How much time do students need to spend in a classroom? That is the question that lies at the heart of the Lynn Public School’s “blended instruction” initiative.
In the planning stages for implementation once Lynn students return to brick-and-mortar learning, blended instruction, in School Superintendent Dr. Patrick Tutwiler’s words, combines ” …. integration of instruction in the virtual world along with traditional educational instruction.”
Adapted from a framework laid out by an organization called The Modern Classroom Project, blended instruction allows students to combine a teacher’s classroom lecture with additional online study allowing them to work at their own pace to become proficient in a lesson.
Lynn’s schools are cautiously returning to classroom learning more than a year after the COVID-19 pandemic upended traditional education models.
Schools in neighboring communities, including Peabody, Lynnfield and Saugus, have definitive plans to return students to buildings. Lynn schools are moving incrementally, with in-school enrollment gradually returning to pre-pandemic levels as one group after another returns to buildings.
Blended instruction is partly a recognition by school officials that the desire for students to return to classrooms is tempered by the reality that COVID-19 might force remote learning to continue.
“There is no such thing as going back to normal,” Tutwiler told Lynn School Committee members last Thursday.
His assessment of educational realities is typically frank and accurate. But making blended instruction a central focus in Lynn schools is not without problems. The Essex County Community Foundation’s “Digital Divide” study in 2020 found that fewer than 76 percent of Lynn students have broadband internet access. An estimated three out of 10 Lynn students do not have desktop or laptop computers at home.
Lynn Schools English Language Learning Intervention Specialist Michael Molnar said blended instruction allows students to “learn at their own pace.” We question how that admirable goal will dovetail with the reality of standardized testing in Massachusetts.
No two students are academically alike. But at some point in the school year, they sit down and take the same test assessing their abilities.
MCAS tests are not disappearing and post-pandemic education must be prepared to equip students in Lynn and every other Massachusetts community with the skills to excel on the tests.
Blended instruction, in our view, sounds like a helpful approach to getting students back in the classroom as long as educators are mindful of the technological deficiencies and testing realities that must be addressed.
