Over the past week, school boards across my area have been voting on their plans for the start of the upcoming school year, almost exclusively opting for virtual learning for at least the first quarter of the year.  This morning, a local news service reported on the outcome of one school board decision rendered late last night.  This quote sprang off the page and smacked me in the face:

“‘Posting online assignments is not teaching and sitting in front of a computer screen is not learning,’ said one parent.”  

And with 17 words, a nameless, faceless parent completely invalidated my current professional life.

I am a teacher. I have known I would be a teacher since the first day of first grade when I came home from school and set up my little Fisher Price chalkboard with magnetic letters and CVC word cards on the floor in my bedroom.  Thanks to my parents’ support, my “classroom” expanded in the coming years until our entire playroom was transformed into a mock classroom, complete with a teacher desk, student desks, and a large chalkboard hung on the wall.  I spent hours creating worksheets, filling them out with varying degrees of accuracy, and then grading them with a fine red felt-tip marker.  My “students” were usually stuffed but often included my younger brother and my grandmother who sat hours under my tutelage.

When I graduated from college with a degree in English education, I anticipated a traditional career in teaching and administration, but a combination of my husband’s military career and my own desire to be home with our children, led me down a beautifully alternative path that included a school for children in a group home, two traditional public schools, an alternative public night school, a homeschool co-op, and my own family’s homeschool.  I eventually settled into a career as an online high school English teacher and course developer, first for an online school that held scheduled live class sessions and for the past three years as an independent contractor for an online school that offers asynchronous Advanced Placement (AP) courses.  I teach a diverse and extremely engaged group of students each year through our virtual classroom, which includes many types of interaction, including “posting online assignments.” Those assignments often take me hours to create and lead to a variety of challenging responses from my students, requiring them to interact with the written word, other people, and their environment. This past year, even with an unexpected, modified AP exam that measured a fraction of what they had studied all year, 43% of my students earned a 5 on their AP English exam. The global average was 13%. But more importantly, my students and their parents report growth in their writing, their love for reading, and the way they think about and respond to the world.

I am a learner.  I absolutely love education and will be a student of something my entire life.  As with teaching, I have been blessed to have a variety of learning experiences in my life.  I attended public school for twelve years, earned my BA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the days when we typed our papers on “fancy” word processing machines or on IBM computers in the computer lab.  A few years later, I earned my MA and EdS at the University of Michigan where my husband and I shared a new and exciting piece of equipment called a “personal computer” to complete our research and assignments.  All of that education was conducted traditionally and in person.  In my twenty-five years since graduate school, I have participated in numerous live and virtual professional development workshops and conferences and taken at least two college-level virtual courses every five years to keep my teaching certificate current.  I took five graduate-level courses online to become qualified to teach English at the college level, and I am currently just over halfway through an entirely online, exceptionally informative PhD program in Special Education through Liberty University.  I learn a great deal “in front of a computer screen.”

Through this myriad of teaching and learning experiences over my fifty years of life, I can confidently say that neither teaching nor learning is confined to a particular context or restricted to a particular methodology.  Students learn and teachers teach when their hearts and minds are engaged in the pursuit or transference of a skill or knowledge or understanding. Educational philosophers, theorists, and researchers have spent lifetimes engaged in describing and labeling the phenomena of learning and teaching, and I have dedicated my life to studying and practicing the best wisdom I can glean from them.  What I have learned is that every student is different, not only from each other but from themselves–day-to-day and even hour-to-hour.  I have also learned that any situation or circumstance can be conducive to teaching and learning if the people engaged want it to be.  A gifted teacher can teach his or her student in a cardboard box with nothing but his or her mind and body.  Likewise, a child can learn as much, if not more, from his or her parents, siblings, and friends as from a certified teacher.  Mentorship and experience are often far superior to structured lessons.  Nature and play teach what textbooks and workbooks cannot begin to capture.  Music and art have the capacity to break language and cognitive barriers to expression and understanding. History has proven that a motivated student can learn in a jail cell or as a slave on a plantation or in the most desperate, deprived situation imaginable.  

After a lifetime of formal education, training, research, reading, writing, and experience in many educational fields, I have grown to become a huge proponent of the most individualized, personalized education possible and of mediated learning experiences that have the potential to not only educate a child but transform his or her cognitive abilities, no matter what biological or environmental challenges he or she may face. To me, the educational goal for any student with whom I work is to do everything I can to maximize his or her potential.  That looks different for every child and changes as the child grows and develops, and it includes a wide variety of learning resources and contexts.

Reading the words “Posting online assignments is not teaching and sitting in front of a computer screen is not learning” first stirred in me a fiery defense of my current professional life but eventually transformed into a pity for the closed mindedness of anyone incapable of seeing beyond tradition and expectation regarding what teaching and learning are “supposed” to look like to embrace the myriad of possible learning contexts, venues, and methods available to teachers and students today.  Virtual learning has been an amazing opportunity for me and my students for almost ten years now—well before COVID and the current educational crisis.  I could tell countless stories of the benefits of virtual learning and have found it just as effective as my face-to-face traditional teaching and learning environments, though in different ways. Is it the ideal educational setting? No, but not because of anything intrinsic to virtual learning but because there is no learning environment that can be elevated above another. The “ideal” teaching and learning environment is the environment in which the teacher teaches and the learner learns.  That can change year-to-year and even day-to-day.  

In this particular season of my life, virtual learning and teaching work for me.  Because of online education, I was able to sit beside my daughter’s bed in the local Pediatric ICU last month and provide feedback on my students’ final writing assignments of the year as well as watch lectures and conduct research for one of my PhD courses.  Was I teaching?  Most definitely.  Was I learning? Undoubtedly.  But I would venture to say that I learned just as much that week from the hospital staff and from my daughter herself.  Because you see, to a true teacher and a motivated learner, education is quite simply life.  It is watching, listening, reading, thinking, seeking, discussing, and understanding. It can be either facilitated or inhibited by technology, people, and circumstances.  That is an individual choice, not a fixed reality.

There is no utopic solution to mitigating the pandemic, navigating the upcoming school year, ending racial injustice, or addressing any of the other crises facing our country right now. The bickering and judgments that litter social media and the news only make all of those situations worse.  Our children are watching and listening. Whether knowingly or not, we as their parents and educators are mediating their learning—about how to handle a crisis, how to treat people who seem different from us, how to disagree with one another, and how to make the best of a situation we did not choose.  Our children WILL learn and progress this year.  A sudden and unexpected break in what we are accustomed to CAN be an opportunity to think creatively, to try something new, to be resourceful, and to simplify.  It won’t be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. It may not be as defined or structured as we like, but discomfort and inconvenience often birth unprecedented resourcefulness and innovation.  Hardship and trial foster resilience and perseverance that cannot be explicitly taught.  Embracing circumstances and seeking to make the best of them will teach our children a priceless lesson that cannot be measured or quantified.  

Now I will get back to creating and posting online assignments for my classes that start next month and sitting in front of a computer screen to research and write about current special education practices. Teaching…and learning.