Clarke Central High School English department teacher Lindsay Coleman-Taylor teaches her Lit. 9 class via Zoom on Oct. 21. Coleman-Taylor believes it is harder to make connections with her students through online learning compared to in-person learning. “I think that the kids are coming with that mental disconnect that we are trying to constantly break through,” Coleman-Taylor said. “Because we can’t really ask a kid to come in and engage fully in the class if they are not fully in the class. So that is something that’s kind of a barrier that we’re trying to work our way through.” Photo courtesy of Lindsay Coleman-Taylor
Clarke Central High School teachers and students have had difficulty with engagement in a digital environment during the fall semester.
CCHS English department teacher Meghan McNeeley, who teaches Lit. 9, has encountered challenges when trying to engage with her students in the online learning environment.
“There just isn’t any (student engagement). I didn’t realize how much I relied on the micro-engagements with students, you know, the eye-roll, the body language, the leaning forward ‘cause they’re interested or whatever,” McNeeley said. “I didn’t realize how much I needed that for the interactions, to gauge how kids are doing, and there’s none of that, I just get black boxes.”
CCHS English department teacher Lindsay Coleman-Taylor, who teaches both Introduction to Women’s Studies and Lit. 9, has had similar struggles with engagement.
“It’s very difficult to keep smiling and being like, ‘Good morning!’, to someone who literally has never spoken, you don’t know what they look like, you don’t know what they sound like. It’s very difficult to make those one on one connections that I feel have always been one of my strengths,” Coleman-Taylor said.
While teachers have had difficulties engaging students, CCHS freshman JeNaii Jackson has been engaged during online learning this semester, yet she’s not clear on how involved peers have been.
Clarke Central High School English department teacher Meghan McNeeley teaches via Zoom during the 2020 school year. McNeeley has found engaging with students in an online environment challenging this semester. “There’s more engagement in my advanced classes in the chat and out-loud but seriously, no faces,” McNeeley said. “I quit fighting that battle early. I really wanted faces or at least cameras, but that didn’t last.” Photo courtesy of Meghan McNeeley
“I feel like personally, I can engage with my teachers, I don’t know about the other students because unless the teacher makes them have their camera on they don’t have their camera on. So I don’t really know if they’re getting that one-on-one experience with the teacher,” Jackson said. “Most people aren’t really active in the Zoom talking-wise, they’ll talk in the chat but with the mic, not really.”
In order to facilitate student discussion, teachers have employed Zoom breakout rooms for smaller group discussions. CCHS freshman Charles Field has seen mixed results.
“I think they’re pretty good. Because, it gives you a chance on a smaller scale to talk with your peers. But I guess it can get a little awkward when you don’t know everybody in there,” Field said. “Nobody wants to start a conversation.”
Despite the difficulties, Coleman-Taylor has found ways to encourage student engagement without requiring them to show their face or living situation.
“I’ve tried a method called ‘thumbs to the ceiling’ where I’ve told kids ‘I don’t need to see your face, I don’t need to see your bedroom, tilt your screen all the way up and show me your ceilings,’” Coleman-Taylor said. “That way, whenever I have questions, (they) can just throw (their) thumb up there and I don’t need to see (them), but I can see that (they) are listening and engaging.”
While the absence of face-to-face interactions poses challenges, McNeeley believes it also provides an opportunity for teachers to give more thorough feedback.
“I’m spending a lot of time, and I think a lot of teachers are doing this, we’re giving a ton of feedback because it’s one of our only ways of (communicating with students). So whatever we’re grading, we’re spending more time grading,” McNeeley said. “I like the interactions in the face-to-face and the feedback I can give like that, but I also see the merit in the (online) feedback, that they then have something tangible to work with so when they do want to fix something, it’s an easy fix because they can see exactly what they did wrong.”
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