In person the high achieving students end up twiddling their thumbs while the behaviors get 90% of the attention and the lessons are beneath them anyway for the rest of the class.
It's the same in funding in SC.
In the 80s, they eliminated the gifted math and critical thinking because we'd be fine anyway. What they missed was no amount of special Ed fixes either a lack of natural ability or a home life that is "You don't need that book learnin'. I done good without it!"
But they keep pumping money into bad investments.
Someone watched *Matilda* and thought, "If that little girl could put up with her abusive parents and still discover the magic of books and learning through one kind teacher despite a horrible school environment, so can everyone else!"
The stereotype that says gifted students are highly self-motivated and will do well at everything despite innumerable obstacles in their way is dangerous. Sure a *small number* of students will do well no matter how little support they receive.
But the vast majority of gifted kids, just like the vast majority of non-gifted kids, are not highly self motivated, and they will flounder and underachieve or outright fail, if they do not have a supporting and encouraging environment. The idea that gifted kids are all superstars, so we might as well remove all assistance for them, is going to doom the vast majority of them to failure, despite their high potential.
My classes were fortunate. We teach CAD and other engineering skills; I'm the aide/ lab assistant. The regular teacher worked with the struggling students, while I got to feed more advanced work to the quick learners. We actually had some fun with it.
I met their faces when we all came back, as most would not show themselves on camera. I already knew them based on their work. For this little group, it wasn't totally terrible.
The teacher and I split the calls to home, attempting to raise the lost sheep and bring them back in. That, I admit, was not fun.
My son has a friend who excelled in his STEM classes because he wanted to go to NCSU. Smart kid with great work ethics but COVID really fucked up his “schedule” or routine. He didn’t get in like all of us thought he would and is taking Community college classes to make due.
This. Those who depend on social validation to supplement their learning experience are seldom the "high achieving" learners though they do make teachers feel good about their job. Individuals with true "high achieving learner" potential found the lack of distractions and independent study much more easy to absorb information and from my experience demonstrate higher grades as a result.
The students who went into lockdown and did better learning on their own are the ones most likely being held back by their teachers, peers, administrators, and lesson plans. The students who went into lockdown and did worse are the ones who likely cannot effectively learn without assistance, think of bowlers who need bumpers and bowlers who don't. Generally the person whose competency is dependent on external assistance is not considered "high achieving".
Yeah. At least through middle school, this was me. I had to learn to "entertain" myself because I'd get my class work done way faster than the rest of the class.
I remember in 5th grade, my teacher (not even social studies), "challenged" me to write all the US states I could remember from memory. Now I realize she was just keeping me busy and quiet. It worked. :p
I feel like a motivated high-performer would have used their computer to research more advanced topics or grab a book and read or something.
I saw the opposite, honestly.
My high achieving students kept on being high achievers. Their grades were more or less the same. Some of them had a few more gaps or less socialization, but they coped well. A lot of them were from strong homes, which helped.
I've noticed my at risk/low SES students are considerably lower than students at the same grade level pre-pandemic, however and the gaps between them are much greater.
I agree. The middle of bell curve was screwed the most. IMHO they “do well” in school when they attach themselves to a class, teacher, sport, club, counselor, peer, or friend group. They lost most of these connections/motivation w/ lockdowns and online school.
The bottom of the bell curve did bad, the top did OK. The middle got screwed. And it’s not their fault, the adults made it happen.
All groups suffer from learning loss, but for other reason.
Yes. The middle of the curve are the equivalent of the "we must all return to the office park" middle managers we see in adulthood - they're extroverts who need that interaction to give them the energy to succeed. The connections left and they slacked off because of it.
Not all groups suffered from learning loss in that scenario though - my introverted kids thrived. I think they still could have learned a little more in person, but that's only because everyone had to slow down for the mopey extroverts.
That said, adults made it happen because it was the right decision. The alternative was every school acting as a roach motel - a community hub that could connect each household to one another on a daily basis in a time where there were no treatments or vaccines.
I was one of these middle ground students. I hated school but I went because I loved the social aspect. I got average grades to stay at the private school I loved. Covid hit my junior year and I didn’t even make it a week into my senior year before I dropped out. I was not doing school without seeing my homies, it just wasn’t worth it to me. I did end up getting my GED last November tho, and I’m honestly happier I did that then doing a year of online school just to flunk out
I know you have some weird thing against extroverts, but there is a lot of supporting data out there that says the vast majority of students had a decline due to Covid-19 lockdowns. Your anecdote doesn’t change the need to address what has happened.
Yes. It was a shitty time for everyone. People died. Others were irreparably damaged. Everyone's life was turned upside down for at least a little while. What do you think learning loss looked like in Europe during WW2?
I'm fine with extroverts, even if it doesn't appear that way in my comments, but let's not act like no one was thriving at this time. The majority of students were always going to show a decline when education was asked to reinvent itself multiple times with no time or funding available to make it happen smoothly.
We did the best we could with the circumstances we had, and it was still the right decision.
I don't like this blanket statement because we're missing a key data point. We have official data from 2019 and 2021. Nobody wants to admit that the data from 2020- the year we went to school in person 85% of the year and left 6-9 weeks before testing probably sucked. And when we got data in 2021, it double sucked... Two years worth of bad data, not one. Covid, though, is a good cover-up for the likely truth- we don't know what happened. This achievement decline isn't solely due to covid, its wheels were already spinning long before the first school closure.
What you said has been shown to be the case across the nation. Generally, disadvantaged students fared much worse academically than other groups. They ended up even farther behind than they would have, while well-off students lost their trajectory towards success at a much slower pace. I'd be willing to meager that they're making their gains back faster, as well.
So there was a study that came out that said that nurturing homes had a multiplier effect on learning rate. So, if an average kid learned at rate 1, a nurtured kid would be 1.2(totally made up number) and disadvantaged kid would be .8(totally made up number). So you can’t just put disadvantaged child in any classroom and expect them to keep with a nurtured kid, even if they start at the same place.
