The teachers I know are eager to teach in class. They recognize that a high percentage of kids are not doing the online work. Once the state announced that no failing grades would be given, incentive went out the window for many.
Teachers I know from school prefer in-class too. No doubt about that. There’d be no issue at all if Covid weren’t part of the picture.
My school district released surveys on the online school website we use…only problem is they never told anyone and parents can’t fill it out.
I think it’s important to note that schools were thrown into this pandemic and expected to pick up and somehow teach droves of kids without seeing them and hearing them - online, without skipping a beat. There was not a plan for this. The seeing/hearing is important. Without knowing a child in person you will have a difficult time knowing their learning style, behavioral issues, personality, etc.
This will be an even bigger issue in the fall as teachers may have a whole (new) class of students they have never spent time with in person to(if school is online).
Urban school systems who already struggle to develop kids who succeed will struggle even more. Kids will need to be exceptionally motivated to keep up with their work and really LEARN without the human component. Even if teachers do live teaching via video call it’s not like kids in many needy areas have a home office - if they do have internet and a device - to quietly focus and learn.
S is a junior high math teacher in an large urban district. With the eventual pass/fail system (basically a pass system because really how were they going to fail anyone under the circumstances?) he feels the last two months of school this year was a wash. He loves teaching math - but he feels the face to face element makes all the difference - not a prescribed worksheet or set of story problems.
I heard an interview on WNYC with the president of the union “American Federation of Teachers.” Her 22 page report on safely reopening schools is here. https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/covid19_reopen-america-schools.pdf
It’s an international school, so likely it has a lot of Americans.