Hybrid Delivery Creates Educational Equity

Why have I been using my own laptop, stacking containers to make makeshift stands, and taking the risk to broadcast my yoga-pant-clad, masked and sweating self on the internet? Like everything we do in Education, it’s for the kids.

There are things one ends up doing as a teacher that, if told in advance that we would have to be taking up such mantles, would probably send us running. The pandemic has magnified this, added unpredictability, and increased pressure points. But as we learned how to survive and even ways to thrive in new circumstances, the limits of the social safety nets we’ve built have also become more apparent.

If I’m a kid who doesn’t have the internet or a device from which I can access the internet, my learning gap has suddenly grown enormously and exponentially. It will be much harder to keep up if I’m sent home or out with illness. Let’s not kid ourselves, there will still be gaps to fill down the road from this thing, but even simply the benefits students get from relational connections make this access worth considering – students are supported in their regular schedule and have access to an adult and peers who can make them feel connected and seen. The most important work I’ve done this year has been in service of connecting through the challenges of the masks and fears and rules, but nothing else is more impactful: kids can’t learn if they’re on social or emotional lockdown.

We are doing excellent work: as an English teacher, I’ve never seen such gains in student written communication. Their emails are looking beautiful, and they are finding ways to learn that they will need as we all make this tectonic shift. My students, and the grace with which they have collectively risen to this incredibly tough occasion, are my most consistently encouraging source of hope for the future.

This is not an easy move – we’ll be feeling aftershocks of these moves and decisions for years to come, but the need for individual devices from now forward has never been more apparent. To work and to learn, these devices have created access. I happened to have a laptop of my own and am choosing to use it, but I should not be the stick by which others are measured – we are all doing our best with the limited resources and equipment with which we are (or are not) supplied or own ourselves. Beyond the hardware, there are lots of reasons not to put ourselves out there the on the internet, not to be spending hours learning makeshift video production and editing skills, or to be limiting virtual access into the vulnerable, courageous worlds of our classrooms. Offering access wasn’t something I chose, nor is it a responsibility or dynamic I take lightly. But this is the world we and our students inhabit. There are terrible responsibilities that come with such power. The kids are watching what we do far more than they are listening to our directions.

I fought this shift. It was only when I considered it as yet another choice I make to support public education, the system that builds communities and cultures, that I decided to fully embrace the hybrid classroom model I have found myself living. My family has lived the results of public education and support in Alberta, and I am honored to continue the legacy and contribute to its reach. For me, public education and social services are on par with building the pyramids. Kids who must learn from home in these times should have every opportunity their in-person counterparts can access. As impossible as this task sounds, I will be doing my best, as we all do time and again, for the kids.