Alt title: Confessions of an Online Teacher

A duty thrust upon me every August that I inevitably forget about until the next year comes around is welcome calls. I get a list of students and I spend hours calling—a good chunk of those hours are talking to voicemails. When I do catch a parent, I go through my questions and spend about fifteen minutes chatting about minute details and who their kid is. It’s a massive undertaking (for some of us. One of my colleagues spends three minutes average on his calls), but every year I’m surprised how much I enjoy just hearing about students, from their parents and from themselves.

The question, and the answers, I’ve been rolling around in my head is “Why did you decide to re-enroll at virtual school?” A lot of parents cited the positives—they don’t like the local school, their student wanted to attend virtually, less distractions, their kiddo can go at their own pace—but a lot of them also expressed worries that their student was becoming socially isolated.

I felt the fear in their voice. Were they harming their child by deciding that they attend school online? How are they learning the important social skills? Are they going to be ready for college/jobs?

It’s not like I haven’t heard these worries before. I had always hand-waved them away. It’s a different way of engaging with people. A part of my reluctance to hear this is defensiveness, if I’m being honest.

I wanted to write this piece about how students who go to school online aren’t being emotionally stunted but figured I’d do my due diligence and peek my head into the research. Most of what I found focused on the pandemic—learning losses in a specific college course, the mental health of college students and how much time they spent at home. The rare article before the pandemic applauds the accessibility that online education gives while also pointing out that taking courses online increases a student’s chance to drop out, especially if they are already at risk. Not related specifically to online education but enlightening nonetheless, a study who tracked where high school students spent their time and then monitored those students into adulthood cites time spent on homework and participation in extracurriculars as clear indicators of future success. I wasn’t thrilled at this revelation. Lots of homework in online school; very lacking in extracurriculars.

While there isn’t a ton just focused on online education, there’s much hand-wringing about teenagers online. Forty-six percent of teenagers say they use the internet constantly. It’s no secret that teenagers (and the rest of us) struggled with a variety of mental health challenges during the pandemic. While researchers still haven’t decided definitively on whether being online/social media negatively affects student’s mental health, there are many who have found evidence for it. 

I was particularly gutted by this quote from Erhardt Graeff, a researcher at Olin College of Engineering who is expert in the design and use of technology for civic and political engagement, in an article focused on hearing what experts believe our world will look like in 2035 (particularly with the rise of AI):

I worry that humanity will largely accept the hyper-individualism and social and moral distance made possible by digital technology and assume that this is how society should function. I worry that our social and political divisions will grow wider if we continue to invest ourselves personally and institutionally in the false efficiencies and false democracies of Twitter-like social media.

What if these people are right? That the positives I see in online education—providing safe places for students, being candid about mental health, erasing barriers to opportunities by offering courses/resources online—aren’t enough? That attending school online is creating distance between them and their peers, distance that they may not be able to overcome?

If all these people are right, where does that leave me? Is it ethically wrong for me to be an online teacher, to support this system? Am I enabling students to become more withdrawn, to become more anxious about engaging with the world outside their computer screen? And moreover, where does this leave me personally?

The community I have online is very precious to me, and I invest a lot of time there. I also have plenty of commitments that require me to talk to flesh-and-blood humans. But ultimately, I am like my students: I enjoy staying home. I spend probably too much of my time on social media. I would say I am chronically online. How do I teach them to navigate this world, the digital and the tangible responsibly? To avoid spiraling in the lies of social media, to make connections both in their local community and worldwide?

A new thing we are trying this year at school is an online hangout zone—similar to Gaia Online if that’s not too niche for some of you. When it was first unveiled, I stuck up my nose. It looked elementary, like it was an educational knock-off of something fun (which, I mean…). But the teachers got to try it out, and I enjoyed learning how to hop around, make friends, and speak on mic to other teachers.

I don’t think it’s the magic wand that is going to teach perfect social skills to the parents who are fretting about them. I think something else has to motivate these kids to “touch grass” (and on the other hand, I also think there needs to be some acknowledgement of the skills learned via social media in this research into teenagers online). But for now, it’s enough to soothe my guilty conscience for now.

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