Arkansas Secretary of Education Johnny Key In August 2020 shows a screening kit being made available to all 1,055 public school buildings in the state. Being present and participating in lessons improved academic performance, kept students connected, and kept them on schedule. Bentonville found students benefitted from live, face to face lessons with their teachers using Google Hangouts, Jones said. School districts had more time to plan for this school year after learning lessons from the spring semester. Technology-wise, they just weren’t there,” he said.
“When I talked to the former counterparts around the nation, they weren’t there. Richard Abernathy, the recently retired former executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, said Arkansas was ahead of the game. Students in that district missed only one day of school.ĭr. The Friday before the governor closed schools, the district sent home 10,000 Chromebooks in one day with younger students.
In Bentonville, students in grades 7-12 were already taking computers home at night, said the district’s superintendent, Dr. The transition was made easier because many districts had already moved to “one-to-one” status where every student has a digital device. Schools immediately pivoted to offsite instruction – done online where possible or using more old-fashioned alternative paper-based methods where not. On March 15, a Sunday, he closed all schools statewide for two weeks, and later he announced they would remain closed the rest of the school year. Asa Hutchinson closed school districts, including Bryant, in four counties at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. We don’t get as much accomplished in virtual as we do in class.”įor Goff and other Arkansas educators, the past 12 months have been like none other.
“I believe as much as possible we are getting the standards taught, but it’s a much slower process,” he said. He needs to look at their paper to see how they’re working a problem. He needs to see the light bulb go off when they understand a concept. John Goff says teaching math virtually to Bryant Junior High students isn’t the same as doing it in person.
ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS TO VIRTUAL ARKANSAS SERIES
Editor’s note: This is the second of four stories in a series about the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Arkansas.
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