Sitting on my dying laptop rolled over sideways on my bed I sat staring at an EdPuzzle a unit circle. This would happen every day, with each day bringing another confusing topic that I couldn’t really care less about, it wasn’t very fun. Being given the open-ended task of working with everything a teacher could ever want for a class steps away, printer, pencil sharpener, and a really good office chair, it sounds like a dream to finally figure out conic sections. But it indeed is not. As there are also distractions, your game console sits on the same desk that you work at, your laptop zooming to the class can easily be switched over to a youtube tab, you could even pull your phone out of your pocket and start swiping away at TikTok. To say it short, math was not done very efficiently in virtual school. The responsibility of learning and grasping difficult concepts were pushed over to students, and the many math teachers on youtube. Some students did well with these extra freedoms, but others struggled with staying motivated on topics “they would never use in the real world”. 

Mrs. Tees, a  McDonogh School teacher has taught in many different schools among many different scenarios, to be short she’s seen nearly all there is to see as a math teacher. But never before she has had to teach students over the virtual school. The long-term impact of virtual math is unknown, but there are presumptions by many educators and researchers. 

“It was rough for students, as a teacher I did all that I could to help the students, but they were forced to be responsible for their own learning, and I’m not sure that all the necessary learning was done,” said Mrs. Tees. Researchers have a similar thought about students falling behind, as according to Kofed mean higher education scores have dropped by .2 standard deviations. While that may not sound like a lot, if everyone falls behind by 2-3%, that significance can be multiplied over time if the important concepts don’t stick with the students. 

Higher education drops are to show an impact on more responsible people but for younger students with less attention span, the loss of key math topics the impact may multiply over their future. Mrs. Tees remarked on her student's loss of concepts and of those younger “They need to be caught up, it both the teachers and student's responsibility to ensure they are not moving too quickly.” “Students cannot move forward without these key concepts stamped down.”

As a student who went through the virtual school, I feel that I am in the minority and enjoyed the freedom of learning. The ability to “get my stuff done” and get it over with was easy and helped me figure out concepts by myself. Pre-calculus is a class that I understood, so being able to do the work and recognize the patterns for all problems was easy for me, I was able to get to the point where I understood the subject and was done. Other students didn't have the same experience as me though. Paul Baliff, who took Calculus over virtual school “Not a lot of learning was done… Our class definitely missed some things”. 

The responsibility cannot be put on teachers to catch students up fully. Students were the ones lacking motivation while teachers tried all that they could to encourage students. The bottom line, they need to have all the correct info to reduce future stress and confusion in math. 

Works Cited

Rebecca Tees - McDonogh Teacher

rtees@mcdonogh.org

Heidi Anne Duerr, MPH. “How Did Virtual Learning Impact Youth?” Contemporary Pediatrics, Contemporary Pediatrics, 1 Oct. 2021, contemporarypediatrics.com/view/how-did-virtual-learning-impact-youth-. 

“Zooming to Class?: Experimental Evidence on College Students' Online Learning during COVID-19.” IZA, iza.org/publications/dp/14356/zooming-to-class-experimental-evidence-on-college-students-online-learning-during-covid-19.