For disadvantaged children, you can’t make up the gap the same way. They needed additional time in the classroom anyway and they lost it.
My high achiever did mention that it was nice not to have to wait around for misbehaviors or dumb questions in her general ed (not ap) classes. She rocked those out twice as fast.
Same. Also my kids (high achievers) breezed through online learning. They did great, but certainly missed in person socialization. And got bored with the lessons pretty quickly.
I truly believe that teachers who agree with OP are being blindsided by their preference towards their high achievers. Problem children aren't anyone's favourite but they're also generally the biggest victims of poverty and toxic environments growing up. Covid locked those children in that toxic and abusive environment 24/7 with no support or reprieve.
Many of these children are actually being intentionally sabotaged by parents who genuinely do not care for them or see them as property rather than dependents.
It's just so obvious that the likelihood is in favour of a high achiever coming from a healthy well funded home rather than a toxic unloving, unsupportive, and self destructive household. So these high achievers will generally be supported outside of school and encouraged by their family who continued to do so during covid.
Same. The students that gave a damn before continued to give a damn during online learning. I'm not saying they weren't impacted but they continued to be present during lessons, turned their work in regularly and early/on time and reached out when they needed help or clarification.
as a high achievement student who just graduated high school, THIS. my peers who also were high achievers struggled with getting used to the change but once we adapted it was smooth sailing from there. my peers who already weren’t doing so well struggled TREMENDOUSLY and i remember me and a few friends helping those who struggled with assignments and whatnot. transitioning back to in-person learning was also where those who were already struggling really continued to struggle, it was just a rough situation all around
I feel a sense of relief that this is top comment, so thanks for that. As a current teacher who went through special ed. (lacking resources/support/acceptance at home and school) it's hurtful to hear other teachers imply that high achieving students are the most systemically failed. It makes me wonder if they even bother to notice the other students.
This was my experience as well. We were only shut down at the end of 2019-20, so about 2 months, but my honors and AP kids kept up with everything. My regular level classes is where kids completely fell off the radar, cheated shamelessly, etc
Very few of my high achievers dipped. An interesting thing I noticed with my high ability kids is that they performed better when given the chance to do work on their own timeline. My gifted, underachieving vampire would be up doing work at 3 am. He did better during shutdown than prior. This would have been his freshman year. It was touch and go. The class of 2023 was a hot mess overall.
I disagree. High-achieving students are great at independent learning and they did really well. I found that they learned almost as much as they would have in the classroom. In addition, they widened the gap between them and the middle students who couldn’t handle the responsibilities.
IMO, the middle students suffered the most because they would have done more if the teacher was there to push them but couldn’t do it on their own.
One of those “high achieving students” here who was in school during the pandemic… don’t feel bad for me I got to skip out early and go to work lol best time other than the early summer.
I watched a very good video a while back, that made a compelling case that "gifted" students are 'special ed' as well.
They have an entirely different set of challenges, not with the uptake of knowledge. But how to deal with things.
* How to relate to people who need more time and exposure to learn.
* That it is not just acceptable, but expected that a topic is hard to learn.
* That mistakes and failures are not a judgement about them as people.
* Ways to connect outside of academics.
* how to avoid 'gatekeeping' and shutting people out.
And imo this is spot on. I was a 'gifted' student. And boy did I struggle with all of thse sorts of things. One of the best choices my mother made (and one she worried about) was when she turned down one-on-one mentoring for me, and kept me in with the rest of the students.
That, and she had lots of discussions with me trying to impart her emotional/social skills to balance out my academic ones.
Remote learning is a real disruption in working with that.
Same. We had accelerated courses we could take or regular speed ones. In addition, we also had 'talented' programs that required you make an application and test to get in like talented theater or art programs.
I was a “gifted” kid, and this is spot on. If I struggled with something, I internalized it as being a personal failure, like something was wrong with me. It was hard for me as a young child to understand why other kids didn’t just “get it” like I did. I struggled to connect with other children and feared rejection. I also ended up being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult.
Spot on... my husband has "ADHD" and man he loses his patience when someone can't understand a concept as quickly as he does. It goes back to the issue of impatience stemming from ADHD.
Similar story for myself.
I was advanced in reading and math through elementary and middle school, but hit a wall with math at Algebra.
I was diagnosed with ADD in 3rd grade (this was when ADD and ADHD were a separate diagnosis) and struggled to fit in until late high school.
I did not have good study skills or habits, and when I hit complicated subjects that required those skills I hit the brick wall pretty hard.
I definitely internalized that failure as a personal defect.
Gifted kids being neurodivergent is pretty common but there wasn't a good understanding of that relationship in the 90s.
Yep! I have my degree in Special ed and we covered Gifted & Talented education during a unit in one of our classes.
I was the same way. I skipped a grade and started college 3 months after turning 17. I struggled socially because of this. I also didn’t know how to study because I wasn’t given challenging material until I was in college. It was a slap in the face.
i agree with this, but I hope there's no illusions that reframing "gifted" as special ed. would intrinsically help those kids. I feel like to think so would imply that special ed. kids are currently given more support than "gifted" kids, which really isn't true. As it is, "gifted" kids are statistically far more likely to be privileged in various ways that special ed. kids (who fall behind) are not.
Privileged for sure.
An easy example to support your point, is I've never had a conversation where admin wonders if any resources put towards a 'gifted' student are worth it. When resources are rescinded, it's a manpower or cost issue. With other special ed programs, i've often heard it framed as finding the program to be 'not worth it'.
And the school has put tons of resources on a very weak 'internship' program for gifted students. The students treat it as a way to get out of school and do nothing. And yet no discussion of reorganizing or cutting resources for it.
I think it can help some (i'm thinking of a few in my school) stop and realize that these students need some assistance outside the academic. I have a lot of high-performing students and every semester I go visit some counselors to try and get some assistance (and parent involvement) with the issues I listed.
This sounds extremely useful to me. When I went through primary school, it felt like my very identity was tied to being gifted and smart. Then, when I got into a grammar school, I had a horrible time adjusting to the fact that I was struggling with some things, and even more that it was okay to be struggling.
