The nightmare of online learning: Here's what I've learned as a teacher. It's not pretty.

Some 19 months ago, as COVID-19 was killing its first Americans and threatening the capacity of our medical system, school districts began closing campuses. I have yet to encounter any educators who believe that even our best, most innovative, efforts with distance learning did much more than lessen a catastrophe.

What will make it an even greater catastrophe is if we refuse to learn anything from the experiment.

I am, of course, just one teacher doing my thing in one school, but I have thought a lot about this — beginning in the weeks after everyone stopped meeting in person — and here are lessons I have learned that I hope others might also recognize.

We have learned – hopefully, once and for all – that no digital teaching tool can replace a talented, experienced, committed, hard-working teacher with at least the basic administrative support in a reasonably safe, clean and well-lit classroom. Much as some of us perfected our online teaching chops, it was never the same; it was hardly close.

If we didn’t already know how much kids need to be around each other, we know now, especially those of us who are parents too.

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But not all students missed what is for them the chaotic crush of school. Many found solace in being away from us. And not just being able to sleep later.

For some kids, being isolated at home was an upgrade from the social isolation or bullying they had to contend with at school – and from which the educators in their lives failed to protect them. We need to do a lot better at creating a positive learning environment for all students.

Many students have told me they missed the structure of school – and found themselves unmotivated in distance learning – but that they appreciated the flexibility and control.

I wondered whether, when we returned to campus, we would go back to the rigidity of rules and regulations. I wondered whether we might stop requiring high school students to ask whether they can go to the bathroom, and I find myself encouraging them to just go when they need to. I’m betting they’ll appreciate the trust and not too badly abuse it.

Trust is something we found ourselves compelled to indulge during distance learning – teachers of students and administrators of teachers – and I am now watching the erosion of that trust, and for no good reason other than the nostalgia and the power of control for its own sake.

Empower students more often

I’ve been teaching teenagers long enough to understand that many of them need, want and expect to be told what to do because the person they trust the least is themselves. We ought to provide the structure they still need, but we might serve them better if we spent more time empowering them.

Recently at the school where I teach, we had a meeting of our school site council, which includes students, parents, teachers, administrators and members of the community. We elected a student as president of the council and another as vice president. It may be largely a symbolic transfer of power, but it seemed a reasonable start.

For fun I asked the new president and vice president what they would change about the school if they could, and with no hesitation they both said they would make teachers stop giving students so much homework.

Of course they did. Kids always want less school work, but maybe it is time for us to listen to their argument.

During distance learning, students were constantly telling me they were overburdened and overwhelmed. Many were suddenly in charge of younger siblings and cousins all day or inheriting other family responsibilities that left them little or no time for school work. Many of my colleagues were unsympathetic to any of it.

We (teachers) love to assume that tough-love stance. You’ll thank me later for pushing you so hard. But it’s not always true. Sometimes we do push too hard.

What they more often thank us for later is understanding or trying to understand what they are going through and what we can do to help them succeed.

Rethink the amount of work

I used to think that having students stay up all night to finish my assignments was an accomplishment, but I’ve come to realize that overburdening them with unreasonable amounts of reading and writing is lazy and unimaginative teaching. What if our goal was maximum learning and minimal stress? What the hell is wrong with that?

What if we could see students as more than our responsibility and see ourselves as more than an authority? What if we regarded students as our partners? What if we – all of us – realized, once and for all, that the students themselves are the most powerful resource for their own learning?

Online classes required us to make lessons interesting and fun or lose students quickly. The truth is that if we aren’t helping get students to love learning, we are losing them whether we can see it or not.

Teaching into a void is a tragic waste, and I fear that as long as politicians and school districts keep prioritizing standardized tests, judging teachers and schools on data that measures mediocrity, it may take extraordinary efforts not to find ourselves teaching from one void into another.

Boredom is the enemy of enlightenment – and by that I mean a lot more people understanding and respecting science, history and the rest of the humanities – is most certainly our only hope to stave off calamity.

I doubt the stakes have ever been higher.

Larry Strauss has been a high school English teacher in South Los Angeles since 1992. He is a member of Paste BN's Board of Contributors and the author of more than a dozen books, including "Students First and Other Lies: Straight Talk From a Veteran Teacher." Follow him on Twitter: @LarryStrauss