What Worked in Distance Learning: Scott McLeod and Ben Kelly on Spring 2020

A few weeks into the spring 2020 school closures, Dr. Scott McLeod had already interviewed nearly two dozen school leaders, from public districts in the United States to international schools in Italy and China, for a video series he called the Coronavirus Chronicles. On this episode of edCircuit’s Education Today podcast, presented by Soundtrap for Education, McLeod, an associate professor of educational leadership at the University of Colorado Denver, shared what those leaders were learning about distance learning. Ben Kelly, department head of innovative design in New Brunswick’s Anglophone East School District, then explained how podcasting gives students, and especially quiet ones, a voice.

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Basic needs before lessons

What counted as a successful practice, McLeod said, depended on where a school was in its response. Schools in China and Italy were weeks or months ahead of most American schools. He compared the stages to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, applied to an organization instead of a person.

The first phase was basic access: getting food to children, getting devices and internet hotspots to families, and checking whether anyone was sick or struggling. Only once a school cleared that hurdle could it think seriously about teaching and learning. Then a new set of problems arrived. Teachers who had never taught fully online had to learn, in about a week and a half, what schools had been trying to show them for five years. Early instruction often meant basic worksheets and homework, simply to keep students’ foundations firm.

Relationships first, and the harder cases behind them

In the first weeks, McLeod heard “an incredible emphasis on relationships first” and caring first, with academics taking a back seat. Teachers driving through neighborhoods to wave at their students made for heartening stories, but he warned against mistaking those gestures for the whole job. Schools also faced families dealing with domestic violence, children who needed counseling at a distance, and families who simply went dark. Telecounseling raised privacy problems when everyone was at home. “A lot of the stuff that you’re seeing is sort of this feel good shallow stuff,” he said, “but there’s layers of depth beyond all this.” No one, in his view, yet had great answers.

Teachers need distance learning strategies, not longer lists

Teachers, McLeod said, were “awash in an ocean of resources.” What they needed most were concrete strategies, a few basic tools and help choosing among them. A teacher who was not comfortable with technology before the closures gains nothing from a list of 200 tech resources, because they do not know how to use any of them.

Districts that had invested in instructional coaches and technology coaches were reaping the rewards, he said, while those that had not now wished they had. He also saw an immediate opportunity in peer-to-peer learning: every building has excellent teachers doing great work, and schools could connect them with colleagues who were struggling.

Questions for the fall

Some issues had surprised him. Several schools were already wondering what to do in the fall with students who had disappeared for months. Should they advance to the next grade? Should they be tested first? The hardest problem he had heard of, without a good answer yet, was serving students with special needs who rely on specialized staff and settings and now had only their families at home.

There was encouraging news too. Schools that were further ahead said the flurry eventually settles into a routine. And many leaders saw an opportunity as well as a crisis. Educators had learned “that we can actually change faster than we thought we could when we need to,” he said, and those skills would shape instruction in the fall.

McLeod also saw a shift in public trust. Parents trying to teach at home had discovered how hard the work is, and trust in educators was, in his view, stronger than it had been in a long time. The challenge for schools was not to squander that goodwill: keep what worked, continue to care for children and families, and show that schools could adapt. The Coronavirus Chronicles interviews are collected on his blog, Dangerously Irrelevant.

A Data Insight on digital curriculum

The episode’s Data Insight from The Learning Counsel found that, even before COVID-19, schools spent $11 billion on digital curriculum in a year, while consumers buying directly spent $21 billion, a 17 percent increase over the year before. The Learning Counsel linked that growth to the rise of homeschooling and other self-directed learning.

Talk and Roll: podcasting meets songwriting

Early in his career, Kelly said, a newspaper reporter asked what he would be if he were not a teacher. His answer was a radio show host. Podcasting with students let him combine that passion with teaching, and his Talk and Roll project combines it with music making in Soundtrap. Students pair up and interview each other with simple questions, such as their favorite season or kind of music. They then separate, and each writes and produces a song for the other based on the interview. The finished podcast includes the interview, the reveal of the two songs and the students’ reflections on them.

Kelly called podcasting “a superpower for introverted people.” Many of his students avoid cameras entirely, and some struggle with writing. He described eighth grade hockey players who were not strong readers and would never appear on video, but who “come to life” on the radio. He usually chooses the pairs, deliberately matching an introvert with a more outgoing classmate, and lets the students choose their topic. When students from different backgrounds settle on the same topic, he said, friendships form. “Radio is a very intimate way to form relationships.”

Getting teachers on the microphone

To help colleagues understand podcasting, Kelly organized a project called Be True to Your School, after the Beach Boys song, in which students interviewed their teachers. The questions were easy, but teachers shared memories they rarely tell anyone, such as how awkward middle school dances were. Microsoft and Soundtrap visited to record the day.

The obstacle to wider use, he said, was access. In his rural school, which he described as not financially rich, only he and the music teacher had Soundtrap accounts, and iPads were not available. If every teacher had a tool that powerful, he believed it would be used across the school.

STEMpathy

Kelly’s term “STEMpathy” started as a catchy hashtag, but he wanted it to mean something. New Brunswick is Canada’s oldest province by population, with many residents over 65 and few under 14, so its graduates will need to care for an aging population. He also cited figures showing that about 31,400 of the province’s 97,000 students lived below the poverty line. In both cases, he argued, empathy is the most valuable skill a young person can bring.

Plenty of schools now have STEM programs, including schools that struggle to afford them; in New Brunswick, an organization called Brilliant Labs uses government funding to supply STEM materials to teachers. But “without a focus, STEM is just STEM,” Kelly said. Empathy gave his program that focus. He frames the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for students as human problems, solved for billions of other people rather than for oneself.

In the end, he said, relationships between teachers and students “trump everything else.” If a teacher cannot form that relationship quickly and meaningfully, students will not bring their problems or their passions.

Listen to the full conversation in the player above, or find every episode on the Education Today show page.

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