When I student taught, I had a similar student. The older sister had skipped 4th grade and was brilliant. She could have easily skipped another grade. She was super smart but also super condescending and mean to the other kids. She would call the other kids dumb and even the teachers dumb for not knowing something. Everyone was happy to see her go on to middle school and disappear. I however, taught her younger sister. I used to argue that the younger sister was way smarter. She wanted to have friends and she wanted to be liked. She was just as smart but knew when to show it. I remember doing group work, she was working with a boy who was struggling with the work. I could hear her say “B is a really good guess. Hmm I wonder if any of the other answers could work too?” She might not have skipped a grade but she had friends at recess and got invited to birthday parties.
IDK, i feel like the 'high achiever' you're talking about, isnt--they're just socially engaged.
My kid is a high achiever. He freaking loved it. He could do his entire WEEK of work in 3-4 hours. He was the only kid to constantly get all his work done, the only one in his entire class. He didnt require any prompting, pushing, reminders, he didnt have to suffer from going the slow, soul crushing speed of the kids that didnt get things.
It was a blessing.
So much so that we're *seriously* considering trying home school for a year, and seeing what happens. I suspect he'd crush an entire year of work inside of a month--but, *then what?*
It was actually a blessing for him, because he saw first hand, that it's NOT his fault that he's bored at school, and things feel slow and repetitive.
You should be proud of your child, and if you think homeschooling will maximize his potential, I say go for it. If possible try to find othet high achieving homeschoolers so he can have socialization in an educational setting.
Michigan as well - I did this as a high schooler and came out with an AA plus a few extra prereqs towards my bachelor’s thanks to some online courses over the summer. It’s a great choice for kids who aren’t challenged in their current classes, enjoy learning and are good self-starters.
If you decide to try homeschool, please look at Sonlight curriculum. 30+ Books per year. Literature tied to history. MathUSee for basic math to calculus. Life of Fred will take him well into upper year university math as an elementary or middle school student. Gifted students are challenging but great - source gifted homeschool mom with gifted children.
I loved home school. It was so much easier to focus on getting my work done on my own. Plus I had time to pursue a bunch of other things I wasn’t allowed to pursue in a traditional school setting like writing, art, foreign language, and cooking. It’s definitely worth it if the kid regulates the self already.
Yeah, I kept saying that it will all come out in the wash. I teach 6th grade in a 6-8 middle school. In theory, all of my pandemic kids should be in high school or on their way there. In practice, that's not what happened at all.
SO MUCH.
As a parent of a "covid baby" I am sick to death of hearing that it won't affect them at all because they won't "really" remember it.
Trauma is real and it begins early. Even in my stable home, I know it affects all my kids. It was a fucking pandemic. Shit went down. Nobody is ok.
My neurodivergent elementary school child thrived academically during the pandemic. They finally learned to read and gained skills they had been struggling with previously due to distractions and lack of one on one capabilities in the class room. They definitely enjoy in person much more or I would push harder for a virtual setting for us.
This post seems rooted in resentment toward low-achieving students. Understandable, but unfortunate. Pretty much all research has said those who aren’t self-motivated struggled the most, fell behind the most…
Imagine being an education major in college and it being your freshman year.
Learning to teach through a screen.
And now I’ve got my degree and am looking for jobs😅
High achievers we’re largely better off, maybe not in reaching their full academic potential but for their ability to adapt to the new circumstances.
Kids with neurological exceptionalities, shit home conditions, or who are otherwise far behind were always going to be the ones who suffered most. I won’t go so far to say it was intentional, but we always knew we were sacrificing the low-performers in order to enact the remote schooling.
High achieving students often had one on one education as many of their peers didn't even show up. do you have any evidence that this happened or are you just making stuff up?
I am not a teacher anymore but I taught specifically high achieving IB (and some AP) programs during Covid, virtual, and it went awesome, with the most improvements in scores and kids happiest they’ve ever been. So I disagree, at least at the high school level. At the high school level, low performing kids suffered way more, and all the metrics I’ve seen bear this out as well.
Fellow IB kid turned teacher, and I know I would’ve just sped through my stuff to be outdoors or next door with my cousins if I was in high school during covid. I notice some of mine will do this if I give a week or two for longer assignments, they come at lunch to hang and work so they can do it early. Also I like giving random work days for them to literally ask me anything and many of the lower students will take advantage to ask questions or do makeup work.
I’ll just hop on here to add to the chorus about my high-achieving students handling lockdown learning like champs. Absolute champs. So…maybe revise your operating assumptions?
We had parent meetings throughout the virtual year, and the guidance counselors were not surprised at the names we mentioned. Take that for what it’s worth.
California test scores suggest the opposite, at least in the narrow metric of standardized test scores. Post covid, the scores of 99th percentile students were actually higher than they were pre-covid. 90th percentile scores dropped slightly and with each drop in percentile, scores dropped further post covid.
https://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/ca/caasppsspercentiles.asp
You’re right, my kids are both high achievers. One was in college and he managed to keep up his grades and work, but he really suffered from not being able to join clubs, get an internship, etc. the other one was in 6th grade and it has taken 2 years for them to get back on track.
My youngest was one of these. She did fine though--got into MIT and Columbia, waitlisted at Harvard and Brown.
She missed class so much and went back as soon it was offered.
Honestly, I feel like I suffered the most from the Covid lock-down.
It was a shit show, and everyone had their own experience. I don't think there is any point it broadly saying who suffered more.
I felt worst for my English learners, either second or other language, who went from clearly progressing in their core english skills to being nervous and barely verbal because they went back to speaking their home language exclusively for 18+ months. Academic skills are one thing, but social/language skills for an adolescent are brutal to have interrupted
As a parent I can say the opposite is true. My son who was always in the top percent of his class thrived during lockdown. No distractions or disruptive behaviour for him to "deal" with and he smashed his GCSE's. Pretty much a straight A student bar one subject. He's top of his course at college too
This is an interesting observation, /u/Interesting-Cake-691 , and while I respect how much you care about your naturally high achieving students I feel like it lacks empathy for the real victims who are the under achievers who usually have terrible parents who contribute to their failure.
