With two dozen freshmen watching from home on Google Meet, teacher Chris Kaus spent 20 minutes Tuesday morning introducing their next assignment before taking questions.
“You think we’ll go back to school?” one student asked.
“I hope so,” Kaus answered.
While public schools across Minnesota took two weeks off to get ready for the start of distance learning this week, Cretin-Derham Hall has been running Online School since March 19, taking just two scheduled teacher training days and one regular school day to get ready.
The 79 Catholic grade schools in the 11-county metro area also moved relatively quickly to distance learning for their 20,000-plus students, said Gail Dorn, president of the Catholic Schools Center of Excellence.
“We just have a sense of urgency about continuing to educate children and supporting parents through that process in difficult times,” she said.
MANY THINGS ON HOLD
Like the state’s public schools, Cretin-Derham Hall is rolling with online instruction at least until May 4 and awaiting further word from Gov. Tim Walz as coronavirus cases proliferate.
Sports are on hold. The prom venue canceled. And school leaders are talking about what high school graduation might look like when the governor has asked people to stay home if they can and keep at least six feet away from others when they do go out.
Reality hit students when the state basketball tournament was canceled March 13, Principal Mona Passman said.
“I think that’s when students really came to terms with, whoa, we may not get these things we have been looking forward to,” she said.
LESS SOCIAL, LESS LEARNING
Nine school days in, students at the St. Paul Catholic school say the swift transition to remote instruction has been pretty smooth. They like the freedom to sleep in and do school largely on their schedule.
But they also miss their friends and say they aren’t learning as much as they did before schools were closed to slow the spread of COVID-19.
“If you’re having a tough day at school, you can’t go and hang out with your friends because you’re quarantined in your house,” said freshman Ava Redpath.
Cretin-Derham Hall created Online School last school year, when snow and cold forced them to close the school for several days, and teachers gave out assignments for completion at home.
This year, much is different. Each class meets for up to an hour, every other day, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Students say most teachers have used that time to give remote instruction in real time, using tools like Google Meet’s videoconferencing.
Teacher Angela Keske said she’s been surprised to see that students who typically get distracted by friends at school are “doing quite well in this format.”
St. Paul Public Schools next week will begin with asynchronous distance learning, in which students will get their work done whenever it’s convenient. One week later, schools will add some real-time instruction using Google Meet.
PRO-SOCIAL
Passman said Cretin-Derham Hall, which assigns each student an iPad, used to disable Google Meet and Hangouts on the devices. Now, she’s encouraging teachers to use those tools to reproduce some of what happens in a classroom.
“I can’t stress enough this is not the same thing” as teaching and learning in a typical school setting, she said. “Teaching is about relationships and being in a classroom with kids and interacting with students. That’s hard to do online.”
Freshman Olivia Kimlinger said the social isolation has been tough and the workload lighter than she’s accustomed to. With just three or four hours to spend in her virtual classroom each day, “I have a lot more time to spread out the work,” she said.
“You wake up at basically anytime, get your work done,” Adam Tauer said.
Elisa Veglia said Online School feels more like homework than school.
Reed Jennrich, clearly missing his friends, called Online School “the worst thing ever.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever look at school the same way,” he said.
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Teachers have tried to make socialization a part of their distance instruction.
Keske’s Advanced Placement U.S. History course features a conference in which students advise President Truman whether or not to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. This year, they did the conference over Google Hangouts, which enabled interaction as a full class and in small groups.
“It worked really well,” Keske said.
In her human geography class Tuesday afternoon, freshmen spent 20 minutes over Google Meet sharing what they learned researching supply chains related to COVID-19.
“My intent with the students was to really connect with them every day,” Keske said.
The assignment Kaus introduced Tuesday was to make a Rube Goldberg machine for his honors science and engineering course. The project includes a requirement that students solicit one another’s advice for the project; Kaus suggested they use Google Meet.
“Even though we’re not together, we can still do it through our technology,” he told the class.
Kaus said the students miss each other after two weeks apart.
“I think they’re going to come away with an appreciation that school is more than just the building and the learning that’s going on,” he said. “I think they’re going to appreciate the community aspect of school more. As a teacher, I will.”