I’ve been thinking about how we are working at leveling the playing field between our haves and have-nots. The pandemic has made extremely clear the advantages that our haves have over our have-nots. A couple of ways our district worked at leveling the playing field was to provide every student a laptop to take home and keep all year long as well as providing hotspots or affordable or even free Internet service when possible. My district is in a rural community and there are places where families live that have no access to Internet or even cell service!
So I’ve been thinking about how laptops at home and connectivity level the playing field. Bear with me, these are just my thoughts after a year and a quarter of having kids who needed to complete work and do a portion if not all of their learning from home. If you think I’m way off on this, please let me know!
In the spring of 2020 and then again in the fall of 2020, the next school year, we sent all our students home with a laptop and where possible, hotspots or access to Internet. That was not sufficient to “level the playing field” I think because not only did we still see minimal to no work being done by a majority of kids when they were at home, some kids disappeared completely even with the tech! And after almost an entire quarter of this new school year working with kids coming to school everyday with class sizes of 24 I’m seeing a lack of skills that I normally see in 6th graders. I’m seeing a lack of basic Math skills across the board. I’m also needing to review classroom routines and procedures more than I usually do. Even using my preferred Learning Management Systems or LMS’s, Classcraft and Google Classroom, which I suspect kids have been using at least Google Classroom for the last year and a quarter, has not been as smooth as usual. The effects of COVID learning, expectedly, are very noticeable. I’m not using these observations to tell kids that they are behind, or that they need to catch up. because all kids are behind in some way and all kids will benefit from catching up to developmentally appropriate skills. These observations are just for me.
During our fall conferences this week I noticed that while most kids experienced dips in their MAP test scores during COVID, some kids either did not dip much or at all while a few even continued to show growth! Speaking with one parent he commented that their family was fortunate because his parents were able to stay at home with the kids making sure they were doing their school work. Then when the parents got home they also checked in with their kids and were able to help them continue learning. Sadly, this wasn’t true for so many children.
So the laptops and connectivity we provided kids for the last year and a quarter were used by kids for what?? Was it for playing games and for connecting with others either through games or social media? Yeah. I heard this from kids and from parents. It makes me think, is providing technology and connectivity enough? Not if all we are looking for is academic growth.
While I have no problem whatsoever with kids playing games, especially multiplayer games where they are playing with friends, and completely agree that using the school computers and Wifi to connect with their friends virtually when they could not be physically together is what kept many of us sane, did it level the playing field between kids who did not have computers or Internet and those who always had technology and reliable connectivity? How much does it matter that our equipment and services did not get used for academics? I’m just wondering. And, for the record, I’m very glad we provided kids computers and Wifi even if it was just used for playing games and connecting with their friends.
