Colleges pivoting classes to prepare future educators to teach students online

Adeena Wilcox took a class about digital technology in the classroom this past summer as part of her master’s program in early childhood education at Ohio State University. 

Now, the 22 year-old from Elizabeth, West Virginia. is putting what she learned into practice as she student-teaches second-graders at Bluffsview Elementary in the Worthington City School District.

“That class was very, very necessary for my success this semester,” Wilcox said. “I’ve used so many things that I’ve learned in that class. I think this sort of class should be a necessity.”

Teacher colleges throughout Ohio are placing more of an emphasis on preparing future teachers to teach in a virtual classroom since the coronavirus pandemic has forced many school districts to transition to some level of online learning.

“While teaching virtually is a different skillset in some ways — it is also teaching,” said Tami Augustine, Ohio State’s director of teacher education, in an email. “Each program is adjusting its assignments and instruction to prepare our student teachers for online instruction.” 

Wilcox, who minored in early childhood education at Ohio State, doesn’t recall her undergraduate classes addressing how to teach virtually in the classroom. But in her class over the summer she learned about different tools teachers can use to enhance the online classroom for students.

“If I hadn’t had that course, oh man, I wouldn’t know what I was doing right now,” she said.

Worthington started the school year virtually, switched to a hybrid approach on Sept. 29 and recently went back to online-only learning through at least Dec. 18.

Theodore Chao, an assistant professor of mathematics education at Ohio State, said most teacher education colleges are doing a poor job of preparing future teachers for virtual education. 

“Structurally, we’re designed to prepare teachers for a classroom that no longer exists,” Chao said. “Change happens slowly in universities.”

Halle Baker, a senior at the University of Akron, said she wouldn’t feel comfortable right now teaching in a virtual classroom. 

“I definitely feel like I would need more experience and more practice with it,” said Baker, a 21-year-old general education major from Medina.

One of the biggest challenges to teaching online is engaging students, Chao said. Teachers also can lose confidence when switching to teaching virtually since it can be unfamiliar territory.

“They assume that because they are teaching in virtual, everything they are doing is different,” said Rick Ferdig, a professor of learning technologies at Kent State University. “If you tell them you still know how to teach … we just need to help you adapt to this different medium, then maybe they start to see, I can do this.”

Drew Barth graduated from Ohio State with a degree in middle childhood education last December and doesn't remember his college classes talking about how to teach students virtually. 

“Online teaching was the minority,” he said. “There was never any specific moment that they talked about virtual teaching in depth really. At the time it wasn’t really on anyone’s radar.” 

The 23-year-old from Upper Sandusky recently landed his first teaching job at Ohio Virtual Academy in Maumee, and his orientation was filled with training videos about how to properly use the school’s online programs. He wishes there was more of an emphasis on teaching future teachers how to interact with students in a virtual classroom. 

“If COVID-19 goes away tomorrow, I think this has taught us that there is still a need for this type of setting and this type of education so I think there definitely should be something,” he said.

Susan Corl, a senior lecturer in elementary education at the University of Akron, said teacher colleges are depriving their students if they are not showing them how to teach virtually. 

“Whether we like it or not, we’re moving forward and we’re not going back,” she said. “I think COVID-19 is really going to make people start thinking how can we incorporate this into our training?”

Sarah McGurk, a master’s student in Ohio State’s early childhood and elementary teacher licensure program, agrees there should be more emphasis placed on preparing future teachers for virtual education. 

“I don’t understand why we’ve been avoiding this,” said the 26-year-old from Manassas, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. “Technology is such a huge part of our lives; we should not have been this unprepared.”

Karl Kosko, a mathematics professor at Kent State, already had been teaching his students how to teach in a virtual classroom even before the pandemic.

Before COVID-19, he had been using  media-based assignments such as quizzes embedded within videos for teachers to determine specific characteristics of children’s math thinking. Now, he is incorporating more Google Classroom Suite assignments and even more media based assignments such as asking students to submit recordings of themselves presenting specific concepts for parent audiences.

“We are teaching the same lesson, but the medium might be different," he said.

Some, however, fear the pandemic won’t lead to lasting curriculum changes that emphasizes online learning.

“Will COVID-19 change that?” Ferdig said. “I would love to say yes, but there’s already teacher educators and teachers praying for COVID-19 to be over so they can go back to traditional face-to-face education, so I don’t think we’re going to see change without purposeful action.”

mhenry@dispatch.com 

@megankhenry