Schools facing ‘a Herculean task’ ahead

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With schools closed at least until April 15, as ordered by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, school districts have adopted “distance learning” to maintain their students’ instruction.

For the two public school districts in the Five Towns, the new system has been a mixed bag of successes and failures, the latter met with a keep-at-it mindset.

In the Lawrence School District, teachers and students have had to become acclimated to the iTutor platform. Though the Jericho-based online educational company has provided the district with academic support for five and a  half years, not everyone in the district has used iTutor. Teachers and many students have used, and are comfortable with, Google Classroom.

The Lawrence Teachers Association has questioned why the district chose not to use Google Classroom, and some parents are asking why it isn’t making use of Zoom, the video conferencing platform.

Lawrence Superintendent Dr. Ann Pedersen defended the decision to use iTutor. “There’s no live feature on [Google Classroom], and therefore no way for teachers to continue to have interpersonal relationships with their students,” she wrote in an email.“We strongly believe that in this socially distant existence, hearing and seeing their teachers and hearing their classmates will keep the learners connected and engaged. The new platform does not prevent a teacher from using their Google Classroom if it enhances their ability to connect with students.”

On Monday, iTutor wasn’t working, according to teachers who sent texts to their students. One from a Lawrence High School teacher read, “Please notify your parents that iTutor is having major issues thus making it non-operational at this time.” The teacher said that Remind and Google Classroom were being used to share material.

Another teacher texted, “To be 100% clear, iTutor crashed and no one can log in. That’s the reason we can’t go live.”

Later in the day, some classes were having more success with iTutor. In an email to Kristen Mclouglin, Lawrence Middle School’s assistant principal, accelerated math teacher Megan Dawideit wrote that all of her classes went live.

“Karen [Velthaus] and I had about 13 students join us live and there were more trying but having trouble getting in, we are working on it for Wednesday,” Dawideit wrote to Mcloughlin. “I had about 20 students in my other classes join and everyone seemed to really enjoy the live lesson. I only enabled the microphone for a student who wanted to ask a question and that seemed to go well too. At the end of the lesson all the students told me that they felt comfortable with the topic and that the live lesson was super helpful to them.”

Lisa Tariq, the district’s supervisor of personnel services, sat in on therapist Lori Sachs’s iTutor session with a student named Camilo. “Camilo could hear us and we worked with him to adjust his microphone,” Tariq wrote in an email. “We were not successful however, Lori remained on for the 30 minutes and Lori used the chat feature to talk to her student back and forth.”

According to Pedersen, the iTutor system was overloaded by teachers logging on at the same time. On Tuesday, only special services, such as speech and language teachers and special education, logged on. “Wednesday the next groups will begin,” Pedersen said. “Unfortunately, in their eagerness, all teachers appeared to log in at the same time, causing a disruption with the server.”

Lori Skonberg, president of the LTA, said there were still issues with iTutor, and the district was “trying to work out these kinks.” “We’re all working very hard delivering instruction, as we have been for the past few weeks,” she said. “I still believe if the rollout had been different — slower, with one message — the result might have been different.”

In Hewlett-Woodmere, students are making use of a variety of electronic learning methods. Some classes are being held on Zoom. Teachers chat with their students while teaching. According to Hewlett High School senior Aidan Warshavsky, students can still learn and ask questions “face to face.” His peers have described the experience as a way to stay connected while learning remotely.

Students and teachers are also using Google Classroom and Schoology. “There are some aspects that I personally like, and some that are more difficult to deal with,” said Hewlett High junior Jacob Kupchik. “It’s nice to be able to do some work, get a snack, and just relax whenever I want, so being on my own schedule has been an upside. On the other hand, teachers are assigning work all at once, and with all the different mediums to keep track of, it’s been hard to stay on top of things.”

Hewlett High senior Shari Nudelman said she was working on her life-work balance. “I try to go take a nice walk every day, spend time with my mom and talk to my friends over Facetime, and decompress from the stresses of senior year,” she said. “Though I do miss the rapid pace of what life was, I’m making the best out of quarantine.”

Veronica Casamassima, of Inwood, the mother of Lawrence Middle School eighth-grader Alexander Nieves, said she was trying to keep the challenges of remote learning in perspective. “Teachers are working super-hard, and all internet services and broadband providers are overloaded,” Casamassima said, adding that the March 30  problems were temporary. “All teachers are really faced with a Herculean task in transferring all their materials to a brand new technology.”