At the beginning of every school year, I survey my (11th & 12th grade) students for several things, including ACEs and resilience (using the ACE survey and the resilience survey from ACEs Too High), as well as things like time commitments and learning profile.
As most of you know, I teach in a Title I school in a low-income community that has among the highest rates of COVID in the state. We’ve been fully remote since the school year started, and will continue to be fully remote through the end of second quarter (early February). Now that we’re approaching the end of first quarter and the first round of report cards is on the horizon, I reached out to every student who was missing a majority of work and is likely to fail for the quarter unless something changes. I looked up their ACE and resilience scores, whether they spend a large number of hours each week with “family responsibilities”, their academic transcripts and their mid-quarter progress reports. I sent each of these students a personalized message explaining what information I had about them and listed some of the things that I thought might be behind their current struggles. I invited each of them to have a one-on-one Zoom meeting with me to strategize how it might be possible to help them deal with some of their struggles and climb out of the academic hole that they had fallen into. A significant fraction of these students have already accepted my offer and met with me; I expect that several more will do so over the next few days.
The strongest correlation I found for remote learning paralysis was with their resilience scores. In the resiliency survey, there were 14 questions. I assigned point values to each of the responses, which were 0–definitely not; 1–probably not; 2–not sure; 3–probably; and 4–definitely. I then normalized the total to a 10-point scale. (A response of “definitely” to all 14 questions would receive a score of 10.0, and a response of “definitely not” to all 14 questions would receive a score of 0.)
Most of my 160 students had resiliency scores of 7 or higher. However, a significant fraction of my students who are experiencing remote learning paralysis—students who are attending classes regularly on Zoom and participating in class, but not turning in any work—have had resiliency scores in the 5–6 range.
In my one-on-one Zoom meetings with these students, they described feelings and responses that are consistent with an ongoing lack of support and lack of positive messages throughout their lives. They reported feelings of isolation, and a depression-like response of being unable to do their work, despite being terrified of the academic consequences. (I say “depression-like” because I am not a psychologist, and therefore I cannot make a clinical diagnosis.) They also reported feeling that no one seemed to care whether they do the work or not.
A lot of teachers in my school complain about the “kids who are in the Zoom meeting but do nothing” and feel that “those kids deserve to fail”. However, my students are academically strong and are not apathetic. (In order to take my physics classes, they need to have earned good grades in previous science and math classes including Algebra 2, so these are students who by and large have been academically successful in the past. In non-pandemic years, I have almost no failing grades for any given quarter, and most years every student passes the course for the year.) If students of this academic caliber are struggling due to factors beyond their control, it stands to reason that “those kids” must be struggling just as much, and for the same reasons.
Professional development is full of warnings about deficit mindsets. We need to see remote learning paralysis through this same lens—as a symptom of an unmet need, not a deficit.
Interesting observations, Jeff and I appreciate both the thoughtfulness and the compassion you bring to the inquiry. I wonder how to reach these isolated kids? School provides supports and an outlet for those where the home environment is lacking or less than ideal. Some lgbtq kids, for example, have not yet found acceptance within their families and experience stress from that and from not living as their true selves.
We also have at-risk kids who are even more so in a remote environment. They do not even show up. How to engage? How to connect? How to help students connect with their peers? This is the struggle.