LYNN — Public school instruction may look different even after students return to school.
A presentation at the School Committee meeting Thursday outlined the potential benefits of implementing “blended learning,” a combination of face-to-face instruction and online learning, into Lynn Public Schools once pupils return to classrooms.
“There’s no such thing as going back to normal. When we go back, it will be different,” said Superintendent Dr. Patrick Tutwiler. “One of the things we know will be part of our student’s educational experience going forward will be technology. As we look ahead, we really want to think about a thoughtful integration of instruction in the virtual world along with traditional educational instruction.”
English Language Learners (ELL) Intervention Specialist Michael Molnar laid out the goals behind the blended learning model, which aims to improve both student agency, and flexibility, while allowing for self-paced instruction and mastery-based learning.
“We’re giving more ownership to students,” he said, explaining how utilizing technology can allow students to learn at their own pace. “Students work both in ependently and collaboratively but can also revisit and review resources as needed. If a student needs to slow things down or speed things up, those options are built into the learning experience.”
“We appreciated the flexibility of this model,” said Molnar. “Which can be shifted at a moment’s notice when learning has to be 100 percent remote.”
The model is inspired by The Modern Classroom Project, a group which aims to improve educational quality through technology.
Molnar discussed how in blended learning, teachers have the options of using both synchronous and asynchronous teaching.
“In blended learning, (teachers) now have some new options,” he said. “Instead of me lecturing in real time, students can have access to a recording that they can pause, rewind and review.”
“Students don’t move from one learning experience to the next one just because it’s time to move on,” said Molnar. “Rather, they progress from one learning experience to the next when they’ve mastered the concepts and skills from that lesson.”
Molnar touted the model’s ability to improve equity in the schools, because “everyone gets what they need and everyone advances forward.”
The schools have already been working towards expanding this approach in schools.
Four teams of teachers have been created to plan the process of preparing staff for blended instruction: an elementary science team, an elementary math team, an elementary ELA team and a secondary education team.
Following the presentation, School Committee member Lorraine Gately expressed concerns that the model did not appear significantly different from things that were already being done in schools.
“This doesn’t seem new to me at all,” said Gately. “I’ve done things in my classrooms at St. Mary’s. It looks like it’s just a combination of strategies we’ve used in the past.”
“You’re right, it’s not new,” Tutwiler responded. “We now have the tools to make this happen in a way that is more robust than ever before. It may have been done in pockets but it has not been an anchor of instruction in our district.”
To increase that capacity of blended instruction, the district plans to collaborate with teachers to gain information about the project then to use these insights to inform the creation of professional learning in the coming school year.
Guthrie Scrimgeour can be reached at [email protected]
