School in the Time of Coronavirus

The pandemic, which has affected people of all professions, except those who provide essential services, has demonstrated the importance of distance education, a way of teaching, for which the majority of teachers, parents and students were not prepared, and had to improvise overnight. While the transition to homeschooling and e-learning has been smooth in some places, in others it has been disorganized, with no guidance for students and parents.

Rivka Oratz, an esteemed educator and administrator who currently serves as the Principal at Lev Bais Yaakov, a private, all-girls, Jewish school located in Brooklyn, NY, believes that it is difficult to determine the long-term effects because duration of the shutdown depends on the spread of the pandemic in the country.

However, according to Rivka Oratz, it is more than clear that the pandemic highlighted the importance of the physical bond between teachers and students, now separated by a computer, or receiving the task via message text, WhatsApp audio or email. Teachers are also overwhelmed, receiving assignments to correct, in photos of folder sheets, where you have to "guess" what the students wanted to answer, without being able to give adequate feedback.

The technological gap between some students is revealing a great inequality, which, despite the political will to achieve inclusion, has not reached everyone. Many students do not have computers or an Internet connection or printer, to be able to do their activities, which they receive with basic instructions, and with the support of parents, who have not always completed their studies.

As Mrs. Oratz explains, this has also shown that although students were born in a technological era, they do not dominate the tools intended to receive information, since access and use of virtual classrooms has been a challenge for both teachers and students.

Another great problem that arises is that of content evaluation, which leads us to reflect on what and how we want to do it, attentive to the new scenario proposed, which urges us to rethink the effectiveness of traditional oral and written exams.

The students are not accustomed to this modality, which implies a certain autonomy, especially regarding schedules and the understanding of instructions, especially at the primary level. They also miss the bond with their peers, the games and the recreational talks, as important as the transmission of knowledge.

This leaves us with the lesson that we have to train ourselves and incorporate technology into the classroom, to use it as a support tool, and have it available, well planned and structured. Training is an essential component of the educational process, that we need to master in order to use it in cases of emergency, like the current one, without having to arm it in an improvised way, many times, with confusing platforms that are difficult to access, and to recognize the importance of the school, that physical and emotional meeting place, so often criticized and now so longed for.