GRACE … mean[s] a disposition to show kindness or compassion…. GRACE implies a benign attitude and a willingness to grant favors or make concessions. 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grace#synonyms

As a parent, I very much appreciated the approach of “grace” that our school applied to the unprecedented and abrupt shift to distance learning that occurred after schools closed mid-March. For parents – like for teachers – this was a whole new world with added burdens related to school responsibilities to ensure their child/children meets school requirements under an entirely different situation. Our school district took the lead in directing schools not to add stress to overstretched parents, so school requirements were mostly not enforced. Everyone was given “grace” – students, parents and teachers.

Here are some perspectives on grace: concerns and suggestions for improvement.

Concerns

Shifting Burdens. Distance learning is an especially heavy lift for parents of elementary age children who previously had few take-home responsiblities for students who mostly had to perform under the teachers’ watchful eyes. When the school has effective control over the student the bulk of the day (up to 8 hours from bus pickup to bus dropoff, or longer for chidren staying for aftercare), the school sets the tone, rules, and requirements. Teachers have ample time to enforce and reenforce expectations on what the student should learn, and how a student should participate and behave. Once the student is at home, it is the parent’s responsibility to monitor, enforce and help her/his child meet learning and behavior expectations. When the in-person contact hours drop to zero and are replaced by limited online Meet time on a 15-inch screen with the option to mute sound and video, the parent has to take on a completely different oversight role throughout the school day. To manage this, parents need more than grace: they need guidance and support.

Impact on Students. What is considered grace for an adult can be interpreted differently by a child. By forgiving a student’s lack of participation without any consequences, it can feed into several problematic narratives, (i) the student does not matter enough to be pushed to perform (insecurity), (ii) the student is smart enough to get by without doing the work (overconfidence), (iii) the student can get by with whatever meager efforts he makes (laziness), (iv) the rules do not apply to the student (otherness, conceit), and (v) no one is paying attention (neglect, invisibility). Although the reduction in immediate school stress for some students can be beneficial to a certain extent; in the long-run, this approach can prove more harmful than helpful.

Different Adjustments. For some students, the shift to online distance learning can be seemless or even better in many ways. For others, they lose connection and struggle to engage without being in a school setting with teachers and students. For example, a student with social anxiety may respond well to the switch from a school-based classroom to the comfort of a home setting, the lack of intensity of in-person contact, and the shorter class time. A different student who depends on the school structure and social interaction may lose interest in and connection to their classmates and teachers without the stimulation of attending school in person.

Risks. A hazard of my work on human rights issues, which includes a focus on gender-based violence and trafficking in persons, is a heightened awareness (and fear) of the risks of cyber-bullying and online predation on children. A major concern about distance learning is the exponential increase in online access for students, many with inadequate oversight to protect them from online danger. Student who use school computers typically have some protective software and firewalls (which may or may not withstand students’ abilities to figure out workarounds to open internet access), but others using home computers may have not. Schools (and some parents) have provided little if any warning about online risks. Some students may engage in risky information/photo/video sharing or start to explore the depths of the internet – and distance learning opens the door to far more online time than many parents would otherwise permit. Moreover, without adequate supervision, a student may choose unmonitored internet time rather than show up for online classtime and/or not do assigned classwork. For families with multiple children, younger children necessarily tend to get the bulk of the attention, while older children may have more autonomy than they can handle. In the absence of adequate protocols, students can more easily fail or end up in a risky online situation without anyone noticing.

Suggestions for Schools and Teachers:

Agreement and Protocols. It is important that the parent and student have agreed-upon protocols with the teacher regarding whether the student will or not attend online class time. This includes how and when a student can leave class with any deviation reported in as real time as possible. For example, the teacher could text a parent after a grace period (maybe 10 minutes) if the student does not show up online for class at the designated time. Protocols should also be established for class assignments and an agreement with parents regarding what is required for grading purposes and whether the parent wants all assignments (including optional or enrichment) to be treated equally. Regardless of the capacity of the student, in distance learning parents would likely benefit from an easy tool to monitor their child’s online attendance record and completion of assignments.

Consider Stressors on an Individual Basis. For students not meeting expectations for distance learning, accommodations will differ depending on what the specific issues and stressors are. For example, a student with anxiety may find completing classwork, including optional assignments, less stressful than attending online classtime. Working together, teachers and parents may be able to shift emphasis, such as completion of classwork as an alternative to attendance, that would give a student a better opportunity to succeed. Teachers can also work with very engaged parents who may be willing and able to provide alternative activities to help a failing student meet their learning goals.

Signal Care and Accountability. Online platforms can be very flat for communication and students vary in their ability to interpret words, tones, gestures, and intention without in-person inputs. Therefore, even small efforts mean a lot – a kind word, a personal note, universal acknowledgement of every student’s attendance or participation, and noticing changes (for better or worse). Checking in privately (one-on-one) can be important to avoid embarassment or shame. This is where the partnership with parents can be especially useful (if they are engaged and have the bandwidth to do it positively) to reinforce whatever messages the teachers need to share. Accountability means not letting missed classes, lack of participation, and/or missed assignments stack up to the point they become too overwhelming to resolve. By necessity, this needs to be a partnership between teachers and parents if a student fails to attend and participate in class and/or do their work, especially because students used to in-school oversight have not been prepared to take on the full responsibility for participation in online learning and completion of their work independently.

Student and Parent Capacity Building. For distance learning going forward, it would be advisable to include capacity building around the risks and responsibilities of online learning as part of the curriculum and learning goals for the students appropriate for each educational level. Special focus should be given to cyber-bullying and online safety (see also https://pandemicparenting.net/childrens-online-safety/). Guidance notes and online training should be provided for parents and parent-teacher conferences (brief online check-ins) should also continue with regularity. Parents need to be better prepared to monitor and engage with their children in distance learning, to establish trust that their children can and will meet classwork obligations, and to build confidence that they will seek out help when they need it.

Everyone – students, parents and teachers – will need to work together to support students through the ongoing challenges of distance learning.