Hurricanes and Hypocrisy- A Reflection on Blended Learning

Today's post has me thinking about hurricanes. This is both because I am a Geosystems (Earth Science for anyone not in Fairfax County, which always has to be just that little bit extra) teacher, and because of something that happened to me in my class last week. As Hurricane Florence drops a deluge of rain and wind on North Carolina, I am reminded of my experience in teaching my Geosystems class using a blended learning model, which I began last year, at the behest of my team teacher.

A Deluge of Things to Grade

To be honest, I LOVE the blended learning model. The test scores skyrocketed, student engagement improved, I was better able to accommodate my students (as mentioned in an earlier post,  I am a special education teacher) because I could focus on helping the ones that needed assistance while the ones that understood plowed on... to say nothing of the potential for accommodations like extended time, modifying assignments so that each student can get something slightly different, etc. One of the first things I noticed, though, was my own hurricane... of assignments to grade. This was something of a new experience for me. This is my 17th year teaching, and in the first 15 I generally had a lot of trouble getting students to turn in work. When they did, it was virtually unheard of for them to correct a flawed assignment and resubmit it, even though it had always been my policy to allow it. And then, Google Classroom happened.

Highly Organized Filing System
Trash by public-domain-photos Source

I'll be up front here... Grading is my least favorite thing to do, and I've always been a tad slow to get to it. Generally, my students (who tend to have difficulties in school to begin with) haven't cared. And yet, I was suddenly buried in submissions and resubmissions. In one of last week's videos, Susan Patrick mentioned that students suddenly have no place to hide. The work is in their face. But, as Holly Mortimer mentioned in one of THIS week's videos, it's very important for online teachers to give immediate and specific feedback. That's because in true distance learning there is no face to face interaction for the typical informal assessments (which I can still do in my blended learning classroom), but in my experience it's also because TEACHERS have no place to hide. I think every veteran teacher of a traditional classroom has had the experience of assigning one too many things, looking at a stack of papers, and deciding to do some creative filing. With everything online, that just won't fly. Students see exactly what they've done, and they see if I've graded it or not, and it seems to make them care more, and I think it's also easier to complete revisions online. I screenshotted just my last page of resubmissions from Friday as an example.

So where does the hypocrisy come in? This is my 17th year teaching, and I haven't set foot in a classroom as a student since 2004. And yet, last week, one of my professors was supposed to have graded a Google Site I had done. I checked the gradebook Monday. No grade. I checked the gradebook Tuesday. No grade. She had had family visiting, and had fallen a bit behind. She informed us of this. It didn't matter to me, though... I was anxious. Suddenly Mr. "Eh... They can wait a couple more days" had the shoe on the other foot. I had finally received my comeuppance. It was quite the revelation, and not an entirely pleasant one.

A Teacher Prepares for Class
Unknown Artist Source

This has also made me reflect that I'm probably not really suited for teaching a true distance learning model. As was noted in the Archambault and Kent 2009 article by one of the teacher responses, it seems like there would actually be MORE time spent in communication and grading one on one than would be in the traditional classroom. I can do a lot of that informally by keeping the material online but being in the classroom to discuss and assist, which would not be as readily possible in an entirely online format. Another issue raised in the Borup, Graham, and Drysdale 2014 was that teachers become frustrated without the ability to tweak and design content, and that would certainly be true of me... I use blended learning, but I'm the one that selects the videos, designs (or steals... all good teaching is stealing*) the worksheets, makes the tests, etc. I don't think I'd like having a rigid curriculum handed to me, especially given the necessity of making accommodations and modifications in my field.

Another thing I'd have to adapt to would be student relationships and motivation. It's a constant theme in almost every source we've looked at this year that online students have to be more self-regulated, and motivation is very important as a part of teacher engagement in general (Borup et al, 2014). My primary method of classroom management, building relationships, and motivation is humor, and I am honestly at my best when I am in person, reacting to events. I don't tend to do well with scripted jokes, and while I try (as this blog might show), I'm not sure it would have the same effect in written form. This is to say nothing of the increased chance of failure to complete coursework discussed in the same Borup et al article. Motivation is already a huge issue for my students, so I'm not sure it'd work for them either, especially if they were expected to work alone. Ninety percent of my time in class is spent circling, assisting, and answering questions, and though that job could be done by a facilitator to some extent, as the Archembault and Kent 2009 article also mentions, these people are often underqualified and underpaid. At my school, for example, we assign full teachers to the rooms where students are assigned APEX (our online credit recovery course), but if the teacher knows the content a particular student is studying, it's only a matter of luck.

I guess I do tend to hold strong positions, which brings me finally to something we actually read last week. I very much enjoyed the Urban Legends article, because I have hated the obsession with learning styles since 2004 when I finally had a professor at UVA tell me that it's bogus, and that when assessments are created to assess learning styles, making them reliable means they're not valid, and making them valid renders them unreliable (vague memory, 2018). Later, I had a principal who, as part of the assessment cycle, asked me in a written structured interview how I incorporated learning styles into my curriculum. I answered that I didn't, because they're bogus, and provided links to a couple of articles by Daniel Willingham of UVA. I kept expecting the principal to bring it up, but sadly, he never did.

I won't cite or mention the two places I saw references to "digital natives" and "learning styles" in this week's readings videos, but rest assured, I noticed. My face might have looked something like this dog's, though perhaps not as cute.

*NOTE: For those who haven't figured out that it's best not to take me seriously, like ever, I of course mean that good teaching is largely borrowing from those who have done things before. Teachers like to utter boring cliches like "Don't re-invent the wheel" to justify this. Check this Google Site I made on Fair Use and Copyright for more info.