Teachers cram for their next big test — working with students online

They may be the teachers, but they have been doing a lot of cramming for their next big test.

Thousands of educators throughout Luzerne County are figuring out how to teach their students without blackboard, smart board, or even a classroom as schools everywhere prepare to officially launch some form of online education Monday.

For Jennifer Yale at Wilkes-Barre Academy, it’s been an exhilarating learning curve.

“We weren’t prepared for any of this,” the veteran teacher said Thursday. “We do a lot of technology in our school. We have smart boards and laptops and tablets to make them familiar to students, but we hadn’t personally done any distance learning.

“In a matter of days — and it really feels like a matter of minutes — we had to assemble our team.”

Like schools around the county, Wilkes-Barre Academy started preparing for closure before Gov. Tom Wolf mandated it in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, sending textbooks, worksheets and other information home with students. And like other schools, Yale said Academy teachers “have been putting up assignments and communicating with children for the past two weeks,” using a parental portal web program and email.

“We’ve kept learning going right from the very first day.”

But on guidance issued by the state department of education, all schools are kicking online learning into high gear Monday, until Wolf gives the all-clear to return to the classroom, tentatively set for April 9. So schools have been preparing various programs through online tools including Google Classroom and Zoom.

“We’ve been hosting our own meetings via Zoom to figure out what works best and where the glitches are,” Yale said, adding “I’m so grateful all the parents and students have really jumped on board. We seem to be going along really smoothly.”

The teachers, of course, are all doing this at home; schools are closed, after all. So the first question was whether they already had the equipment and internet speed to handle two-way audio-video web conversations.

Then the school had to make sure students had adequate equipment. Yale said the administrators and staff have been very helpful in getting things set up and finding ways to work around problems. Sometimes a student may not have a computer or an internet connection, but will have a smartphone that can still connect to the teacher.

Now they’re trying to make sure it all works together in a useful way.

“As kids come online, most of the teachers have figured things out on their own and are trying to resolve those issues, but we’re waiting to see. Some children have multiple siblings in the school, and so for some of us there may be three children from the same household on at the same time.” Such a situation can slow down the connection at that family’s home. Though early efforts have proven promising.

“A kindergarten teacher zoomed with the entire class today and didn’t have any issues. And it’s a pretty big class.”

While the state has talked about “review and enrichment,” and not about giving a full day of new learning, Yale said the Academy’s plan has always been to teach new material. Students are required to participate. If they are not live-streaming, they are given some work to do.

Teachers have to adapt pretty much everything they usually do. Yale noted the lack of a blackboard requires a work-around.

“I’ve had to type up everything and send it as file attachments and say, ‘This is what I would have written on the board.’

“We found we have to revise how we normally teach, to accommodate not doing live teaching. It’s not perfect, We’re not able to walk around the room, but it’s as close as we can come.”

Yale is excited about the chance to interact live, if not in person, with her students again, and she thinks most of the students feel the same. “I’m very excited. So many students have texted and emailed, saying they can’t wait until they get back in school.

“I hope everyone involved in education is able to keep going, because our kids are really hungry to learn,” Yale said. “Any way we can restore some normalcy for them, I think that’s so important.”