Guest Commentary: Distance learning can't bridge interpersonal gap

A few days before Gov. Walz's decision to keep Minnesota schools closed through the end of the year, I ran out to Wrenshall School to scan materials for my classes. The only person in the building, I walked the hallways and looked into several empty classrooms - desks, books, decorations, teaching materials, all packed away. The senior hallway that had only weeks before bustled with noisy students and slamming lockers now stood silent, locks removed and lockers cleaned out. Although it was April, everything about the moment told me it must be June - summer vacation, the only time when the school ever stands that desolate.

I almost expected to hear Rod Serling's "This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call ... The Twilight Zone." But we were just beginning the fourth full-week of what is now known as "distance learning," with teachers and students carrying out the curriculum from home.

I entered my own classroom and, after watering my two plants, sat behind my desk. Twenty-five empty seats faced me, desks that had been occupied daily by nearly 100 high school students only a few weeks prior. As I considered the possibility that my classroom would remain empty this year, I became emotional, nostalgic over the missing students - their energy and quirkiness, their sometimes painful honesty and often surprising humor. I began to reflect upon specific moments that had occurred earlier in the year right there in my now empty room.

By early March, my eighth-grade class was well into our study of word roots, exploring the building blocks of our language. In one particular lesson, I presented the word root "dem." Found in hundreds of English words, "dem," from the Greek "demos," means people. One of the several vocabulary terms I had chosen for this word root was pandemic, literally meaning "all people." I explained that a pandemic involves the spread of a disease or contagion, a condition that could threaten the health or safety of a large portion of the population. I then asked, or more wondered aloud, "Do you think we could experience a pandemic of something good, something that could infect most of the people in a positive way? A pandemic of inspiration, perhaps? Or how about a pandemic of moral outrage over a significant issue or problem?"

As I waited for some discussion, one student looked up at me and said quietly: "A pandemic of love."

I stopped for a moment, smiled, and said "Nice. I would like to hope so. And that'd make a heck of a title for an album, right?" We shared a laugh. The next day, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a worldwide pandemic. Even at that moment, it seemed unimaginable that in under two weeks I would see students leave my classroom and the school for the remainder of the year. Now, following the extended school closure, nearly every teacher and every student in Minnesota faces another month of remote teaching and learning.

The COVID-19 is a pandemic. It has negatively affected all of us, denying us the simple and enormously important activity of the classroom, the immediate and spontaneous give and take of in-person education, and the daily pleasure of connecting.

For the most part, teachers and students have adjusted to this new mode of instruction and learning. Using online resources, learning platforms, video presentations, and live interactive discussion via computer, we have been getting by. Many students are excelling while others are struggling not only with the learning format but the absence of real-time, face-to-face interaction with both teachers and classmates.

Despite the drawbacks to distance education, this "old dog" of a teacher has learned some "new tricks" that have improved my instructional delivery, skills I will continue to utilize when school is back in session. Despite those wins, there is no substitute for the experience of the live classroom setting.

Education is much more than learning facts, understanding theories, or gaining new skills. It is as much about sharing physical space and time, creating memories in those spontaneous moments, and enjoying a sense of community. Through the hardships this pandemic has created, we may all be able to further appreciate the simple things once taken for granted.

As I now face teaching from home for the remainder of the year, my thoughts again turn to this year's eighth-grade class. This January, we were reading and studying "The Diary of Anne Frank," taking a deep look into the Holocaust. Students confronted the sad and shocking truth behind Anne Frank's death. They grappled with the cold reality of the concentration camps and mobile death squads. As well as building the historical context, students also met Anne Frank the person, a teenager not unlike themselves, who only desired the simple rights and pleasures that she and her people were denied. My students came to appreciate the irony of Anne's wish as a writer to "go on living even after my death." They learned about courage and sacrifice through the actions of the intrepid individuals who sought to protect Anne and helped save thousands of Jews at tremendous risk to themselves.

Toward the end of the unit, we were discussing Anne's steadfast belief that "people are really good at heart," even though she and millions of other Jews confronted an unfathomable evil. One student raised her hand and said, "Maybe it takes the worst evil we can imagine to bring out absolute goodness in the world."

As I witness people helping others in both big and little ways, as I look to the nursing home across the street and watch families make daily pilgrimages to visit loved ones - shouting their words of comfort and concern through closed windows - as I witness a group of my neighbors come together to rake the yard of a woman whose husband recently passed away, and as I join my wife and Wrenshall staff to celebrate a co-worker's marriage from the safe "social distance" of a church parking lot, I believe that student was right.

Although the coronavirus pandemic will continue to affect all of our lives, there is another parallel pandemic occurring, silent and unseen and much more tenacious, infectious, and undeniable. In the words of a 13-year-old student: A pandemic of love. I look forward to the day when our schools reopen, and a student, pondering a simple question, opens my eyes to something new, reminding me not to take for granted what happens in my classroom.

Joel Swanson is in his 26th year of teaching English and language arts in Wrenshall.