Schools Seek Formula to Re-Engage Students After Remote Learning | News, Sports, Jobs

Woodsdale Elementary students Hudson Bradshaw, front, and Allie Eskins participate in Math Field Day earlier this month. Local school districts are looking for ways to get students to re-engage in in-person education after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools for so long. (Photo Provided)

WHEELING — Local educators sense students need a shot of excitement in the arm to boost their interest in learning since schools have reopened from their COVID-19-induced closures.

They say the biggest challenge they’ve seen in classrooms this year is that students just aren’t as engaged as they were before COVID. For months, they spent their time learning remotely in their kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms.

“Coming out of COVID, it seemed the time students spent at home did hurt their motivation,” said Ohio County Schools Assistant Superintendent Rick Jones. “When they spent a lot of time at home doing schoolwork, they got used to doing it on their own schedule. Now that they are back in school … we’ve found that we’ve had to extend deadlines. While they were remote learning, the idea came to be ‘just get it in.’ We just wanted to make sure they were learning.”

But now that students are back in the classroom with teachers, there is a need to return to normalcy and turn assignments in on time, he said.

“They’re not spending as much time studying, we have to get back in that mode,” Jones said. “Next year, there will be more strict timelines and deadlines.”

To spark more interest in students, schools also must look to offering more exciting activities to complement classroom learning, according to Jones.

He noted that is why Ohio County Schools is building maker spaces in all of its school buildings, and instituting such activities as robotics to capture student interest.

“We are trying to do more active learning things,” Jones said.

Participation in extracurricular activities remains “about the same” as it was before COVID, as many students continue to participate in sports, music, speech, clubs and career tech programs, he said.

“The things they don’t have to do – the interest is still there for those.” Jones said. “It’s the ‘I have to go to math class’ attitude we have to get back into.

“We have to spend time making learning as interesting and engaging as possible. We have to make things a lot more engaging than just listening to a lecture. It’s a constant thing in education – how to increase engagement. COVID just amplified it.”

In Marshall County Schools, Assistant Superintendent Woody Yoder agreed the learning environment in the classroom is different post-COVID.

But, he added, what hasn’t changed is the need for teachers to create one-on-one bonds with students – an element that was missing while students were learning by computer.

“They (students) have to reconnect with their teachers and their classmates,” Yoder said. “There’s an initial phase and they have to go through that.

“It’s about getting them back together. The challenge is they were disconnected, and in-person learning is a strength. We need to have teachers who make connections with kids.”

One immediate thing Marshall County educators saw at the start of the school year was that not as many students signed up for advanced placement classes, according to Yoder.

“I don’t think students felt as confident as they were in the past to take AP or honors classes,” he said. “I think they saw coming back as a bigger challenge than during a normal year, and they thought they might not have been able to handle it.”

Yoder added that Marshall County Schools does many activities for students that can help them reconnect to in-school life, but again not as many students seemed interested in them this year.

“The numbers were down, but they are coming back,” Yoder said. “There are more opportunities for them to participate. There are sports teams, speech teams, social studies fairs, and activities in classrooms such as robotics.

“They have avenues with which they can reconnect to school and learning.”

Yoder wanted to commend families and teachers for their work during the months of student remote learning at home, and their later return to the classroom.

“We are working our way back to normalcy,” he explained. “Someday, we won’t have mask mandates that cause us to feel differently about school. We see teachers getting kids to make connections.

“I don’t care what people say about remote learning. What we’ve learned is that the best place for learning is right there in the classroom,” Yoder said.