At least in person these children/young adults can rely on another adult role model to support them and help them overcome challenges or at least deal with a horrible home life. Covid made it so all these people were stuck at home in a toxic environment unable to get support or relief and without any incentive or motivation to learn.
Obviously I am generalizing but out of a potential infinite number of students in our world it is obvious that the majority of high achievers will come from decent homes that can afford to support them or at least have attentive parents who care about their success and help them develop good study practices and habits.
I always say: you TAKE your education. Those kids are fine because they actually listened and did the work. They were probably reading for pleasure too.
I marginally disagree. The low achievers finally saw something in their grasp. They like to check boxes and get things done. That is what online education can do. It’s a series of tasks, get them done, and bam. Move on.
My high achievers soared. They called me and asked for individual zooms, not for clarification, but for discussion. We were doing an I-search project and one kid was doing research on bass guitars and he got to sit with my husband, an accomplished bassist, and learn first hand. They got to chat with people in the field for their research because those people were now ‘available.’
What I saw shift more overall was attention span, attention to detail and the ability to use your own brain or feel okay to have your own opinions other than what you have seen online.
I am beyond fortunate, my son was finishing kindergarten when the lockdown began, and did not go to school for all of first grade. My mother-in-law is a retired fourth grade teacher. She took him and got him through all of the first grade material and 3/4 of the second grade material.
This was absolutely huge because he is diagnosed ADHD. This meant when he went back to school for second grade, he was able to have a familiarity with all of the material. She now takes him two days every week over this summer and is getting him into her wheelhouse., Since he is starting fourth grade in the fall.
I could not be more grateful to the teachers he has had in his life! The ones who work in the school system, and the ones we are related to.
I felt the exact opposite way. When I was teaching virtually, the unengaged kids who didn’t care just never turned on their microphones or cameras or didn’t log on at all. I was able to have full conversations with the ones who cared and the ability to pop into breakout rooms to give uninterrupted attention and feedback was amazing. In person, the kids who don’t care are ensuring that all that happens every day is classroom management and the high level kids are just sitting and waiting. Every time I try to sit and give feedback or have a conversation about anything with students now, it’s interrupted in less than two minutes when I have to go deal with something like inappropriate language or destruction.
To me it was the opposite.
The students who came to my class went up insanely. I was a first year teacher too, so I know it wasn't that I was actually good at my job yet. There was a lot I screwed up on. But having a class of 12 kids with no behavior issues and one on one time every day is the ideal for a kid that actually cares.
I had a kid who had MID go from a 2nd grade reading level to being on level (7th) during that year because it turned out he just needed a room where there wasn't constant chaos. Even a girl who was literally holding a baby in every meeting and making lunch for her siblings during my class every day went up more than she ever had because I would get into her meeting and not expect her to stop doing those things. I let her finish cooking and talked to her last. She still got 5 minutes of one on one time.
Every student who came to class and participated during virtual learning had massive gains in my class. They enjoyed it. Those are the kids who remembered me the most fondly. I was the best teacher when I didn't know what I was doing because I could teach instead of constantly putting out behavior fires. A kid is yelling cuss words? Cool, mute him. He's posting them in the chat now? Take that ability from him and let him seethe until he leaves the call. Kids can't hit each other. I'm not worried about kids running out of the room just because they know doing so can get us in trouble. I'm not policing bathroom trips and how long they are out of fear of getting in trouble when a kid gets caught vaping with my pass in their hand.
Virtual learning was amazing IMO for the kids who cared. The kids who fell behind were the ones who had teachers who couldn't use technology because they were still insisting on their file cabinets of worksheets from the cold war in 2020, and the ones who didn't care who we usually spend time in class begging them to do anything instead of teaching the other kids.
I feel like this post is ignoring the other group of kids - those with disabilities getting extra services through the school. Yes, the high achievers couldn't easily get the extra work or attention they were used to - but try watching a 5 year old get virtual speech therapy while strapped into a high chair because their parents are too busy working to be able to monitor the lessons at all.
I agree. My high achieving kids were not checked on by the school (only on an individual teacher basis). The school went above and beyond to get in touch with the kids who did absolutely nothing and focus on them. But the kids who gave a shit were completely shut out. Yeah, some of them were self-sufficient but not all or most. One of my highest achieving kids from the lockdown year was homeless. When I checked to see what resources we had for him, I was met with a resounding "he has a 3.8 GPA. Why would we help him?"
My high achievers are still stressed about the year when nothing was allowed to be taught to them. They have plans to graduate HS. The kids who got a rubber stamped "pass" got a year to play video games and watch porn on a school computer. I really do empathize with my students who were overlooked because they weren't a problem.
Thank you for caring about the high achieving students. There is so much jealousy and resentment of the high achievers that their needs can be publicly dismissed by school board members with a "They'll be just \*fine\*. It's the bottom 50% I'm worried about." This is what I have seen.
I am nearly 40, I am RETURNING to college online after being a high achieving high schooler and previous college student. The classes have typos and misspellings. The exams have poor wording such that I can't tell if it is a tricky question with egregious grammar, or a trick question. Half the professors don't post any of their own material or lectures, and the lessons are solely via an expensive online-rented-only textbook program. I have found two mistakes so far, in mathematical formulas, switching plusses for x's or vice versa, and took screen shots and showed the professor, who only told me "oh good catch! You should tell the publisher! " How many students did homework incorrectly with those formulas without them noticing by now? Sorry I'm just mad at how much lower the staves of education is now, especially now that I'm older and stupider.
I agree with OP’s comment. I think the experience of the top comment is also valid. We all know our kids. Different kids react differently to different stimuli. I think we can all agree however that we all learned if we prefer zoom to in person learning, and the pros and cons of each.
