Shelly-Ann Cunningham Thompson | Changing roles of teachers in times of COVID-19

Since the reopening of public schools in October, students and teachers have been spending hours online as they try to navigate the virtual classroom space in an attempt to meet learning objectives. Using Google Meets, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, students and teachers are engaged in meetings from as early as 7:25 a.m. (Devotion Period) to even 3 p.m. These ongoing student-teacher interactions are all in a bid to ensure that educators are fulfilling their role of teaching students. These engagements often include a lot of back and forth conversations between the teacher and the few students who are willing and/or are able to participate in the live discussions.

Ironically, much of the work required for students’ success is not done in these meetings. Also, these meetings, riddled with Internet connectivity, may not even provide teachers with a clear indication of students’ progress.

The practice that students need to develop skills in different subject areas is often done after the meetings and may be time-consuming, depending on the students’ situation (device and access to the Internet). So, after sitting in meetings all day, students must use their afternoons and late nights to complete endless assignments. They are usually on to a new meeting before getting feedback on the previous task. We can imagine the insurmountable work load that is given to them as well as to the teachers who must prepare for the live sessions, engage students during the sessions, complete physical and electronic records then provide feedback after students are finally able to complete the tasks. Clearly, an attempt to bring physical school online multiplies the work for students and teachers and the outcome in view is a clear burnout. This will definitely not be in keeping with the ultimate purpose of school. We must definitely rethink our approach.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.” The goal for students’ learning is constant, but undeniably, the roles of the educators in achieving this goal must change and so, too, should the expectations.

FACILITATOR OF KNOWLEDGE

First, now more than ever, the teacher is a facilitator of knowledge and not necessarily a giver of it. Ongoing teacher-student engagement does not translate to student engagement with the course content. A requirement that teachers ‘police’ students online is in no way indicative of students’ interaction with course content. Being student-centric is critical! The teacher’s expertise or superpower, as it is now called, is in determining the skills required for individual students to achieve learning goals and to locate, create, or customise materials that facilitate the attainment of such goals. Every teacher is now a “content creator”, finding and developing needs-based materials and sharing such materials in a form that encourages maximum interaction from students. So the art of lesson planning is no longer writing an elaborate document narrating the 5E model (engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate) of a traditional lesson. Lesson planning is now the creation of student-engagement materials.

It is not possible to create much less engage with these materials electronically without some level of digital literacy. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, coupled with the spread of COVID-19, has mandated the use of technology in almost every aspect of our lives. Believe it or not, digital literacy is as foundational to learning as reading and writing. In the same way that we promote writing in the disciplines or writing across the curriculum and content-area reading, technology in the disciplines is essential. The teacher must be able to manipulate the different platforms to create and distribute materials and should be versed enough to provide technical support to students so that they may be able to benefit from these materials. This will require a change from teachers. However, it is absolutely necessary if we are going to be providing feedback to students.

On the topic of feedback, live meetings seldom give students the opportunity to demonstrate learning. As a matter of fact, some students deliberately exit meetings when a response is mandated. What is the point of teaching without assessment? What is the point of teaching without feedback? Students should be given the opportunity to do extensive practice. Therefore, it is the role of the teacher to create avenues for online independent work so that targeted skills may be assessed. As they do these tasks, the teacher may provide technical support as it relates to manipulating the devices as well as clarify content/skill-related misconceptions as they arise.

To meet learning goals, the classroom must take on a new shape, which may not necessarily mean increased student-teacher interaction but definitely maximum engagement with content. So what are the roles of the teacher? To diagnose students’ needs, to locate, create and/or modify engaging content to meet the students’ needs and to provide technical support, guidance, and clarifications as students engage with content.

Shelly-Ann Cunningham Thompson is a teacher of English, literatures, and communication studies and operator of Online English Clinic. Send feedback to onlineenglishclinic@gmail.com