The COVID-19 global pandemic had a dramatic effect on teaching and learning in schools across the U.S. This chapter details the pandemic-induced shifts related to the home-school connection in an elementary school observed by an instructional coach. It outlines how the author's teacher colleagues' family literacy practices, including those related to communication, use of online platforms, and homework, were impacted by the pandemic and how it has shaped their current and future beliefs about family involvement in schooling.
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While teaching remotely, a first-grade teacher, Ms. Hall, expressed that she built a strong emotional relationship, above and beyond what she has had in the past, with her students and families through her synchronous instruction. She compared it to a true family classroom where teachers, students, and parents were all working together in their homes. She had frequent one-on-one conversations with parents and found when she had those conversations, parents were really understanding the material and what she was trying to do instructionally. This made her realize that prior to the pandemic, she might have been lacking specificity in the communications she sent home. This realization has changed the way Ms. Hall conveys information to families post-pandemic.
In March 2020, the COVID-19 global pandemic flipped elementary education in the U.S. on its head. Teachers, students, and parents adjusted to a sudden switch in instructional delivery methods from traditional in-person learning to emergency remote teaching. This type of teaching is not the carefully designed online distance education typically seen in institutions of higher education (Branch & Dousay, 2015), but rather, a temporary shift in delivery that provides access to instructional support (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020; Hodges, et al., 2020).
This switch was not only abrupt, but also found all parties involved scrambling to adjust. Many elementary teachers had never received training on how to teach virtually (Marshall et al., 2020), students had never been required to use technology as their main source of information (especially for several hours at a time), and parents were suddenly thrust into the role of at-home teachers assistants, many while juggling their own jobs. Like the pandemic, emergency remote teaching was not short-lived and became the “new normal” as many districts adopted it as a permanent option for students and parents as the pandemic raged on.
Schools rushed to train teachers on formal distance learning techniques and to procure the necessary technologies for students to flourish. School leaders, including instructional coaches, quickly developed trainings on digital tools and learning management systems, many of which were unfamiliar to them just a few weeks before (Kraft et al., 2020; Marshall et al., 2020). As time went on, these same leaders also took on the responsibility of preparing teachers, students, families, and the school environments as learning shifted to in-person and hybrid formats.
This chapter details the pandemic-induced shifts in the home-school connection observed by one elementary school leader, an instructional coach named Peter, the second author of this chapter. It outlines and how his teacher colleagues’ family literacy practices were impacted by the pandemic and how the pandemic has shaped their current and future beliefs about family involvement in schooling.
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Definitions
Throughout this chapter, we will use terminology and reference points that may be interpreted differently by different readers. For the sake of clarity, here is how we define the following (please note time references specifically refer to this specific school’s timeline, not necessarily the global timeline):
Pre-pandemic: Refers to the time period extending from August 2019 to the beginning of March 2020.
During pandemic: Refers to the time period Peter’s school was heavily impacted by state/national guidelines and quarantining rules and implementing emergency remote instruction (including hybrid learning). Began mid-March 2020 and extended to June 2021.
Post pandemic: Refers to the 2021-22 school year, during which all students and teachers at Peter’s school returned to face-to-face instruction.
Parents/Families: borrowing from the definition by Lynch & Prins (2021), parent refers to any caregiver who play an important role in raising a child. Families can include non-biologically and biologically related individuals.