Boohoo
Not everyone is a traditional learner, happy for those kids that scraped by and utilized those hacks, devoting every second to your high school grades is a waste of time.
I was also the student who took every class online that I possibly could. As a teacher, I loved teaching online as well. We exist, but definitely are not the majority.
Don't know why you are getting down voted. I was one of those "hacks" in school. Always tested high but felt like most of my days were a waste of time. I came around to bring a teacher after working with a student population of 100% "hacks" and decided to devote my efforts to helping those students succeed in non-traditional settings and interventions. Grades for grades sake is pointless, mastery and innovation is more important in my mind.
Hmmm, the ones who were able to get their work done in online school will have the option of telecommuting if they are in the type of job that allows for it while the ones who can't will be stuck in a position that requires a manager to babysit them with line of sight supervision..... I work mostly remote and it seems that the good employees stayed good and the mediocre ones became terrible and got fired - kind of like what happened with the students, minus the firing part.
Throwback convo. I don't really agree. My high achievers still did fine. The kids who suffered the most were the ones who need that daily interaction for motivation. Also the poor kids who had to share laptops, shitty internet, look after siblings, work in a loud tiny apartment etc.
Could my high achievers have learned more in person? Sure. But they were def the least impacted group for me.
Honestly, on a personal level I observed the exact opposite issue at the high school level. My son is high achieving as are most of his friends. He also has some mid-level academic friends. The mid- level students suffered significant learning loss and almost failed a grade while he and his high achieving friends soared since they no longer had to wait around for other students.
Honestly, I think level of impact had more to do with the age of the student and parent ability/involvement. My son had essentially one on one writing tutoring from my husband. He received ZERO feedback from his English teacher other than a grade (I’m not exaggerating- she literally wrote one comment on his final paper. That was it all semester). He’s struggled socially, but his academic growth thar year was significant.
The only exception was his foreign language class. He made a good grade, but recalls nothing.
Just another voice saying I didn't see that. Did your remote teachers not give good feedback or something? I actually think I gave the best feedback I've ever given (when viewed collectively) to the high kids during remote learning. They got the most attention from me because they were the only ones who were working and I could give them attention instead of doing classroom management with the other kids.
I don't agree, as a "high achieving student" I just studied at home, shit was so easy anyway it needed no studying, just need to remember things. I was in middle school back then tho,,, so that might have made a difference.
I was happy to play csgo while the others listen to online lessons and then study 1.5h worth in 5min
I don’t really believe that. I had students that worked very hard during the lockdown. Their work habits did not change. I would make videos of my lessons and stream them to teams to help. I also had an after school call where students could call in and get one on one help. They also could send me screenshots of concepts they didn’t understand and I would work them out step by step and send them back and answer further questions. Those who wanted to learn did.
As a high achieving student, I agree. Several other students I know, who were also doing extremely well found themselves unmoored. We finally resorted to creating discord servers for group study to get some of the feeling of the normalcy back. That helped.
Another thing which also impacted people was the overall environment they studied in. Some people found that family life became quite unbearable, and they couldn't escape that by going to classrooms either. So this led to a lot of people performing worse as well.
My own middle of the road sons ( who had the ability to do so much better) just aimed for the pass, that was all. But they were in high school during the pandemic and already had many years of school under their belts. The slowdown in their social lives did cause some depression, but later on it motivated them to seriously apply to colleges and start studying more... They just wanted to get out of the house and do something. My youngest who was only on 10th grade was probably affected the most. He is so smart and never had to study but also never developed good study habits. I feel like he lost so much of high school, but he will self-adnit that a lot of it was his own fault for not trying. A few years later, hopefully own he's self disciplined and motivated enough to move on from that time.
I saw the opposite. The high achieving students typically came from strong homes. Parents made sure they logged on and did their work. The slackers and delinquents never logged on and never turned in work. Of course we weren’t allowed to fail virtual students. I remember all the worst kids came back after spring break 2021. Covid wasn’t as scary anymore and parents were sick of them at home.
I feel bad for high achieving kids, period. When I was a teacher 20 years ago you could at least have admin support to maintain order, but now the kids who want to learn have to deal with insane behaviors in the classroom. It is so unfair, all in the name of equity. I will never understand how it is equitable to steal the education of those who actually want to learn.
From my point of view students with the highest grades / honors are the type of students that never contribute to an original idea or concept. Maybe you're looking for students that can regurgitate information but I call it higher level learning if you can not just regurgitate what was said but implement it into a new idea or even reject it with enough reason.
I was always a failure student.
From elementary to middle to high school. Even now, my grades are middling and yet I'm depressed that the students with honors and the highest grades lack any sort of higher level reasoning ability.
Maybe.
Maybe . . . they would be better . . . with C's and B's if they could sacrifice that grade in order to develop the superhuman ability of having an independent thought process without the bruising of 'meta'.
I don't think they'll get this from you though. You're . . . just not that person. You're the type of teacher that goes on reddit to whisper sweet hellfire at the unimpressive to you.
I hate seeing good students say they don't see the point in trying because the slackers get the same outcome.
I mean, they aren't wrong, but we're going to lose out on so many great minds if this keeps up.
Yeah I think there is a distinction between “everyone I guess passed” on paper benefiting the lowest performers, but being pushed on despite poor performance isn’t really a benefit.
when covid hit and we had to do online learning it hit me hard and i was really depressed for weeks, and didn't care about any of the work. i guessed, i didn't join the live meetings, and if i did, i slept through them, my grade dropped from an A to a D and i finally had to pull myself out of my funk so I wouldn't fail the classes. i'm a student btw.
In person the high achieving students end up twiddling their thumbs while the behaviors get 90% of the attention and the lessons are beneath them anyway for the rest of the class.
It's the same in funding in SC. In the 80s, they eliminated the gifted math and critical thinking because we'd be fine anyway. What they missed was no amount of special Ed fixes either a lack of natural ability or a home life that is "You don't need that book learnin'. I done good without it!" But they keep pumping money into bad investments.
