As the COVID-19 Pandemic winds down and the majority of US schools plan to return to normal in-person instruction, the impact that the pandemic had on education will undoubtedly have lasting effects. Most notable is the potential of continuing remote learning on certain days as opposed to 100% in-person instruction. While it is still essential to provide key factors of in-person school such as socialization (especially for younger students), the sudden switch to online learning was surprisingly beneficial for many schoolgoers around the nation.
Many parents and students alike would likely agree that the 2020-2021 school year was far from easy. From the new school structure to not being able to see friends and family very often has taken its toll on everybody. However, this does not mean that all of the sudden changes that many schools made was necessarily bad. Middle school teacher Montenique Woodard explained to edutopia.org her difficulty with a certain “class clown” in an in-person class. She shared that once the shift to online learning began, the same boy who was causing trouble in the classroom began to flourish academically.
In the article by Edutopia, Woodward remarked,
“I think not having those everyday distractions in shool has really allowed for kids like him to focus on the work and not necessarily all the social things going on because some kids can't separate that out,”
The students in Woodward’s class were able to focus much more easily when deprived of the classroom’s social distractions. This success story shows that incorporating some hybrid style of learning for certain students could potentially relieve some distractions that hold them back. The ideal situation would be to teach these students the best way to behave in a school environment, but there are some special cases where more control is required for the entire class to succeed.
For slightly older students, the increased autonomy over their schedules has been a huge advantage. Instead of being confined to a certain task during in-person instruction, students have gotten a taste of what it might be like to be assigned tasks and then complete them with their own pacing. English teacher Lauren Hiddleston noticed, “[Students] are taking ownership a bit more because they’re no longer under the micromanagement of the school day”. This discovery could lead to changes that were a long time coming, especially since different students work at different speeds. Even though there will definitely still be students that prefer having designated time to work on a task to combat procrastination, self-paced assignments from different classrooms should be incorporated more into today’s classes.
COVID has undeniably changed the way many families and teachers view education, and even opened up some opportunities for growth. As hard as the year was, the difficulties can be used as learning experience to not only improve the education system, but also to prepare for any unexpected event that may happen in the future. The reduction of distractions and the ability to self-pace are only a few of the benefits that came with the transition to remote learning. With more studies and more student access to resources, the advantages only increase.
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