How Modesto schools might improve after coronavirus

As a retired Modesto City Schools high school teacher, I wince when I read some of our leaders state or imply that our K-12 students will still get a high quality education online in the remaining few weeks. While I believe teachers will give it a good try, it is too much to expect so soon, especially since teachers have to function under rules not suitable for pure online instruction, and I think parents already understand their children will receive a lesser education this spring due to COVID-19.

This is not to say that some students do not get a good education at home under supporting parental supervision. I have met many home-schooled children who achieved a fine education.

But many students will not thrive without a supportive school environment. Most students need to attend classrooms dedicated to learning, led and supported by a professional and socially supported by other engaged students. Students will find they can accomplish more — and pay attention longer — than they can from sitting alone in front of a monitor at home.

The disruption of the coronavirus and forcing the adaptation of on-line learning is a lesson in disguise, as it provides a needed kick in the pants to dramatically improve our delivery of instruction — if we take it to heart.

The educational system has done a poor job integrating technology into the school system, since technology wrought correctly should improve efficiency and lower costs. So far it has done neither. Education has been treating technology as an add-on rather than as an integrative operative and teaching tool.

The problem is the educational bureaucracy has never been more top-down and fearful of teacher instructional out-of-the-box delivery than in the last 10 years. We are in need of serious innovation at a time when the fashion is to wait for some governmental institution’s ill-fated marching orders.

We need bottom-to-top innovation and we need it now. Schools need to start establishing a true hybrid learning dynamic delivering the best of both worlds: online personal instruction.

In the near future, a 21st-century school will have lessons delivered both at home and in the classroom. I see our most industrious and self-motivated students attending their high school classrooms perhaps only twice a week while other students requiring more direction, encouragement, and support attending three or four times.

For teachers, one day per week could be student-free, a time dedicated to work on improving their online curriculum operation. This hybrid school would allow more individuated instruction than is possible just in the classroom.

The key to this moment begins this August. Each teacher should be asking themselves, “Which aspects of a typical week’s lesson can only be critically performed within the walls of my classroom? Which aspects should be filmed and stored online for student review or reference? And which aspects should I not perform anymore in the classroom, but could be offloaded online for student access on their own time?”

The establishment and the teachers’ unions should both get on board with a truly integrated, hybrid, online personal instruction model because sooner than later some private entity will offer another tempting but flawed option: pure online instruction. Public schools are uniquely situated to deliver the best of both worlds unless they are too sluggish to react.

My hope is that every legislator, administrator, and teacher recognizes this moment. It will take several years of hard work, but the public school of the future will be superior to what we do presently and will be more flexible to confront future events.