
The necessary need to create engaging digital lessons, materials, and assessments that keep students tuned in and turned on in virtual live classes.
Searching, gathering, and learning unfamiliar EdTech tools to deliver the first bulleted challenge.
The extra time teachers take to brainstorm how to plan lessons, virtual class agendas, instructional resources, and digital learning assignments and activities, and how this extra time has elongated the normal school day for many teachers.
During virtual learning, many teachers were in different roles (mom, dad, spouse, housekeeper, meal maker, caregiver, etc.) with those roles, the responsibilities, while teaching, planning, grading, and designing digital teaching and learning artifacts. Teacher time, energy, and social-emotional wellness were mostly, in depletion mode.
Providing feedback digitally is new, time-consuming, and hard to schedule.
Valuable educational physical activities such as labs, Socratic Circles, field trips, and guest speakers all needed to turn virtual in nature if we wanted to still provide these learning experiences to our students.
Authentic assessments are a challenge online; long summative assessments, the kind we administered in physical school are not going well in showcasing student mastery of content.
For the most part, pedagogy, changed overnight, with very little research on what the best practices are when teaching virtually. It is safe to say, most collegiate teacher programs did not offer a course on best practices in virtual learning environments when we were in our programs of study.
One challenge not mentioned in the article but a challenge I have seen in my coaching is the high incidence of plagiarism and academic dishonesty among high school students in the virtual learning setting.
At the time of this article, some schools continue to be 100% virtual. Other schools are in hybrid design, certain days of the school week are virtual for students and other days are in the physical classroom. There are schools that are doing the “newest” form of education: hyflex, where some students have returned to the physical classroom while others are still in school virtually; whichever mode students are learning, they are solely learning virtually or in the physical classroom. This different way of school has been nicknamed, the “roomers and zoomers”. And some schools (and most of which are private schools), are back in the physical classroom 100% of the school week.
So how do we as teachers, face and fix these new challenges in instruction, student learning, and assessment?
Since it seems, each district, and it is probably safe to say, each school in a school district, are doing what is best in these times for their specific stakeholders (students, parents, teachers, staff, and administration), this type of autonomy may not provide solutions that work for all teachers.
What seems to be a sign of the times is online training or e-learning. As the article stated, teachers who “up-skill and re-skill” with online learning opportunities equip themselves to face and fix the challenges stated in this article.
Online learning or otherwise stated, e-learning, in 2020 and 2021, has increased at astounding numbers. Why? The e-learning industry has seen unprecedented increases in enrollment, participation, and as a result, revenues, due to COVID-19 restrictions. Adult learners need or want the training, appreciate the convenience of a virtual learning space with no transportation requirements, and also value the convenience of this type of remote training. Skillscouter.com stated the e-learning industry is projected to reach that $325 billion USD by 2025 (2). It makes sense that teacher professional development, as well, will also predominately transform into an e-learning type of framework and delivery at a higher proportion.
Who knows? Many predict education will never be run the same or structured as it was prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic school shutdown. Maybe teacher training, educational conferences, and EdCamps will also take on a new look and livelihood.
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Start the conversation by commenting below:
Which challenge stated above resonates the most with you?
How have you learned to move through this challenge?
Thanks for reading! Stay safe, take care, and keep smiling, knowing your worth.
Next week’s blog topic: What is working well for students in virtual learning?
Sources:
(1) Challenges for teachers which never existed before - Education Today News (indiatoday.in)
(27) 9+ Staggering Online Learning Statistics Revealed!🥇(2021) (skillscouter.com)