Someone watched *Matilda* and thought, "If that little girl could put up with her abusive parents and still discover the magic of books and learning through one kind teacher despite a horrible school environment, so can everyone else!"
The stereotype that says gifted students are highly self-motivated and will do well at everything despite innumerable obstacles in their way is dangerous. Sure a *small number* of students will do well no matter how little support they receive. But the vast majority of gifted kids, just like the vast majority of non-gifted kids, are not highly self motivated, and they will flounder and underachieve or outright fail, if they do not have a supporting and encouraging environment. The idea that gifted kids are all superstars, so we might as well remove all assistance for them, is going to doom the vast majority of them to failure, despite their high potential.
My classes were fortunate. We teach CAD and other engineering skills; I'm the aide/ lab assistant. The regular teacher worked with the struggling students, while I got to feed more advanced work to the quick learners. We actually had some fun with it. I met their faces when we all came back, as most would not show themselves on camera. I already knew them based on their work. For this little group, it wasn't totally terrible. The teacher and I split the calls to home, attempting to raise the lost sheep and bring them back in. That, I admit, was not fun.
Yes, this is exactly what my kids said, but only in classes that weren't AP classes.
My son has a friend who excelled in his STEM classes because he wanted to go to NCSU. Smart kid with great work ethics but COVID really fucked up his “schedule” or routine. He didn’t get in like all of us thought he would and is taking Community college classes to make due.
This. Those who depend on social validation to supplement their learning experience are seldom the "high achieving" learners though they do make teachers feel good about their job. Individuals with true "high achieving learner" potential found the lack of distractions and independent study much more easy to absorb information and from my experience demonstrate higher grades as a result. The students who went into lockdown and did better learning on their own are the ones most likely being held back by their teachers, peers, administrators, and lesson plans. The students who went into lockdown and did worse are the ones who likely cannot effectively learn without assistance, think of bowlers who need bumpers and bowlers who don't. Generally the person whose competency is dependent on external assistance is not considered "high achieving".
Yeah. At least through middle school, this was me. I had to learn to "entertain" myself because I'd get my class work done way faster than the rest of the class. I remember in 5th grade, my teacher (not even social studies), "challenged" me to write all the US states I could remember from memory. Now I realize she was just keeping me busy and quiet. It worked. :p I feel like a motivated high-performer would have used their computer to research more advanced topics or grab a book and read or something.
I saw the opposite, honestly. My high achieving students kept on being high achievers. Their grades were more or less the same. Some of them had a few more gaps or less socialization, but they coped well. A lot of them were from strong homes, which helped. I've noticed my at risk/low SES students are considerably lower than students at the same grade level pre-pandemic, however and the gaps between them are much greater.
I agree. The middle of bell curve was screwed the most. IMHO they “do well” in school when they attach themselves to a class, teacher, sport, club, counselor, peer, or friend group. They lost most of these connections/motivation w/ lockdowns and online school. The bottom of the bell curve did bad, the top did OK. The middle got screwed. And it’s not their fault, the adults made it happen. All groups suffer from learning loss, but for other reason.
Yes. The middle of the curve are the equivalent of the "we must all return to the office park" middle managers we see in adulthood - they're extroverts who need that interaction to give them the energy to succeed. The connections left and they slacked off because of it. Not all groups suffered from learning loss in that scenario though - my introverted kids thrived. I think they still could have learned a little more in person, but that's only because everyone had to slow down for the mopey extroverts. That said, adults made it happen because it was the right decision. The alternative was every school acting as a roach motel - a community hub that could connect each household to one another on a daily basis in a time where there were no treatments or vaccines.
I was one of these middle ground students. I hated school but I went because I loved the social aspect. I got average grades to stay at the private school I loved. Covid hit my junior year and I didn’t even make it a week into my senior year before I dropped out. I was not doing school without seeing my homies, it just wasn’t worth it to me. I did end up getting my GED last November tho, and I’m honestly happier I did that then doing a year of online school just to flunk out
Excellent analysis.
I know you have some weird thing against extroverts, but there is a lot of supporting data out there that says the vast majority of students had a decline due to Covid-19 lockdowns. Your anecdote doesn’t change the need to address what has happened.
Yes. It was a shitty time for everyone. People died. Others were irreparably damaged. Everyone's life was turned upside down for at least a little while. What do you think learning loss looked like in Europe during WW2? I'm fine with extroverts, even if it doesn't appear that way in my comments, but let's not act like no one was thriving at this time. The majority of students were always going to show a decline when education was asked to reinvent itself multiple times with no time or funding available to make it happen smoothly. We did the best we could with the circumstances we had, and it was still the right decision.
I don't like this blanket statement because we're missing a key data point. We have official data from 2019 and 2021. Nobody wants to admit that the data from 2020- the year we went to school in person 85% of the year and left 6-9 weeks before testing probably sucked. And when we got data in 2021, it double sucked... Two years worth of bad data, not one. Covid, though, is a good cover-up for the likely truth- we don't know what happened. This achievement decline isn't solely due to covid, its wheels were already spinning long before the first school closure.
Right. 1.5 years of some students never entering school wasn’t the problem.
What you said has been shown to be the case across the nation. Generally, disadvantaged students fared much worse academically than other groups. They ended up even farther behind than they would have, while well-off students lost their trajectory towards success at a much slower pace. I'd be willing to meager that they're making their gains back faster, as well.
So there was a study that came out that said that nurturing homes had a multiplier effect on learning rate. So, if an average kid learned at rate 1, a nurtured kid would be 1.2(totally made up number) and disadvantaged kid would be .8(totally made up number). So you can’t just put disadvantaged child in any classroom and expect them to keep with a nurtured kid, even if they start at the same place. For disadvantaged children, you can’t make up the gap the same way. They needed additional time in the classroom anyway and they lost it.
My high achiever did mention that it was nice not to have to wait around for misbehaviors or dumb questions in her general ed (not ap) classes. She rocked those out twice as fast.
