Distance Learning and the CES Common Principles

Sometimes our classroom is quiet. You might hear the tapping of the computer keys and an occasional chuckle or a sigh. Two or three students sit at separate tables; one is focused on the laptop screen diligently writing her second draft of her science report. In the other room, a student meets with Mr. D. about his math project. Sometimes it’s crazy! Music comes from a computer. Students discuss their video. An alum sits at the table helping another student with her digital project. A teacher works with a student who is there with her newborn, discussing her work plan for home and the other teacher talks with a few students about political philosophies. Meanwhile, some students wait their turn to confer with the teachers, and others are packing to leave after a few hours of work. This is our classroom at any given time, on any given day. Like every classroom, we have students with varied learning styles, interests, and backgrounds. However, our students, who very much want to be in school, have constraints on their schedules that make it challenging for them to be present during the typical daytime school hours. We have young moms with and without daycare. We have students who need to work to help their families pay the rent or simply to survive on their own. We have students who have health conditions that flare up, causing them to be in and out of school and disrupting their academic progress. We have students who simply are “too old” to sit in a regular classroom with other students. They all have a mission: to finish school and receive their high school diplomas. Our History: What Worked, What Didn’t In 2001, Boston Day and Evening Academy (BDEA) started its Distance Learning Program (DL) to serve students who could not come to school on a regular basis. Because we are by design a competency-based school, the opportunity to have a program where students truly demonstrated the required skill set rather than just attending specific courses met the school’s mission. Initially, the DL program was designed for a specified group of students who met the criteria of being able to demonstrate independent study skills and had issues that kept them from attending school regularly. BDEA aimed to lease school-owned laptops to them so they could complete a competency-based program from home. In the DL program’s first year, I was its coordinator and only teacher. I was going to be the students’ advisor as well as their program manager, assigning “tests” and practice programs that students “tested into” from the Plato Learning program. Then reality set in. At that time, the installed version of Plato was not compatible with the Apple iBooks laptops. As an immediate remedy, we switched to Plato’s web-based version. Inner-city networking was in its early stages, and there were many Internet glitches that occurred during our time in school. Our access to technical support was limited; because we were an evening program, when we had problems at 6:00PM, the Office of Information Technology was closed. As well, computers at home were not as accessible to students as they are now. The idea of leasing laptops was well-intended, but sending students home with brand new computers was not wise. First, though students had computer bags, they became walking targets for theft within their neighborhoods and on the bus. Second, wireless connections were not widely available. The best way for students to get on the Internet was through a dial-up connection, which proved to be a nightmare for students without a landline. Even those that had active landlines faced challenges because of the poor quality of the phone connections in their living spaces that often had not benefitted from telecommunications upgrades for some time, if ever.