Students can teach us a lot about Zoom school. These Peninsula teens are doing that

Let’s be honest, when Gov. Jay Inslee shut down schools last March to flatten the COVID-19 infection curve, some K-12 teachers pivoted to online classrooms better than others.

Turns out, doing school by teleconference isn’t easy. Sure, online platforms like Zoom make lectures, tests and quizzes accessible, but keeping kids motivated and engaged is another matter entirely.

For that, school districts would be wise to listen to five Pierce County high school students who crowdsourced interviews with peers and brainstormed ideas such as online office hours and tech teaching assistants.

We give these Peninsula teens props for ingenuity and good timing. All 13 Pierce County public school districts are now committed to start this fall with no brick-and-mortar classrooms open, at the urging of local health department director Dr. Anthony Chen. They need all the distance-learning ideas they can get.

The group, brought together by private academic tutor Mimmi Beck, jokingly refer to themselves as the “Quaranteam.” They made it their business to troubleshoot what went wrong in the spring of 2020.

Their findings became a paper aptly called “Student Perspectives on Zoom,” complete with cool graphs and charts. It got the attention of local district administrators and a Bill Gates-backed think tank.

Kris Hagel, digital learning director for the Peninsula School District, told us that PSD administrators are taking the paper seriously and will implement some suggestions, such as teacher office hours and uniform schedules.

Good for them. If educators want to make Zoom school more effective this fall, who better to offer technology advice than the people who’ve grown up using it?

Obviously, the first order of business is getting kids properly wired to learn. But distributing equipment and wifi doesn’t solve all problems embedded in remote learning.

According to the kids’ study, 73 percent of students said they weren’t participating much during Zoom classes and 60 percent said they felt schoolwork “didn’t matter.”

Teacher access was another problem, especially for technically challenged instructors. According to the report, “Teachers were open to emails but often didn’t answer for a long time.”

Granted, the Quaranteam’s study sample was small (about 30 students) and didn’t specifically cover poverty or race-related inequities. But it could still be a resource for teachers and administrators as they design remote classes for the new academic year.

The study came with good recommendations like, “Teachers should record Zoom lectures” so students can replay them if they’re having difficulty with a lesson. Students also crave a schedule that closely mirrors “actual school.”

The students also recommended “mandatory visual attendance,” but that’s one piece of advice PSD will reject. Hagel said many students aren’t comfortable in front of video cameras and mandatory face time could inhibit learning.

Student feedback is a perspective largely missing from the online equation, which is why the study caught the eye of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, funded by the Gates Foundation.

The center included the study in its online newsletter. That’s a nice honor for authors Kodiak Bear, Travis Hand and Mitch Huber, who attend Gig Harbor High School; Emma Beck, a recent Gig Harbor High graduate who will attend University of Washington; and Charlie Zelazny, a student at Bellarmine Preparatory High School in Tacoma.

The study’s biggest takeaway is that students falter when connections fostered at school are gone; they miss the sanctioned and unsanctioned activities, the banter before and after class and the opportunity to ask impromptu questions.

The COVID crisis has reminded both kids and educators that the function of school goes way beyond information exchange. As this study underscores, kids actually like being in a classroom, but because that’s not possible this fall, they’re asking for a more interactive online experience.

Now it’s up to grownups to listen and make it happen.