The virus will pass. How quickly we find a vaccine is an open question, but we’ll find one, we’ll inoculate ourselves, and we’ll be able to return to school without the immediate worries we’ve been living with since March, 2020.
But we will not return to “normal.”
To begin with, there were will be far fewer Catholic schools. According to Tim Uhl, superintendent of Montana Catholic Schools, we closed 148 Catholic schools in 2019-2020, most but not all Catholic elementary schools. Were it not for the extraordinary allocation of monies through the federal PPP program, the number would have been higher. But we won’t get that money in 2021, and schools with significant enrollment loss simply won’t have the resources to continue. Will we have another 200 schools close next summer? 500? More?
Second, the schools which remain, even if they preserve their present “form,” will incorporate technology in a way they never have before. For the most part, our use of technology prior to Covid didn’t challenge paradigms; it was used, rather, to make us more efficient in doing the same things we’ve always done: word processors to write essays instead of type-writers, using online research instead of using the library, emailing instead of writing letters, averaging grades by software instead of by hand, etc. I suppose one might argue those advances were so great in degree that they ultimately differed in kind, but I’m not terribly persuaded by that argument. Having been a high school principal since 1989, most of these changes have simply allowed me to do the same tasks more quickly, ironically making me busier than I ever was. Instead of typing a nice letter in 45 minutes and using white out to correct mistakes, I now crank out 10-15 emails. Is that progress? I’m not so sure.
But the communications technology we’ve all used during the Covid19 virus will now challenge paradigms. We taught students virtually for three consecutive months last spring. We are now teaching in “concurrent classrooms, “ with most of our kids present in classrooms, but with a significant minority using “Google Meets” to participate in that same classroom from home. It is almost as natural now for teachers and students to interact online as they do in person.
That’s gotta change us. As I try and pierce the veil of the unknown future, let me offer some possibilities, from least to most radical:
First, it’s going to open up new possibilities for person to person interactions. For the last 20 years, if you caught me at the wrong time in the spring, you might have heard me moan about the lack of parent involvement in anything we ever tried to do in the spring. PTO attendance in the spring is abysmal. I’ve tried offering talks with nationally known experts in raising teenagers, famous theologians to speak on matters of ethics and public policy, local drug enforcement agents to speak about what the teenagers are using—it didn’t matter. The parents didn’t come. Frustrating! But I never made any changes in approach until Covid. Last April, on five consecutive nights, I hosted “Zoom” sessions for senior, junior, sophomore, freshman and incoming parents—just a question/answer session. We had nearly 70% attendance, which was astonishing.
So there is opportunity here. As an example: at the end of our first quarter this year, we’ll do parent-teacher conferences over Zoom, and allow parents to sign up for those conferences via “signup genius.” Just this week, we had to rethink our “club expo,” in which students were invited to the cafeteria to go around to booths, staffed by club presidents, each pitching their club for new members. Social distancing wouldn’t permit that, so we asked each club to create it’s own video, and invite students to watch the video and sign up using google forms. Some of the videos were fantastic, giving student life here a whole new vibe (here’s our sailing club video, as an example).
Second, for years we’ve had the technological capacity to offer distance-learning opportunities to our students to augment the curriculum, but we’ve never had enough proficiency or urgency to do so. But I can foresee a “class period” in the very near future where students come to the same classroom, take out their laptops, plug in their earphones, and each take different classes—Chinese, perhaps. Or advanced engineering. Or coding. Or a virtual geography class which allows them to “travel” all over the globe in 4D detail. The adult in charge of the classroom guarantees order and proctors tests, but need not be the expert. Students are on their own to do the learning.
Third, as our schools close, and then some rise from the ashes, re-purposed by a set of entrepreneurial educators, what form might they take? Could a diocese use a recently closed elementary school as the hub for a diocesan-wide “virtual school?” Could these virtual schools be staffed by “subject specific” teachers in grades K-2, 3-5 and 6-8 (a math teacher, for example to teach K Math, then 1Math and 2Math), rather than by generalist teachers, expected to teach all subjects in a grade level? Could that virtual school be “scaled” by adding teacher assistants to welcome 30, 40 or 50 kids per subject? Could it invite students from rural areas in the diocese, who’ve never had access to a Catholic school, to join up? For that matter, could it welcome students from anywhere? And could this virtual school create hybrid options, whereby, for example, the core subjects were taught on line from 8-12, but from 1:30 to 3 p.m, families could opt for face to face tutoring? Do we need to stay in an 8-3 school day? Could students complete some core requirements for the year over the summer, giving them more flexibility in their schedules during the year, allowing them to work at jobs in the early afternoon?
Frankly, the options are endless, and I believe what has happened, in light of the “free form” of the last five months, is they no longer sound like science fiction, but ideas worth trying. If Catholic education is going to flourish over the next decade, we’re going to need to be creative, entrepreneurial and daring.
May God give us the wisdom and grace to navigate the winding roads ahead!
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