The Great Zoom-School Experiment | The New Yorker

The Great Zoom-School Experiment | The New Yorker

The Great Zoom-School Experiment

In some ways, the Lang School, a small, private school in the Financial District, was well-suited to the age of the coronavirus. Lang, which has students in grades two through twelve, is a “2e” school, which stands for “twice exceptional.” The term refers to gifted students who also have some form of learning disability such as dyslexia, ADHD, or mild autism. Such students present all kinds of teaching challenges, and so Micaela Bracamonte, the founder and head of school, said, “I seek out teachers who are flexible and improvisational and adaptable. A lot of them have an arts background.”

On Wednesday, March 11th, the day the World Health Organization announced that covid-19 was officially a pandemic, the school’s staff sprang into action. They spent two days setting up the transition to remote learning—configuring Zoom, developing lesson plans. Online classes commenced on Tuesday, March 17th. By Wednesday, Bracamonte was getting frantic e-mails from the parents of second and third graders. For those students, she said, “it was clear that it was a disaster.” The problem had to do with the teaching format. Older students were taking live classes via Zoom. But the New York State Association of Independent Schools and other pedagogical authorities had recommended “asynchronous learning” for younger children. The six- and seven-year-olds were given assignments to complete on their own time, with their parents acting as presumed enforcers. The result was a “mini revolt,” Bracamonte said. “The kids were just not doing the work. And the parents were exasperated.” CONTINUE READING: The Great Zoom-School Experiment | The New Yorker