Schools are empty, but learning goes on

Alumni teachers pivot to virtual instruction

By California State University, Bakersfield

March 26^th, 2020

When third-grade teacher Eddie Gonzalez and his colleagues at Casa Loma Elementary left campus a week ago Tuesday to transition to distance learning, they asked each other, “How are we going to connect with the kids?”

They were desperate to do so because, as Gonzalez put it, teachers can’t turn off their passion to teach.

So they checked out various online teaching platforms and decided Flipgrid would work best. It allows teachers to pose a question and have students respond via video. The kids can reply to one another, creating classroom discussion.

Next they called parents to see what devices and Internet connectivity they had at home, and most at least had a smartphone. The teachers texted them an app and code that got them started with Flipgrid.

Through the app, Gonzalez has had the kids pick back up their reading of “Charlotte’s Web.” Casa Loma math teacher Glen Purvis (a 2004 CSUB grad) has taught kids how to learn multiplication tables using playing cards. And the school’s principal, Lemuel Kwon (who has two degrees and multiple credentials from CSUB), has delivered morning announcements.

So far a little more than half of Gonzalez’s students have been able to use Flipgrid.

“If you build it, they will come,” quipped Gonzalez, who earned his bachelor’s degree in liberal studies in 2008 and his doctorate in educational leadership in 2019 from CSUB.

The story illustrates the extraordinary lengths to which CSUB alumni educators and their colleagues are going to ensure students keep learning while cooped up at home to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. They’re still figuring out the best ways to do that, and will refine things as they go.

They’re also continuing to try to reach parents of students they haven’t reached yet, and adjusting to the reality this will be their new normal for longer than originally thought.

The Kern High School District told teachers this week campuses won’t re-open until at least May 5. To prepare for the longer haul, it will soon distribute Chromebooks to students to address uneven access to technology.

“We’re pivoting from pretending, ‘We’re not going to see you for a few weeks’ to ‘We might never see you again, but we still have to be your teacher,’” said CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame educator Jeremy Adams. “And that is a profoundly difficult pivot to make, especially in the middle of a global pandemic.”

Lots of teaching tools

The approach fourth-grade teacher Stephanie Campos took at Bakersfield’s Evergreen Elementary was to keep things simple, use websites and apps with which her 27 students were familiar.

She assigned them Base-10 addition and subtraction lessons on a website called Prodigy, reading and writing exercises on a free Scholastic site, and an art project on Flipgrid. Campos is also using Instagram and Zoom to answer student questions.

On Monday she posted a story about a little girl who lost her arm and wants people to ask her what happened and how she’s overcoming barriers. Campos then had the kids create a 3-D design of a robotic arm and show it to their classmates.

“We can use it in so many ways,” she said of Flipgrid.

Evergreen Elementary teacher Stephanie Campos.

So far, Campos has been able to reach about 80 percent of her students’ families to determine how to best teach each pupil. About 60 percent of her students are doing assignments online; the rest are working on packets of assignments that Bakersfield City School District curriculum and instruction administrators made for families to pick up.

Those packets will last about two weeks. Campos and her fellow fourth-grade teachers at Evergreen have together made packets that will go out for the third and fourth weeks of distance teaching.

Asked if teachers are worried this will be a “lost” period of learning for many students, Campos said that’s not her biggest concern right now.

“At this point I just want them to be healthy and stay home,” said Campos, who at CSUB earned a liberal studies degree and teaching credential in 2015, and her master’s in education in 2019.

She’s encouraged by her “amazing” students’ eagerness to learn and stay busy.

The high school experience

A combination of luck and early groundwork to connect kids to online learning resources has put the Taft Union High School District in a strong position to meet the distance learning challenge, said Superintendent Blanca Cavazos, a recent CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame inductee.

Monday, March 16, was a pre-scheduled professional development day without students, and faculty pivoted to getting ready for the distance learning slated to start that Thursday, Cavazos said. Teachers spent Tuesday and Wednesday, when school was still face-to-face, getting the kids ready, too.

And because 2 ½ years ago Taft Union implemented a one-to-one device program, almost all district students have the technology they need for distance learning. (Almost all because some parents opted to have their kids leave the devices at school.) Plus, a survey showed only 30 of Taft Union’s approximately 1,000 students lack Internet access, so nearly all pupils can actually use the devices.

Taft Union High School District Superintendent Blanca Cavazos praised not only teachers but support staff for serving students during this challenging time. “They are heroes, too,” she said.

For the 30 students without Internet, Taft Union is creating and distributing individualized paper packets of assignments. Next week it will follow Wasco High’s lead and distribute thumb drives loaded with assignments that students can plug into their devices.

Teachers are using Google Classroom and the Aeries Student Information System to communicate with the kids, and have the ability to set up Zoom meetings. So far teachers have indicated that they’ve only been unable to communicate with 84 students, though some faculty may not have entered their data, Cavazos said.

“Instruction is happening, that’s probably the most exciting thing for us,” Cavazos said. “And the kids are staying connected.”

Cavazos ended by saying any story about distance learning must also include a shout-out to support staff. That includes people serving, and in some cases delivering, meals; IT specialists repairing malfunctioning devices (taking special health precautions in the process); and custodial workers.

“I am seeing the best of humanity,” Cavazos said.

Over at the home of Adams, a Bakersfield High School teacher, CSUB lecturer and author, it’s “controlled chaos.” He’s not only teaching his BHS economics and world history classes and CSUB political science course but his own two high schoolers and fourth-grader.

What does that look like?

“I’m just not doing anything well,” Adams said. “I’m not teaching my students very well, I feel like I’m not parenting very well, I’m not writing particularly well. I feel like I’m getting fatter than I already am.”

Jeremy Adams is not only teaching Bakersfield High School and CSUB students but homeschooling his own three children.

As someone who believes in the power of traditional classroom teaching -- being able to walk around a room, look students in the eye and pick up the general class vibe -- Adams is having to expand his repertoire. He knows the texting app Remind, has a YouTube channel and posts content on Google Classroom, but wants to pick up Zoom or another livestream option to create the interactivity he misses.

It takes a lot of faith to send out content and hope students are looking at it, Adams said. “What I fear most,” he added, “is the kids who will disappear.”

He particularly fears for the at-risk BHS Drillers who not only get an education on campus but meals, counseling and the modeling of good behavior.

On a much brighter note, Adams said teachers will probably join doctors, nurses and grocery store workers as among the groups likely to come out of this crisis looking really good. And educators will find new ways to teach.

“I think there’s going to be more innovation that takes place over the next two or three months than we’ve had in a long time,” he said.

Jaci Elliott, who teaches computer and virtual business classes at Centennial High School, is not only teaching but comforting students. That includes virtual business students who don’t get to go to their national competition in New York and seniors worried they won’t have a graduation ceremony, prom or grad night at Disneyland.

It has taught them a lesson about life, said Elliott, who has two degrees and a credential from CSUB.

“I had seniors who said the last day before we left, ‘This is definitely teaching me that I need to appreciate things in life, do things while I have the chance or appreciate that I got to do them,” she said. “’Because you never know when something is going to be ripped away from you.’”