(Guest post from Stacy Scofield from sponsor Commonwealth Learning)
More than three years have passed since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. And now, with little pomp and circumstance, the Public Health Emergency Declaration is over. We made it, resilient lot that we are, through the isolation, illness, and three of the most challenging years students and teachers have ever seen (and lest we forget, too many episodes of The Great British Bake Off to count!).
For 35 years Commonwealth Learning Center has provided 1-to-1 academic support services to individuals with learning differences and offered a variety of multisensory trainings to local and regional educators. This work was conducted exclusively in person, and then along came the pandemic. We had considered the idea of offering virtual services more than once over the years, but our Learning Center seats were always full, so we opted in these moments to leave well enough alone. But suddenly it wasn’t enough after all.
As COVID swept the country, schools moved to a fully remote curriculum; fear and frustration set in for many families while educators worked overtime transforming their lessons to fit the new virtual format. Questions swirled about how it would work, and whether it would work. Would this generation of learners lag behind or feel shortchanged forever? At CLC, we knew we had to step up and make some changes.
“Initially it was a lot of trial and error. Teachers had to just jump in. We had never done this before,” recalls Beth Dinelli M.Ed., Director of Commonwealth Learning Center.
“Prior to the pandemic, we were of the mindset that in-person tutoring was the best way to go; but we saw students struggling and wanted to make our tutoring services as accessible as possible while still incorporating the multisensory strategies that are so effective with our students—all students, really. To that end, what we have been doing since the beginning of the shift to virtual in March 2020 is mailing supplies and manipulatives to our students to make tutorials hands on despite the presence of the computer screen. For example, some of the things we mail to students receiving Orton-Gillingham instruction are colored chips for sound segmentation, a plastic screen for tactile practice of sounds and sight words, and a columned vowel chart for word sorts. Before the lesson, we also email materials that are printed at home, so the students have those in front of them.”
Of course, making such a significant change was not without its challenges. “Initially, Wi-Fi connection was a major issue for a lot of people because students competed with others in the home for a good signal,” notes Dinelli.
“That was overcome through a lot of troubleshooting with the parents. Another hurdle was that some families didn’t have a device. That’s still the case even now—sometimes families don’t have a device to use for remote instruction and we’ll lend them a Chromebook to use.” Regarding the lesson content, for students with dyslexia, one challenge we anticipated with a virtual learning environment was discriminating between sounds. On a computer without headphones, auditory is sometimes compromised. In situations like this the teacher will prompt the student by saying, “look at my mouth to see what sounds it is forming, and how my mouth moves to make those sounds.” For this purpose, having a close-up of the teacher’s face on a screen is actually quite an advantage.
On the whole, we’ve found that the multisensory learning approaches we employ such as Orton Gillingham, the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing® (LiPS®) program, the Nancibell® Visualizing and Verbalizing® Program for Language Comprehension, and Multisensory Math lend themselves nicely to the virtual environment. “Students have responded really well,” reports Dinelli.
“When the pandemic first started, I thought, this is never going to last. As soon as we can, we’re just going to go back to in person. And I was definitely proven wrong.” At this point we have reintroduced in-person instruction it’s been back for over a year now—and still the breakdown of virtual to in-person clients is three to one. Dinelli cites convenience as a primary influencing factor for this, as many families are scheduling tutorials around extracurriculars and siblings’ schedules. Fatigue from a long day at school and mental health challenges are some other factors that make virtual instruction appealing for our students. With virtual instruction students’ attendance is better, and because their attendance is better, they’re able to make measurable gains faster. We’re also able to reach populations outside of the Greater Boston Area, which wouldn’t have been the case before the pandemic. Dinelli notes that even some of the students who received in-person instruction at Commonwealth for years have moved to virtual and never looked back.
In Commonwealth Learning Center teacher Ms. B’s experience, she has found parents to be more in sync with virtual lessons because they print out the materials for their children, are nearby during instruction, and even occasionally pop on screen to chat at the end of the session. But really, it’s about the students, and Ms. B observed that kids come alive when they are in their comfort zone. She has enjoyed providing her students with the opportunity to share their pets and favorite possessions and speak and behave more freely than they might in the Learning Center amongst other student/teacher pairs. She recalls one learner in particular, a gymnast, who completed a task, excused herself to do a few back flips, and then returned to her lesson refocused and ready for the next activity—an option that would have been challenging at best in the Center.
“Prior to the pandemic, the prevailing opinion was that multisensory instruction couldn’t happen virtually. It had to happen in person,” Dinelli recalls. “I don’t think we would have made as much of a transition if the pandemic hadn’t happened because we were of the mindset that being physically present was necessary for optimal learning to occur.”
Now, her feeling is just the opposite. “Our experience has shown us that students can get just as much out of a virtual tutorial session as they can in person.”
Now, in year three of virtual instruction, Dinelli doesn’t see the possibility of ever returning to an in person only enterprise. “We get many, many requests for virtual, and if we couldn’t provide a high level of service in this format, we wouldn’t continue to get those requests or even offer the service. I understand some families may have trepidation about switching from in-person, but our virtual students receive the same type of experience through the screen, using the same multisensory model. Lessons are formatted in such a way that students are engaged, feel successful, and make gains comparable to those of in-person tutoring.”
Children with language-based learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, may be at a higher risk of summer slump than their peers (Christodoulou, J.A., Cyr, A., Murtagh, J., Chang, P., Lin, J., Guarino, A.J., Hook, P., & Gabrieli, J.D.E. 2017).
Impact of intensive summer reading intervention for early elementary school children with dyslexia. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 50(2), 115-127), so now is a particularly pertinent time to consider virtual tutoring to help your student(s) stay on track academically without disrupting summer fun. Sessions can take place before or after camp, or even from your vacation rental/seasonal residence.
For more information about virtual tutoring services through Commonwealth Learning Center, schedule your free consultation here.
