People talk about the upcoming school year as if we have a choice between in-person classes or distance learning.

We don’t.

The fact is there will be NO face-to-face learning this year.

Neither in our school buildings or on-line.

No matter which path we choose, we will be teaching behind a mask or behind a computer screen.

There is no middle ground here – nor should there be.

Even if schools try to execute some hybrid model where kids only attend classes in-person two or three days a week and go on-line for the remainder of the time, when they are in the school building everyone will be wearing masks.

And that’s as it should be.

When in a public place during a global pandemic like that of COVID-19, we need to wear face masks to reduce the spread of the disease.

But let’s not pretend this has no side effects.

Social distancing, limited mobility, plexiglass barriers, cleanliness protocols – all will have an impact on academics.

So if we reopen physical school buildings, we will not be returning to the kind of face-to-face instruction students enjoyed as recently as January and February.

It will be a completely new dynamic that may present as many difficulties – if not maybe more – than learning on-line.

That’s something people would do well to understand before deciding which course is best.

Mask-to-mask learning will not be face-to-face learning.

Social distancing may rob the physical classroom of almost all of its benefits over distance learning.

Again, I’m not suggesting we do without PPE or safety measures. But let’s be honest about how these measures will alter academics.

 
First, let’s look at masks.

Admit it. It is hard to be heard in a mask.

Imagine trying to get a message across to a classroom of middle school children with a piece of fabric hiding half of your face, obscuring your expressions and garbling your words.

I’m not saying it’s insurmountable, but it’s not indistinguishable from classroom teaching at the beginning of last school year, either.

It generates distance, just as it’s supposed to do. But teaching requires connection, understanding and relationship building.

Many of my students come into my class with trust issues. They’ve been let down by adults and authority figures. They aren’t about to put in their best work for just anyone. They have to know the teacher can be trusted and cares about them as individual people.

How are you supposed to generate trust when students can only see your eyes?

Moreover, masks are a permanent symbol of the danger we’re all in just being together. Every time we look at each other we’ll be reminded of risk, threat and our own vulnerability.

These do not make for good teaching. On Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of 
Needs, only physiological necessities like food and water take precedence. Without a sense of safety, it is difficult to impossible for students to achieve their full potentials.

Unfortunately, facial coverings aren’t the only problem. Consider physical proximity.

As a teacher, I rarely sit when students are in the room.

During a 40 minute class, I probably lap the space as many times going from desk to desk observing students progress, answering questions, reading work, making suggestions, etc. This will be much more difficult with the threat of Coronavirus in the room.

How can I closely observe my students from a minimum of 6 feet away?

I would suspect this will be even more profound with kids with special needs. Just because they’re in the classroom with the teacher does not mean the teacher will be able to serve them as well as under normal circumstances. This is bound to lead to increased frustration and acting out.

The most common diagnosis my middle school students have is ADHD. The most common adaptation I’m told to make to help them overcome this is to repeatedly prompt them back on task. And you don’t want to do this in a way that will draw attention to the issue. I often walk up to students and ask questions privately, or point to something on their papers.

This will not be easy when trying to avoid their physical space. Any verbal queues would be loud enough to be heard by the rest of the class.

 
Nor does this allow for students to work together on group projects. They can’t push their desks together and work on assignments cooperatively in the physical classroom. In fact, in the time of COVID, these kinds of projects may actually be better served on-line.

Finally, imagine the difficulty of getting children to comply with social distancing mandates.

If we can’t get adults to wear masks, how can we expect to get their kids to do it?

Moreover, children are mischievous. Some may try to purposefully cough on their classmates just to get a reaction. Others could intentionally take off their masks to annoy classmates. As every teacher knows, some kids will do anything for attention. Even negative attention.

In-person teaching could easily degenerate into a game of trying to get kids to obey the rules with little to no actual instruction going on.

Are administrators and school boards really prepared to suspend students for endangering their classmates? Are parents willing to accept such punishments?

And let’s not forget the elephant in the room.

What do we do when safety measures fail?

When a student gets sick, do we quarantine for two weeks all the other students who came into contact with him? When a teacher gets sick, who teaches her classes while she is in isolation? And do we keep her students home, too?

Before we can reopen schools to in-person instruction, there are a host of problems we have to solve.

We have to figure out how to get kids to and from school without crowding them together on buses. We have to arrange classes and move students safely from point A to point B within the building. We have to figure out how to safely feed them – since no one can wear a mask while they eat. We have to figure out how to adequately ventilate buildings that were in need of repair for decades prior to the crisis.

One has to wonder – is it worth it?

With so many challenges involved with reopening school buildings, might it not be better to just continue distance learning initiatives?

As we’ve seen, the push for in-person schooling isn’t justified by academic concerns.

Though under normal circumstances face-to-face learning is worlds better than on-line learning, that is not what we’ll be doing if we reopen schools this year.

In truth, the pressure to reopen schools during this crisis comes more from political and economic considerations than pedagogical ones.

Lawmakers and policymakers don’t want to put forward the funding necessary to reduce the risks. Teachers fear they’ll be laid off if they speak out against unsafe working conditions. Parents fear they won’t be able to return to their own jobs if they have to stay home to take care of their children.

These issues can all be solved by good government. Our lawmakers need to follow the lead of nearly every other country that has lowered infection rates. We need federal relief checks so people can pay their bills without having to risk their lives working through a pandemic. We need personal protective equipment (PPE), protection from evictions, and universal healthcare so that we can weather the storm.

It is not the job of schools and teachers to fix these problems. We can’t. We can only further enable bad leadership.

But putting aside political and economic issues, there is an obvious best course of action.

Under these circumstances, continuing distance learning is the best choice from the standpoint of both safety AND academics.

In any other year, having a teacher physically present in the classroom with a cohort of students is worlds better than Brady Bunch style ZOOM meetings or assignments posted on-line.

But this isn’t any other year. It’s 2020 and Coronavirus cases have topped 3 million in the United States. There were nearly 60,000 new cases just yesterday.

You don’t close schools when there are only thousands of cases and then reopen them when there are millions.

One thing to recommend on-line learning at the present time is that we know it can be done. We already tried it last school year. There were certainly major problems but we have a good idea what they are and can make changes to at least attempt to solve them.

We can do a better job ensuring all students have access to computers, devices and the Internet. We can make expectations clear and achievable and increase project based assignments. We can habituate participation, increase interactivity and offer multiple chances to do the work.

Don’t get me wrong. Distance learning will never be as effective as face-to-face instruction.

But we will not have face-to-face instruction this year. It will be mask-to-mask or screen-to-screen.

That cannot be emphasized enough.

None of the possible solutions does a perfect job overcoming the problems.

There are not enough adequate virus screenings to tell who has the disease. Nor can we screen those who have it and keep them quarantined from the rest. Nor do we have adequate PPE to reduce infection. Nor does any vaccine appear to be forthcoming.

With the exception of the last point, many other developed countries have done much better with these things and so are in a better position to reopen schools.

But we have to face facts. The United States is not in the same position. In fact, we’ve made wearing a mask a political statement instead of what it is – a public health concern.

Until we solve these issues, there will be no perfect solution for schools. We just have to choose the best of several imperfect options.

In my opinion, the only way forward is distance learning.

To do otherwise is like trying to figure out how to live in a burning building instead of putting out the fire.

The only sane option is to get to a relatively safe place first.

I hope we can do that for our children, families and communities.

I hope that the death cult of capitalism doesn’t require teachers to jump on the pyre of economic growth.

We all deserve better.

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