Teaching without a classroom proves challenging

Just a few weeks ago, Columbia Falls Junior High teacher Leslie DiMaio could dim the lights in her seventh-grade literature classes and her students could find a comfortable chair and sit down and read a good book or story.

Today that’s all gone. The first week into trying to teach students remotely from home has been marked by frustration. The goal more often than not is simply connecting with her students, finding out where they are, how they’re doing.

“It’s not teaching,” she said bluntly.

There’s a host of challenges with remote teaching. Some students don’t have Internet or they don’t have it until their parents come home from work and they set up their phone as a hot spot. Some are babysitting siblings while they’re trying to learn, because their parents have to work and there’s no daycare.

Others aren’t checking in at all.

The students, she said, are having a tough time.

“They’re lonely and they miss their friends,” she said.

The only plus, her kids tell her, is they get to sleep more.

The technology also presents challenges. For example, using Google Meet, a piece of software that allows a class to come together online, also allows kids to chat amongst each other during the class.

Not exactly a great way to stay focused.

“I can control what happens in my classroom,” she said. “Now there’s this distance. I don’t have control anymore.”

Jim Peacock teaches biology, earth science and geology of the Flathead at Columbia Falls High School. He’s encountering similar problems. The distance is a real challenge, he admits.

“As a teacher, you get a lot of energy off the kids,” he said.

The give-and-take of the classroom discussion is gone in many cases.

“You’re missing one side of the conversation,” he said.

The technology doesn’t always work. He recalled videotaping an entire 30-minute lesson, only to have the software crash at the very end, losing everything.

Like DiMaio, he’s also finding that many kids don’t have reliable Internet access.

The work schedule is taxing as well. He’s checking emails at dawn, teaching all day and then going over assignments and students work until he goes to bed.

Like DiMaio, he also spends a lot of time just trying to track down students.

“I haven’t figured out how to set work boundaries,” he said. An avid runner and cross-country and track coach, he still gets out and runs to clear his mind and get a break from all the screen time.

Peacock said he expects things to get better. Schools will be closed in all likelihood until at least the end of the month and likely much longer than that.

“Kids are extremely adaptable,” he said. “Teachers work hard.”

“We’re letting kids know we’re here and we care and we miss them,” DiMaio said. “School is not school without kids in front of you.”