Instead of double doubling classroom teachers with absurd remote/face to face simultaneous instructional expectations and a schedule that fires a month of work at students that teachers are then expected to prep, deliver (in two places at once) and mark with no time given, let’s review and improve this situation.
Course duration has always been set in Ontario at 110 hours, but instructional time has been systemically devalued by waiving expectations for remote learning and dropping unqualified teachers into make-work support roles instead of using them for what they should be in schools for.
In a pandemic where everyone is stressed, a schedule that is uneven and cruel has put unnecessary pressure on both staff and students. Let’s take a step back and see if I can’t spitball a better solution. I ain’t no senator’s son sitting in an office deciding these things, I’m just one of the people who is being waterboarded by them, but I’ll take a swing at that difficult job anyhow.
THE SITUATION WE’RE IN NOW
A teacher typically teaches three classes of 20-31 students per semester. Let’s say that’s 75 students you’re responsible for (some semesters I’ve had 90+). If we made all classes capped at 20 students (a single cohort), each teacher would be responsible for 60 students, which is less than most of us normally are.
We have way fewer students in schools right now because many have opted for fully remote learning, so there are empty classrooms all about.
We have a shortage of specialist teachers and can’t provide qualified coverage for them.
We cling to the idea that we need to keep prep periods in our schedule and then fill them with meaningless, un-pedagogically sound busy work while causing always on quadmesters where your prep isn’t happening even as you’re being asked to rejig a curriculum to a schedule no one has ever seen before.
Students with special needs are swamped by the machine gun like efficiency of quadmestering.
Students without special needs are overwhelmed by the drink from the firehose curriculum of quadmestering.
A CRUELTY FREE SOLUTION TO PANDEMIC RESPONSE TEACHING
- in semester 2 return to semesters and end the quadmester cruelty
- each week is one class with a weekend to de-COVID the place (that’s a good idea)
- make every Friday an independent review and catch up day for students to give them time to make sense of the hectic influx of material
- on those Fridays staff are given time to mark the week’s work, contact students with updates and concerns and prep for the next week’s influx
- each month/4 weeks is a complete tumble of the schedule
- teachers don’t have prep ‘periods’ any more (they have the Friday and smaller cohorts)
- teachers all provide their own remote learning support (so a qualified person is teaching students they are familiar with)
- leverage the empty classes generated by fully remote learning to spread out cohorts and cover the bump in classes running
- leverage the teachers currently brought in at teacher salaries to babysit to actually teach classes
- each class is a three hour face to face morning session (12 hours of instructional f2f time per four day week)
- each class has a 2 hour remote/online expectation for review and consolidation of learning WITH THE SAME QUALIFIED TEACHER
- teachers can leverage their relationships with students to engage them in online work
- at five hours per day of instructional time, and 16 weeks of class (4 tumbles through the schedule), students would experience 48 hours of face to face instruction and 32 hours of guided online instruction with a qualified teacher familiar with them from face to face learning. They would also have 5 hours of Friday consolidation of learning time each week for a total of 20 hours in the semester. That adds up to one hundred hours of learning at a pedagogical effectiveness we can only dream of right now.
- add in an exam/culminating presentation day per class at the end of the year and you’d be at 103 hours of instruction with credible culminating grades generated (exams are cancelled currently)
- students cannot opt out of remote learning and every effort will be made to ensure they have connectivity and technology at home with which to do it (this is happening now anyway – not the opting out part, you can do that – people are knocking themselves out to ensure this isn’t a digital divide issue though and would continue to)
The benefits of this approach?
- small cohorts to reduce the chance of COVID transmission
- a qualified instructor who knows students providing remote learning
- a much higher quality of remote teaching
- a teacher not expected to be online and in class simultaneously
- time given for meaningful one on one feedback both face to face and remotely
- time given for redesigning an entirely curriculum schedule on the fly (that’s not happening right now)
- time given to recognize the cognitive load on students trying to cover a month of material each week
- time given for pedagogically sound learning
- time given for students to sleep on and review their learning and consolidate it
- students with special needs would have time given to support them (currently that’s all cancelled)
- a more reasonable schedule that is evenly distributed and isn’t trying to kill people with stress during a pandemic (there’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to write)
- restore credibility to online/remote learning after a year of the Minister and now boards suggesting it’s optional and doesn’t matter
SUMMARY
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