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Coronavirus might prompt a reform Slovakia's schools have needed for a long time
Remote teaching is not just fancy conference calls. Teachers have to show their resourcefulness.
“Mr teacher!” a child’s voice comes from the computer speakers, quickly joined by more.
“Hello, hello, children,” replies teacher Peter Pallo as he enters his virtual classroom. Sitting in front of his computer screen, he takes in the faces of his second-graders divided into four windows. Some of them are smiling into their webcam, some are only using the mic.
Pallo is a teacher at the Rudolf Dilong Elementary School in Trstená, a town on the borders with Poland, in the region of Orava. When his pupils are gathered for another online school day, he takes his accordion and kicks it off with a song familiar to the children. There's a commotion on his screen - the kids are standing up and as they sing along, they start the dance choreography they have learned at school.
After the short exercise, Pallo's pupils sit back in front of their computers to follow a math task the teacher has launched on his computer. The pupils switch to screen sharing so the teacher can see in real time how they are doing with the assignment.
This is a way of keeping up with the curriculum after schools were closed around the world due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“We are even busier than usual,” Pallo said when asked how the crisis has affected his work.
In Slovakia, the nationwide lockdown of schools has applied since March 16. Many closed days before the state ordered them to do so. In the Bratislava Region, all schools have been closed since March 9. As of the end of March, it is not clear when schools will open again. New Education Minister Branislav Grohling admitted after he took over on March 22 that the schools might remain closed until September, although the government promises to do their best to have the kids back this school year, which officially ends at the end of June.
The closure of schools is no holiday for teachers - or parents of school kids. Teachers, who are receiving their full salaries, are expected to carry out some kind of remote teaching, each using the devices they have available. More often than not, that does not mean fancy online conference calls.
How to keep children busy during quarantine
Pallo was available for an interview for this story only after 18:00, when he was done teaching for the day. After the initial experience of teaching from home, he rescheduled his online classes to afternoons. The internet connection is not as busy then as it is in the morning, and many working parents are at home by then so they can see how the learning is going.
In families with more children than computers, pupils need to take turns, and afternoon is not as busy as the morning in that regard, Pallo said. This is particularly true for a rural region like Orava. Most pupils in Pallo's classroom come from families with four kids.
The school day does not stretch into the usual five or six 45-minute-long lessons. Teaching should not be longer than 70 minutes, since in the online environment it is more difficult for pupils to remain focused. Pallo mainly does math, Slovak language and reading, Natural Sciences and alternates it with PE or music lessons.
The pupils of the school where he teaches in Trstená have their own tables so they can learn at home. The same is true for pupils of the private school BESST in Trnava.
The Education Ministry left it up to each school to find their own way of teaching remotely. Online is an option, not an obligation. It is also up to the schools how long they will teach during the day or whether children just receive a list of assignments to work on.
Eva Polláková, director of the BESST school, said that every child from third to ninth grade now follows an education process similar to normal operation, with lessons and breaks like at school. Children are also assigned homework but not more than 15 minutes for every subject, to make sure they won't be overburdened.
“In the first and second grade, we were considering assigning a list of tasks. We were not sure if the youngest pupils would be able to handle [regular] online education,” Polláková told The Slovak Spectator. She explained that in the end, they agreed that the first two grades would also have some online education (two to three lessons per day) combined with homework.
Learning at home is a struggle
Not all children, however, have an internet connection at home. According to the Education Ministry data, about 96.6 percent of the pupils have internet access at home and 93.6 percent of pupils have a mobile phone with the internet they use.
The initiative of the Teacher of Slovakia award finalist, Jana Karľová from Snina, is an example of that. She came up with the idea of School via Mail Box. Pupils of the special primary school with no access to digital technologies will find their learning materials in their mailboxes.
Similarly, the primary school and the nursery school in the Roma settlement of Podskalka in Humenné prints out the tasks for children. Teachers create the assignments from their pupils and then, with the help of teacher’s assistants, social workers and volunteers, deliver them to the children under strict hygienic measures.
One week into the nationwide closure of schools, the public-service RTVS came up with its own teaching programme, called the School Club. It airs every morning at 9:15 on Channel 2. Teacher Dávid Králik, one of the main stars of the programme, is the co-founder of the Félix school in Bratislava.
He said that even though it is harder to teach via cameras, it is possible.
“Teachers do not have immediate feedback and it is less engaging, as I do not have children to fool around,” he told The Slovak Spectator.
When teachers have problems
Apart from teachers of the BESST school or the Rudolf Dilong Primary School, not every teacher has previous experience with using digital tools for teaching or can adapt to the new system.
For teachers who would like to adapt to novelties as fast as possible, the Education Ministry in cooperation with NGOs launched the website ucimenadialku.sk, where they can find tips and tools for teaching. NGO Živica came up with a similar initiative with webinars educating teachers on how to teach online.
František Cimerman of Živica said that of the more than 2,800 participants of the Živica webinars who were surveyed, almost 22 percent had no previous experience with teaching online or using digital technologies in education.
“Despite that, these teachers are willing to learn something new, to try and experiment,” Cimerman told The Slovak Spectator.
Teachers are often asking about the possibilities of communication between teacher, pupil and parent, suitable methods of testing and grading, questions about the volume of the curriculum and searching for alternative tasks for students.
Coronavirus kicked off long-awaited reform
Despite the hardships brought by this unexpected situation that suddenly fell on the heads of pupils, parents and teachers, some teachers agree that this is a great chance to move the education process in Slovakia forward.
Polláková said that using online teaching revealed many shortages in the accessibility of technologies at schools and in households, as well as the lack of preparedness of some teachers and pupils.
“On the other hand, this situation is developing the digital and personal skills of teachers and pupils,” she noted.
Pupils are forced to work individually, to search for information, study on their own and plan their activities, she added.
Cimerman said that it is a great opportunity for teachers to try something new and deal with their own creativity. “It concerns mainly traditional teachers reading their notes in front of the board,” he said.
After the school closure is over, a slew of new alternative attitudes towards education and grading students will have been tried out, he added.
Králik said that people have been forced to leave their comfort zone and learn new things.
“What better fuel for the education system could there be than teachers who are learning?”
“This situation has led to the reform of the education system finally starting willy-nilly,” Pallo opined. Many teachers were too used to teaching their own way to make new proposals for teaching differently and using new methods.
“Everyone is suddenly forced to think differently,” Pallo said, adding that it is necessary to pick things from the curriculum, as it is not possible to teach everything. Another problem was with the technologies about which Pallo, Teacher of Slovakia of 2019, is also helping to educate his colleagues. He admits that it is exhausting and requires him to work many overtime hours.
“But I have to say that I see everyone's enormous attempt to find ways of teaching,” he summed up.
