Teaching English/Language Arts Online: Still Human

High school English/Language Arts is a broad subject area and teaching it isn't an easy task. Being a high school English teacher, I am all too aware of this. Tying together all of the literacy skills students need to be viable members of society and to achieve in higher education is a balancing act for English/Langauge Arts educators. For example, students in any given classroom come with a broad range of reading, writing, grammar, and general communication skills. Adequately ensuring that all of these students get what they need is a difficult but necessary task. How much time can you spend on literature appreciation and analysis before you need to address other areas? These include oral and written communication skills, business/career applications for language arts, critical thinking, research, visual and media literacy... the list goes on. How do you plug holes and fill gaps before the students leave your class or high school altogether?
So, I say to anyone who thinks of the high school English classroom as a place where one simply reads and talks about classic literature, he or she would typically be mistaken.

But what about the virtual school environment? How does this affect the quality and nature of English/Language Arts instruction. In searching the Internet, I actually didn't find many resources dedicated to this particular area, however, one I did find was worthwhile. In the January 2005 edition of the Christian Science Monitor there appeared an article by a veteran English (and Social Studies) teacher named Melissa Hart who went from teaching in the traditional classroom to that of a virtual school (available at http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0104/p12s01-legn.html ).
Hart begins by briefly discussing a comment she read regarding the inability of the virtual school environment to have a teacher who was inspiring to a student. This she vehemently disagreed with and offers evidence of why a virtual school teacher might do well to reach and inspire students. For example, because her virtual school, like most of them, sees the student as the focus, she writes:

"We offer an extensive questionnaire that evaluates learning styles and pinpoints students' areas of interest. Should a student find a particular lesson less engaging than others in a course, teachers will work with the student to design a more relevant lesson. Such attentiveness to the individual can't help fostering meaningful relationships between students and teachers."

As it pertains to English/Language Arts instruction, while Hart says "there is nothing like the energy and excitement of a group discussion of novel, poem, or essay," she also notes that while teaching said subjects online is different, "pedagogues should look further before they recoil from education via computer."
A primary example Hart offers is of a student who e-mailed her (a common form of teacher-student communication in the virtual school) and asked to do a different assignment than the one originally outlined. Specifically, according to Hart, the student sent this message:

"Dear Ms. Hart,

May I substitute the three-page paper analyzing "The Epic of Gilgamesh" with a different project? Since the story is about friendship, I'd like to film a documentary about a day in my life, and how my best friend's death affected me."

Hart explains that some educators were "aghast" that she decided (and was delighted) to allow this student to complete the suggested alternate assignment rather than the typical analytical essay. But because the story of Gilgamesh (which my own students study) is a Sumerian legend about a man and his devastating loss of his close friend, Hart said the student's "work on this documentary ensures that she'll never forget the Sumerian king and his sorrow, so like her own." Because the class was an online format and because the teacher was only an "e-mail away" as Hart says, it was easy to allow the student to do the alternate, potentially more resonate assignment.

Hart concludes her article admitting that there are times when she is working alone at her computer as a virtual school teacher, grading student work and missing "dynamic classroom debates" and "the pleasure of looking into a student's eyes and seeing a new enthusiasm for literature." Still, she said "neophytes" who think that teaching English/Language Arts, or any subject area for that matter, is a "lesser form of education need to rethink their position."
Just like the traditional school environment, she says she and students communicate daily and "not just about course work but about new puppies, dating dilemmas, and worries about leaving home for college."
She adds: "We develop strong friendships, and I've found myself in the role of mentor too many times to count. Although we've never met face to face, many students keep in contact long after graduation."

To me, Harts words are the "stuff" for teachers and education stakeholders to really consider when thinking about virtual schools. Without humans, technology would serve no purpose. Even though its digital technology that seems inanimate and cold at times, it doesn't do anything unless people make it to do something. I remember from the early 80s learning about how you had to give computers "commands." So, my point is, even with virtual schooling and teaching English online, you aren't taking out the humanity involved in learning about our language and literature. It's just being done in a different way. Think about it, to many people at first the telephone seemed far more impersonal than talking face to face. To some, it must seem difficult to accept a high school English classroom as anything other than a traditional brick and mortar setting where you read the "classics," talk about them and write about them. But compared to the world outside of the classroom, how realistic is this? That time is gone. For some it may have been good, great or just comfortable, but it's gone and that's OK. Let's figure out a way to accept and use current technologies for teaching English and language skills and change for the benefit of today's students, not students from yesteryear that no longer exist.

Reference:
Hart, M. (2005). In virtual school, teacher is just an e-mail away. Christian Science Monitor. Jan. 4, 2005 [Accessed March 30, 2008] Available at:http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0104/p12s01-legn.html