The Washington Post - 18.03.2020

WEDNESDAy, MARCH 18 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE B5

ing indoors to avoid other peo-

ple, washing your hands fre-

quently and taking the coronavi-

rus pandemic seriously. Just be-

cause you cannot see the virus,

Elias told the teenagers, does not

mean it is not extremely danger-

ous.

But he interspersed more

li ghthearted moments, too — at

one point joking that months of

isolation at home might cause

his hair to grow back (he is bald).

Elias compared this odd new

phase of his job to becoming a

social m edia s tar: “Guys, it’s h ard

being an influencer,” he said. A

silver lining of the coronavirus

crisis, Elias said, is that he may

wind up reaching more students,

more directly, than he would

have otherwise.

[email protected]

ing a jump in turnout Tuesday.

During broadcasts, students

give feedback and ask questions

by posting comments beneath

the facebook video. Te achers can

watch, too — in a private face-

book group chat Tuesday, educa-

tors typed comments and sug-

gestions, and asked Elias to relay

the advice to their students.

Among the recommendations

he received from other teachers:

Eat oranges to strengthen the

immune system, use time at

home to read “anything that

interests you” — and, from Eng-

lish teacher Emily Yarrison, a

suggestion that Spanish-speak-

ing students watch television in

English with Spanish subtitles,

to hone their language skills.

other important things to re-

member, Elias said, include stay-

how students can pick up free

meals from the school system,

then plunged into a recent read-

ing assignment for his history

students, who were learning

about the Byzantine Empire

when school shuttered.

“So what’s going to happen,

you think the Byzantines are

going to last?” he asked. “I don’t

know, they got the Persians on

one side.”

Elias’s class makes up a sub-

stantial portion of the viewers,

though the broadcasts are t arget-

ed to all high-schoolers, and

Elias’s audience and reach are

growing. monday’s session drew

about 200 students, whether

watching in real time or tuning

in afterward, and — based on the

number of live viewers — Elias

expected he would wind up see-

modynamics, Spaeth told the

teenagers. “You can do anything;

dream big!”

He ended by giving the stu-

dents his email address and

offering to help them find engi-

neering internships. Afterward,

Ushe said the first session drew

far more viewers than she ex-

pected.

“Now, what I really need to

do,” Ushe said, “is find someone

who works with vaccines and

viruses, who can come on and

speak to viruses.”

Elias plans to stream his

morning sessions, which last

about half an hour, every week-

day.

The topics, he said, will vary —

on Tuesday, Elias began with a

weather forecast (“cloudy and

rainy”), switched to explaining

him social media platforms are
where teenagers spend much of
their time. other teachers are
resorting to similar measures —
taking crash courses in TikTok,
Instagram and reddit.
Jessica Heppen, senior vice
president at the American In-
stitutes for research, a Wash-
ington-based nonprofit re-
search group focused on social
and behavioral science, said it
is not surprising that educators
must innovate to stay in touch
with middle-schoolers and
high-schoolers. online learning
tools have improved, she said,
but are insufficient to support a
massive national experiment in
online education — even if
teachers everywhere knew how
to use them, which is not the
case.
“We as a nation were not
prepared for this,” said Heppen,
who has studied online school-
ing in K-12 schools. “So it’s good
there are a plethora of tools
available.”
mary Kay Downes, an English
teacher in Northern Virginia, is
repurposing online learning
platform Google Classroom to
check in with her students.
Downes — who teaches in
fairfax County Public Schools —
sends messages every other day
to her two English classes and to
students producing the high
school yearbook, which she ad-
vises. The fairfax system, like
Alexandria City, is not mandat-
ing academic work for its
188,000 students during a rough-
ly month-long shutdown.
“Use this time to relax and to
read,” Downes wrote march 14 to
her senior English class.
“Start a diary or blog,” she
suggested Tuesday. “record this
life-altering event so you can one
day share it with your children.”
Elsewhere in Virginia, engi-
neering and biotechnology
teacher Jennifer Ushe is relying
on videoconference program
Zoom to k eep her students think-
ing about science, technology
and math during the break.
Ushe has lined up guest speak-
ers, each representing a different
science- or math-related profes-
sion; upcoming lecturers include
a physicist, a pediatrician and a
microbiologist. She is asking
guests to appear on a videocon-
ference for 3 0 minutes to an h our
to discuss their jobs, answer
students’ questions and offer ca-
reer advice.
Ushe is hosting the Zoom calls
at noon every Tuesday, Wednes-
day and Thursday, a schedule s he
plans to follow for as long as the
closure lasts. Any T.C. Williams
student is i nvited to watch and to
submit questions.
Her first Zoom call Tuesday
drew about 50 student viewers,
just a handful of them from her
class. Engineer mike Spaeth —
holding a yellow coffee mug and
wearing a T.C. Williams hoodie —
fielded inquiries about his most
difficult work assignment,
whether engineering is an oner-
ous college major and how stu-
dents can find work in the field.
“Stay optimistic if you’re hav-
ing trouble with things” such as
differential equations and ther-

TEACHERS from B1

Va. teachers experiment with live-streaming, social media to reach students

HAnnAH nAtAnson/tHE WAsHInGton Post

Gabriel Elias, a history teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, is staying connected with his students by streaming a daily Facebook Live video. Elias’s class

makes up a substantial portion of the viewers, though the broadcasts are targeted to all high-schoolers, and his audience and reach are growing.

“We as a nation

were not prepared

for this. So it’s

good there are

a plethora of

tools available.”

Jessica Heppen,

senior vice president at

the American Institutes for

Research, a Washington-

based nonprofit research

group focused on social and

behavioral science

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