The New York Times Magazine - USA (2020-09-13)

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Erika Larsen for The New York Times

never asked a question. They just wanted to

be around somebody while they were doing

work. And they’d look up every now and then

to make sure the teacher was still there.

We are trying to limit the areas for instruc-

tion to the most important aspects of a grade’s

standards, and trying to go deeper as opposed

to broader, and using that as a way to deter-

mine where there are gaps that we need to

fi ll in. I just think it’s so important that we

not squander the opportunity of the health

conditions provided to have kids in person,

because we know how much harder it is to do

this eff ectively online.

White: I wish for the fall, the state and the

district had been more proactive in thinking

of the worst-case scenario. At this point, I’m

teaching virtually and in person at the exact

same time, and that’s basically doing two jobs

at once.

We’re required to use Zoom, and students

have to have their cameras on. But we’re not

allowed to use breakout rooms, and children

are not allowed to talk on Zoom freely. Teach-

ers have to choose to unmute them, and I have

seen some who don’t. My big thing is to make

my class feel like a community. I think you

can still do that virtually, not as well as you

can in person, but somewhat. The kids in my

class don’t have to turn their cameras on, and I

unmute them if they want to ask me a question

or talk. We engage in the chat, we do lots of

interactive games.

We have to teach for 30 minutes straight,

which I don’t think is helpful for students,

because you’re not going to keep kids’ atten-

tion for 30 minutes straight doing a lesson. So

I usually do mini-lessons that are about fi ve to

10 minutes long, and then I turn the kids over

to do their independent work after that, and

I stay on Zoom for them to ask me questions.

Bazelon: What’s the rationale for not allowing

students to talk freely on Zoom?

White: That what’s going on at home can be

disruptive to the learning environment.

King: This is troubling. I think that, in part,

what we’re seeing is the challenge of making

up how to do distance learning on the fl y. We

should be using tools like Zoom breakout

Zola Shapiro-Strano, 10

Fifth grader, Whittier Elementary School,

Phoenix

School started on Aug. 6, fully online. I was

pretty worried, because last year when

everything went online after spring break, it

didn’t go well. But it’s actually pretty good.

I feel like we’re learning more about how to

use technology, like learning to code, that

we wouldn’t do in normal school because

we weren’t always using computers. I coded

something for my dad’s birthday.