On Jan. 27, KQED followed Oakland high school teacher Whitney Dwyer as she went about her day teaching on Zoom. What we found is that conducting class exclusively online is not just a serious struggle for students, but for teachers as well:
9 a.m.
“So our agenda for today: We are going to review with a lightning round,” she says.
She throws in a sound effect: “Pew! Pew! Pew!”
Nobody has their camera on.
“Your participation credit goes up if your camera is on,” she offers. “I’m feeling a little lonely.”
Nothing.
She does get tired of sounding desperate. Like, can someone just turn their camera on? It doesn’t even have to be aimed at your face — it could be pointed at a window.
More silence. Another thing she’s had to get used to. Classroom chatter is reduced to text shorthand: lol, lmao, omg, ty, yw. And of course: ?
Answers to her questions arrive by chat, too, often in private messages.
“Thank you, Leilani,” she says in response to an answer only she can see.
Silence.
“Oh — I don’t know about all that.”
Silence.
For everybody else, they're hearing half a conversation.
Today’s topic is Venn diagrams — using them to compare and contrast the agriculture of the Aztecs and Mayans. That means learning a new digital tool, so Whitney toggles between describing ancient farming practices and troubleshooting.
Teach, group chat, private chat, text. Teach, group chat, private chat, text.
When the topic of slave labor among the Mayans comes up, something almost like a normal class discussion begins. Almost.
“Imagine being dependent on slave labor —”
“I mean one could argue —”
“There are really low wages —”
“People in jail are basically slaves —”Zoom keeps cutting one person off when another one starts talking, so it’s all jumbled and fragmented.
Conducting class this way has robbed Whitney of almost everything she enjoys about teaching. For one, she no longer gets to see the confusion in her kids that’s often followed by light bulbs going off. What's left are nightmares of black boxes.