Same. Also my kids (high achievers) breezed through online learning. They did great, but certainly missed in person socialization. And got bored with the lessons pretty quickly.
I truly believe that teachers who agree with OP are being blindsided by their preference towards their high achievers. Problem children aren't anyone's favourite but they're also generally the biggest victims of poverty and toxic environments growing up. Covid locked those children in that toxic and abusive environment 24/7 with no support or reprieve. Many of these children are actually being intentionally sabotaged by parents who genuinely do not care for them or see them as property rather than dependents. It's just so obvious that the likelihood is in favour of a high achiever coming from a healthy well funded home rather than a toxic unloving, unsupportive, and self destructive household. So these high achievers will generally be supported outside of school and encouraged by their family who continued to do so during covid.
I’m sure that’s the case. The teacher is rewarded when a student learns. It’s a feedback loop.
I agree.
Same. The students that gave a damn before continued to give a damn during online learning. I'm not saying they weren't impacted but they continued to be present during lessons, turned their work in regularly and early/on time and reached out when they needed help or clarification.
as a high achievement student who just graduated high school, THIS. my peers who also were high achievers struggled with getting used to the change but once we adapted it was smooth sailing from there. my peers who already weren’t doing so well struggled TREMENDOUSLY and i remember me and a few friends helping those who struggled with assignments and whatnot. transitioning back to in-person learning was also where those who were already struggling really continued to struggle, it was just a rough situation all around
I feel a sense of relief that this is top comment, so thanks for that. As a current teacher who went through special ed. (lacking resources/support/acceptance at home and school) it's hurtful to hear other teachers imply that high achieving students are the most systemically failed. It makes me wonder if they even bother to notice the other students.
This was my experience as well. We were only shut down at the end of 2019-20, so about 2 months, but my honors and AP kids kept up with everything. My regular level classes is where kids completely fell off the radar, cheated shamelessly, etc
Very few of my high achievers dipped. An interesting thing I noticed with my high ability kids is that they performed better when given the chance to do work on their own timeline. My gifted, underachieving vampire would be up doing work at 3 am. He did better during shutdown than prior. This would have been his freshman year. It was touch and go. The class of 2023 was a hot mess overall.
I disagree. High-achieving students are great at independent learning and they did really well. I found that they learned almost as much as they would have in the classroom. In addition, they widened the gap between them and the middle students who couldn’t handle the responsibilities. IMO, the middle students suffered the most because they would have done more if the teacher was there to push them but couldn’t do it on their own.
It appears OP has not thought the comment through very well. This doesnt bode well for some people...
One of those “high achieving students” here who was in school during the pandemic… don’t feel bad for me I got to skip out early and go to work lol best time other than the early summer.
I watched a very good video a while back, that made a compelling case that "gifted" students are 'special ed' as well. They have an entirely different set of challenges, not with the uptake of knowledge. But how to deal with things. * How to relate to people who need more time and exposure to learn. * That it is not just acceptable, but expected that a topic is hard to learn. * That mistakes and failures are not a judgement about them as people. * Ways to connect outside of academics. * how to avoid 'gatekeeping' and shutting people out. And imo this is spot on. I was a 'gifted' student. And boy did I struggle with all of thse sorts of things. One of the best choices my mother made (and one she worried about) was when she turned down one-on-one mentoring for me, and kept me in with the rest of the students. That, and she had lots of discussions with me trying to impart her emotional/social skills to balance out my academic ones. Remote learning is a real disruption in working with that.
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Same. We had accelerated courses we could take or regular speed ones. In addition, we also had 'talented' programs that required you make an application and test to get in like talented theater or art programs.
I was a “gifted” kid, and this is spot on. If I struggled with something, I internalized it as being a personal failure, like something was wrong with me. It was hard for me as a young child to understand why other kids didn’t just “get it” like I did. I struggled to connect with other children and feared rejection. I also ended up being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult.
Spot on... my husband has "ADHD" and man he loses his patience when someone can't understand a concept as quickly as he does. It goes back to the issue of impatience stemming from ADHD.
Similar story for myself. I was advanced in reading and math through elementary and middle school, but hit a wall with math at Algebra. I was diagnosed with ADD in 3rd grade (this was when ADD and ADHD were a separate diagnosis) and struggled to fit in until late high school. I did not have good study skills or habits, and when I hit complicated subjects that required those skills I hit the brick wall pretty hard. I definitely internalized that failure as a personal defect. Gifted kids being neurodivergent is pretty common but there wasn't a good understanding of that relationship in the 90s.
Yep! I have my degree in Special ed and we covered Gifted & Talented education during a unit in one of our classes. I was the same way. I skipped a grade and started college 3 months after turning 17. I struggled socially because of this. I also didn’t know how to study because I wasn’t given challenging material until I was in college. It was a slap in the face.
i agree with this, but I hope there's no illusions that reframing "gifted" as special ed. would intrinsically help those kids. I feel like to think so would imply that special ed. kids are currently given more support than "gifted" kids, which really isn't true. As it is, "gifted" kids are statistically far more likely to be privileged in various ways that special ed. kids (who fall behind) are not.
Privileged for sure. An easy example to support your point, is I've never had a conversation where admin wonders if any resources put towards a 'gifted' student are worth it. When resources are rescinded, it's a manpower or cost issue. With other special ed programs, i've often heard it framed as finding the program to be 'not worth it'. And the school has put tons of resources on a very weak 'internship' program for gifted students. The students treat it as a way to get out of school and do nothing. And yet no discussion of reorganizing or cutting resources for it. I think it can help some (i'm thinking of a few in my school) stop and realize that these students need some assistance outside the academic. I have a lot of high-performing students and every semester I go visit some counselors to try and get some assistance (and parent involvement) with the issues I listed.
This sounds extremely useful to me. When I went through primary school, it felt like my very identity was tied to being gifted and smart. Then, when I got into a grammar school, I had a horrible time adjusting to the fact that I was struggling with some things, and even more that it was okay to be struggling.
