Islands in the Stream: World Language Classes Adapt to Hybrid Approach
Written by Madison Lynn Farley
Photo by Cheney Yao
When returning to school this year, many students were surprised to find that their World Language classes are being taught as streaming classes. French, German, Chinese and American Sign Language teachers have had to teach students located at different schools across the district at the same time. The school is adapting to the unique circumstances streaming classes bring and changes have been made to help students and teachers adjust to the challenges and limitations of streaming classes.
When asked to describe streaming classes, Mr. Boothe, the vice principal that oversees World Languages, says “A streaming class…would be where a single teacher is teaching live, either in person or via Zoom, to students at multiple locations.” He continues, “For example, our French teacher, Ms. Bird is physically at East Ridge during the school day, but she has some students at Woodbury watching her live via Zoom during her classes. This is different from an online class because often the online classes are not taught in real time. Streaming classes are taught in real time from different locations, online classes are taught asynchronously.”
“Our German, Chinese, and French classes are split between Woodbury High school and East Ridge. The Sign Language classes are entirely taught from teachers at Park and all of the students in those classes are here at East Ridge” Boothe says.
World Language teachers have had to adapt to becoming streaming teachers. Ms. Bird, the French teacher who teaches French 1, French 2 and French 3 at East Ridge and Woodbury High school, has had problems with keeping track of students due the splitting of her classes.
“It’s a little hard for me to know all of the time what the students on Zoom are doing or if they're fully engaged. Since I have students in front of me, when I am with the students that I’m with, I want to make sure everyone here is understanding and is engaged. That means that I can’t constantly look at my computer,” Bird says. “Has someone got up to leave? Is their camera on? Are they looking at their phone? There are some things that I just do not know are happening because I can’t just stare at the computer.”
Since learning French requires learning to speak and pronounce words and sounds, making sure students are doing speaking activities has been hard. Also, malfunctioning technology can make it hard for students to learn pronunciation. “It is very dependent on the sound working, for students to hear what I am saying. It is extremely important to be in a place where you can talk to a partner because we are trying to speak… in the classroom, when I am here, we do all those partner activities and that is very beneficial. I think the students are turning and talking, like I am asking them to, but that is really hard to insure… It is dependent on speaking, so that’s a concern. Are we engaging everyone in some of those activities when they are not with me?” Bird says.
While technology has allowed students and teachers to connect, in some instances, technology has acted as a barrier for students and teachers to engage with one another. The separation of physical space has made Ms. Bird have to plan around the constraints of being a streaming teacher.
“There are some things that really can’t be done on a Zoom, or, if they can, it’s much more difficult… activities where you rely on things, markers or paper, don’t really work on Zoom,” Ms. Bird says. “If I need a physical thing… I have to flip those days so we can have the physical thing.”
Mr. Boothe explains that a large part of the district’s decision to make some World Language teachers become streaming teachers was due to budget reductions. “We started getting to a point where there were not enough students to take and keep full-time teachers teaching world languages like French and Chinese. In order to keep the teachers full time and keep the classes full… we could combine the classes so that a teacher has a full roster.”
Prior to streaming classes, teachers who taught at multiple schools in the district were crossover teachers. Crossover teachers would teach at one school in the morning then drive to another in order to teach there. “In their schedule we would have to have travel time because they would have to drive from school to school. That would be an hour that they would not have been able to teach. By teaching virtually, in this way, we don’t have the travel time. It has allowed us to keep offering the classes and allowed our teachers to continue having full time jobs,” Boothe says. The school would also have to pay the teachers for their travel time. Instead, streaming teachers can use the time they would have spent travelling teaching a class.
The Hybrid schedule, from last year, also influenced the district’s decision to offer streaming classes. “We also learned a lot during the pandemic… I know we were bouncing back and forth between in-person and hybrid and distance and in-person. But it worked, it wasn’t always perfect but it worked. And as the budget reduction process was going through, this was a suggestion that would save the chance for us to continue to offer our world languages. Otherwise we would have likely had to cut people and lose the opportunity to offer those languages,” Boothe says.
Streaming classes have also allowed East Ridge to offer students classes that they might have not been able to otherwise. “If we would not have done this, I don’t know exactly how it would have shaken out, but there would have been a possibility that for example East Ridge might have had to stop offering Chinese because we would not have been able to staff that appropriately. There would not have been enough students to make it work in their schedules and that would have been a real concern for us. There are kids that started taking Chinese 1, Chinese 2 and they have been working their way through the program. For many students, having multiple years of World languages is critical for your college applications. The benefit of being able to do this is that we have continued to be able to offer French, Chinese and now sign language. Whereas if we would not have done this there is a possibility we would not have been able to offer it,” Boothe says.
Recently the school has addressed some of the problems brought about by streaming classes. Starting on October 5th, East Ridge French and Chinese classes, when taught over zoom, were moved from the media center to the upper gold pod. “We have also moved locations for students to try to give them a little more of a focused space with less distraction. We instituted seating charts for our sign language classes as well. To say, ‘hey this is where kids have to be specifically, as opposed to giving them a little too much freedom,” Boothe says.
The tech specialists at East Ridge have done a lot to help teachers. “Our technology support person here on campus has spent a lot of time with our World Language teachers to try to help navigate the Zooms and making sure they get logged in and other technology issues,” Mr. Boothe says.
Ms. Bird has appreciated the work tech specialists have done to help her, saying, “Ms. Merchlewicz, the tech person here at East Ridge, has been extremely helpful… We did not know how to run everything in the first week or two. Having her check in on us was very, very good to help out. She continues to try to improve the technology that we have to use.”
Problems with technology have also been a major problem faced by streaming teachers. Time with technology helped Ms. Bird become better equipped to adjust to her streaming classes. “I attended only a less than an hour session, during our workshop week. The board for this room didn’t arrive until the first day of school,” Ms. Bird says, talking about the training she got prior to school starting. “I think time to play with the board and get used to everything before having to do it with a class would be better. At least minimal training with that.”
Ms. Bird and other streaming teachers continue to struggle with the problems they have with streaming classes but, if the district continues to have streaming classes next year, the school would be better equipped to handle the problems they bring with them. “We probably have learned a lot about what is working and what is not working,” Mr. Boothe says. “It’s not always perfect but I think we’re starting to hit our stride now.”
