Teachers pad digital skills, helping earn recertification
IEA sees to teachers getting credit for techniques they’ve had to adapt for remote learning
President Kathi Griffin makes a point in releasing the IEA’s “State of Education” poll a year ago. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
Teachers have had to almost learn an entire new job in adapting to remote learning, and the state’s largest education union is making sure they get credit for that when they have to renew their licenses.
The Illinois Education Association is urging teachers to file for professional-development “clock hours” in mastering the new digital skills they’ve needed to instruct students at home.
“Our members, they have been amazing,” IEA President Kathi Griffin said Wednesday, “because they have taken the curriculum and totally turned it around to present it in a digital way. And if you think that’s easy, it’s not.”
With school districts across the state rushing as quick as possible to shift classes online when the COVID-19 pandemic forced a shutdown in March, Griffin said, “Some of the schools, they had one day. ‘Here is the platform you’re going to be learning, go for it.’ Which is crazy!”
She quickly added, however, “What teachers are is we are rules followers. If you tell us we have to do this, we’re going to do this. We love our kids. We want to do the best for them.”
So teachers went about teaching themselves the fine points of digital education. “Teachers have spent hours learning platforms, learning to do different things, learning how to make a little video so when you’re explaining something the kids can actually see it being done — as well as putting some of those videos together so parents know what to do,” Griffin said, “because this is all new for them as well.”
The problem there, however, was that at the very same time teachers need to amass a certain amount of “work hours” in enhancing their professional development to recertify their licenses — which they have to do every five years. Just as schools were being closed, classes teachers might have arranged for themselves to amass those hours were also being canceled. Griffin said that in her home district in Schaumburg Wednesdays are typically devoted to professional development, with students released early and teachers staying late to put in that extra work. That ended too with schools being closed.
What the IEA recognized is that teachers were already amassing new skills with the shift to digital instruction. According to Griffin, the union’s person in charge of professional development rushed together a proposal over a day or two for the Illinois State Board of Education to grant that time as “work hours” on their recertification. As a professional-development provider, the IEA is now able to approve those work hours, and it’s urging its members to file for them ahead of a June 15 deadline. If the union approves them as credible, they’ll be applied in the relicensing process.
“We are just so, so delighted that our folks are going to be able to get credit,” Griffin said. “So many of them taught themselves all these different things on their platform.”
Griffin said that was critical as the state continues to suffer from a teacher shortage. The IEA is the state’s largest education union, with 135,000 members, and Griffin said it has more than 15,000 teachers who need to recertify this year. ISBE extended its deadline until the end of August, but couldn’t go further than that due to state statute. So far, according to Griffin, about 2,000 teachers have filed for work hours on digital instruction.
“We knew that we had to do something,” Griffin said. “We just wanted to make sure we didn't add to the teacher shortage, that we acknowledged the work that people had done and respect that.”
Of course, all of this is trying to make the best of a difficult situation. Rural areas don’t have the same internet access as cities and suburbs, while families that aren’t as well off might not only have the same issue, but they could have multiple children trying to use the same computer or phone — even if they have access. Griffin said some teachers across the state were sending out learning packets instead.
“I think it depends on where you’re at,” she said. “We’ve really seen the differences in those who have and those who don’t.”
Griffin readily acknowledged that even those with digital access aren’t receiving the same instruction. “People have been fabulous. But it isn’t ideal,” she said. “When teachers are teaching, they like that face-to-face interaction, that in-person interaction.” Teachers not only size up students on a daily basis — who’s having a bad day? who needs a little extra space? — but they develop relationships with students over time. The class a teacher has in March, Griffin said, is nothing like that same class beginning the school year in September.
“Just the idea of teachers sitting to instruct their students digitally,” Griffin added. “We’re not used to sitting. As a classroom teacher, you put on miles walking around your classroom.
“For so many of our folks, they’re having a tough time not being able to see their kids — and not being able to say goodbye” as the school year comes to a close, she said. “It’s so hard for the students, but it’s also hard for the teachers.”
Hopes are that both teachers and students return to class in the fall, but until then summer school will have to be digital — where districts have summer school at all. This spring, teachers have been able to shift instruction online thanks to the foundation they had already established with their students, but the very idea of trying to continue online learning in the fall while starting from scratch with a new class of students is almost inconceivable.
“That’s what’s so difficult about all this,” Griffin said. “We don’t know what phase we’re going to be in” in the Restore Illinois recovery plan. That makes it hard for teachers to plan, which in turn produces “so much stress, because you have no control,” she added.
For all the noble work teachers have done making the transition to digital learning, Griffin said, “what I think we’ve learned is the best thing is in-person teaching.”