Online learning wasn’t great last spring. Wake promises it will be better in the fall.
Wake County school leaders are promising that online learning will be better this fall, no matter what option parents pick for their children.
The remote instruction that North Carolina public schools used to end last school year drew widespread complaints from parents that it didn’t give their children enough work to do.
But Wake County school officials say that all students will get a full day of learning this fall, regardless of whether they’re in a school building or learning from home.
“This is an intentional effort to ensure what is provided across all instructional environments is ultimately about the same thing,” Brian Pittman, Wake’s senior director of high school programs, told the school board this week. “It’s important that the environment does not determine the outcome of what a student receives.”
Gov. Roy Cooper announced Tuesday he’s reopening K-12 public schools in August under Plan B, which calls for “moderate social distancing” by reducing how many students are allowed on campus and on buses. He’s also allowing school districts to reopen using Plan C, which is remote instruction only.
Wake plans to reopen school buildings for classes
For now, Wake County is using Plan B to split students into three groups on a rotating schedule of one week of in-person classes followed by two weeks of remote learning. Students who don’t feel comfortable about returning to campus amid the coronavirus pandemic can sign up for the new Wake Virtual Academy, which is all virtual.
Wake has received 38,000 applications for the Virtual Academy as of Thursday, around 23% of the district’s enrollment. The registration period closes Monday.
School administrators updated the school board this week on the reopening plans.
“At no point will you hear us make the case that any of the decisions that we’re making or recommending come close to resembling the ideal state for teaching and learning under what we consider to be normal circumstances,” said Drew Cook, Wake’s assistant superintendent for academics. “That said, we do believe that ... what we are sharing represents the very best, most feasible path forward for our students at this time based on what we know.”
Cook said Wake had to abruptly begin offering remote instruction when schools were closed in mid-March to try to slow the spread of COVID-19. He said they’re planning to provide families and teachers this fall with consistent expectations and guidelines.
Students to get 5-6 hours a day of instruction
Pittman said all Wake students will get five to six hours of instruction and/or instructional activities every weekday, whether they’re in school or at home. He said the live instruction could include things like teachers checking in with small groups of students and teaching students new concepts.
“Both live and the counterpart, non-live instruction, are equally important to the plan,” Pittman said. “Live instruction is a component — not the component — that makes each learning environment successful.”
Students will be graded for the work with the same expectations from teachers if they’re working from school or from home.
Under Plan B, Wake students will get at least five hours a week of live instruction with about four hours a day of non-live instructional activities during their remote learning weeks.
Students at the Virtual Academy will get at least 2.5 hours a day of live instruction, not including the non-live activities. The same amount would be provided if Wake switches the entire district to Plan C.
Pittman said school buildings don’t have the wireless capacity for teachers to stream live instruction all day to students who are learning at home. He also said it would be like watching a bank security camera because teachers would often be walking around the room to check in with students, leaving those online to stare at a wall or a blank screen.
The amount of time students spend in front of a device will depend on their age and which courses they are taking, according to Pittman. For instance, he said students in kindergarten and first grade won’t spend as much time on a device compared to a fifth-grade student.
“We have to encourage students to take meaningful breaks regardless of their learning environment,” Pittman said. “We also need to acknowledge that there is great instruction that can happen in a remote environment and in the Virtual Academy that does not involve any device.”
Pittman said schools will tell parents the daily schedule of in-person learning and of live instruction during the remote learning weeks. He said schools are still working on these schedules.
Teachers worried about reopening plan
Wake is providing teachers with resources such as pacing guides and learning plan templates on how to work in this new environment. Schools are being encouraged to have teams split the work to determine who will handle the in-person instruction and who will teach the remote classes.
Michelle Tucker, Wake’s director of K-12 mathematics, said they want teachers to be “assured we have their backs and we’re here to provide as much level of support as we can from the district level as they embark on the school year.”
But some teachers are concerned about how they’ll juggle these new classes, especially under Plan B. School board member Jim Martin said teachers only have two workdays before the first day of classes to figure out how to get things to work.
“I feel like it’s a little bit like we know a hurricane’s coming so we’re putting together the emergency preparedness plans but we’re not going to let you board up the windows until the day before the hurricanes come,” Martin said. “It may not be a perfect analogy, but that’s a sense of what I hear.”
This story was originally published July 16, 2020 at 4:50 PM.
