There's an Upside to Everything. . .

My school just went virtual starting today. We tried to maintain the in person campus but the Omicron spike hit our high school staff hard and finding subs (understandably) is hard. Teaching virtually is hard. I know learning that way is hard too, and there's been a lot of increasingly strident discourse on both sides of the issues of keeping the schools open during the spike. 

I don't love teaching virtually. It's isn't my favorite thing by a long shot, but I think we tend to lose sight of some of the unexpected benefits that did appear out of all this chaos. I'm going to list some of the positives that I've seen come out of the virtual classrooms

1. Digital monitoring and feedback - this sounds pretty 1984 but bear with me. I'm a language arts teacher, so no matter the format, my students do a lot of writing. When we are virtual, I monitor my students docs as they are writing which allows me to nudge them in the correct direction and also keeps them focused on producing work. You'd think I could do this same thing in the classroom, but strangely it just doesn't work as well. In general, the quality on first drafts goes up as a result.
2. Natural Motivators - In the physical classroom there is no real reward for focusing and getting done early. No matter what, they are stuck in my room. However, online my policy is if they finish the work early and I agree that they are as done as they can be, they can log out of class early. It's a powerful motivator for a teen stuck in their room around all of their stuff. It's amazing how focused they can be when the reward is something they want.
3. Comfort - our school has a pretty strict dresscode policy. For better or worse, we can't enforce that as much when the students are at home, so they take liberties. Usually they are pretty good and finding ways that are non-obvious on the screen. Honestly, when the students can lounge in comfy chairs wearing comfy clothes, they have an easier time focusing on the material. Honestly, I wish we could throw the dress code out the window. If I had my way that two page section of the handbook would be ditched in favor of: "dress in clean and mended cloths that cover all undergarments and do not feature offensive language or images. Skirts and shorts should be at least finger-tip length, shoes must be worn and conducive to travel between classes." Maybe I'm just too permissive.
4. Challenging Assumptions - The New York Times had an article about student behavior being more problematic since the beginning of the pandemic. I don't know what teachers are seeing in other schools with other populations, but what I'm seeing is my students are taking fewer things on assumption. A lot of school behavior runs on expectations - some of them good some of them bad. The pandemic has proven to them that there are other ways to do things, that the things they accepted as necessary can be adjusted. Right now, yes it seems like they question everything and because they are teenagers, they tend to come across as confrontational. However, I like that they are thinking things through more and asking questions (even if I don't love how they go about it.)

I'm not saying that these positives outweigh the negatives. On the whole, I'd vastly prefer to be in the same room as my students. However, it's good to keep sight of what positives are there because there is almost always something.