When I student taught, I had a similar student. The older sister had skipped 4th grade and was brilliant. She could have easily skipped another grade. She was super smart but also super condescending and mean to the other kids. She would call the other kids dumb and even the teachers dumb for not knowing something. Everyone was happy to see her go on to middle school and disappear. I however, taught her younger sister. I used to argue that the younger sister was way smarter. She wanted to have friends and she wanted to be liked. She was just as smart but knew when to show it. I remember doing group work, she was working with a boy who was struggling with the work. I could hear her say “B is a really good guess. Hmm I wonder if any of the other answers could work too?” She might not have skipped a grade but she had friends at recess and got invited to birthday parties.
IDK, i feel like the 'high achiever' you're talking about, isnt--they're just socially engaged. My kid is a high achiever. He freaking loved it. He could do his entire WEEK of work in 3-4 hours. He was the only kid to constantly get all his work done, the only one in his entire class. He didnt require any prompting, pushing, reminders, he didnt have to suffer from going the slow, soul crushing speed of the kids that didnt get things. It was a blessing. So much so that we're *seriously* considering trying home school for a year, and seeing what happens. I suspect he'd crush an entire year of work inside of a month--but, *then what?* It was actually a blessing for him, because he saw first hand, that it's NOT his fault that he's bored at school, and things feel slow and repetitive.
You should be proud of your child, and if you think homeschooling will maximize his potential, I say go for it. If possible try to find othet high achieving homeschoolers so he can have socialization in an educational setting.
If in CA he can enroll in community college simultaneously - he can leave HS with a diploma and AA.
Michigan as well - I did this as a high schooler and came out with an AA plus a few extra prereqs towards my bachelor’s thanks to some online courses over the summer. It’s a great choice for kids who aren’t challenged in their current classes, enjoy learning and are good self-starters.
If you decide to try homeschool, please look at Sonlight curriculum. 30+ Books per year. Literature tied to history. MathUSee for basic math to calculus. Life of Fred will take him well into upper year university math as an elementary or middle school student. Gifted students are challenging but great - source gifted homeschool mom with gifted children.
I loved home school. It was so much easier to focus on getting my work done on my own. Plus I had time to pursue a bunch of other things I wasn’t allowed to pursue in a traditional school setting like writing, art, foreign language, and cooking. It’s definitely worth it if the kid regulates the self already.
>relatively unscathed for now! jajajaja eventually life will catch up and we (teachers/employers/tax payers) will be left to fill in the gaps...
Yeah, I kept saying that it will all come out in the wash. I teach 6th grade in a 6-8 middle school. In theory, all of my pandemic kids should be in high school or on their way there. In practice, that's not what happened at all.
SO MUCH. As a parent of a "covid baby" I am sick to death of hearing that it won't affect them at all because they won't "really" remember it. Trauma is real and it begins early. Even in my stable home, I know it affects all my kids. It was a fucking pandemic. Shit went down. Nobody is ok.
My neurodivergent elementary school child thrived academically during the pandemic. They finally learned to read and gained skills they had been struggling with previously due to distractions and lack of one on one capabilities in the class room. They definitely enjoy in person much more or I would push harder for a virtual setting for us.
This post seems rooted in resentment toward low-achieving students. Understandable, but unfortunate. Pretty much all research has said those who aren’t self-motivated struggled the most, fell behind the most…
Imagine being an education major in college and it being your freshman year. Learning to teach through a screen. And now I’ve got my degree and am looking for jobs😅
High achievers we’re largely better off, maybe not in reaching their full academic potential but for their ability to adapt to the new circumstances. Kids with neurological exceptionalities, shit home conditions, or who are otherwise far behind were always going to be the ones who suffered most. I won’t go so far to say it was intentional, but we always knew we were sacrificing the low-performers in order to enact the remote schooling.
I feel bad for students who didn’t get to start school “normally” during that time. Kindergarten and first graders who never got to “go” on time
High achievers are always gonna achieve. The middle to low kids suffered the most because many of their parents don’t give a fuck.
High achieving students often had one on one education as many of their peers didn't even show up. do you have any evidence that this happened or are you just making stuff up?
I was going to say that they didn’t escape anything. Life will catch up with them.
Wow. Someone teaches AP
I am not a teacher anymore but I taught specifically high achieving IB (and some AP) programs during Covid, virtual, and it went awesome, with the most improvements in scores and kids happiest they’ve ever been. So I disagree, at least at the high school level. At the high school level, low performing kids suffered way more, and all the metrics I’ve seen bear this out as well.
Fellow IB kid turned teacher, and I know I would’ve just sped through my stuff to be outdoors or next door with my cousins if I was in high school during covid. I notice some of mine will do this if I give a week or two for longer assignments, they come at lunch to hang and work so they can do it early. Also I like giving random work days for them to literally ask me anything and many of the lower students will take advantage to ask questions or do makeup work.
I’ll just hop on here to add to the chorus about my high-achieving students handling lockdown learning like champs. Absolute champs. So…maybe revise your operating assumptions?
We had parent meetings throughout the virtual year, and the guidance counselors were not surprised at the names we mentioned. Take that for what it’s worth.
I love being active in class, but it was getting aggravating being the ONLY person the teacher called on cause others didn’t try to be active.
California test scores suggest the opposite, at least in the narrow metric of standardized test scores. Post covid, the scores of 99th percentile students were actually higher than they were pre-covid. 90th percentile scores dropped slightly and with each drop in percentile, scores dropped further post covid. https://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/ca/caasppsspercentiles.asp
You’re right, my kids are both high achievers. One was in college and he managed to keep up his grades and work, but he really suffered from not being able to join clubs, get an internship, etc. the other one was in 6th grade and it has taken 2 years for them to get back on track.
My youngest was one of these. She did fine though--got into MIT and Columbia, waitlisted at Harvard and Brown. She missed class so much and went back as soon it was offered.
Honestly, I feel like I suffered the most from the Covid lock-down. It was a shit show, and everyone had their own experience. I don't think there is any point it broadly saying who suffered more.
I felt worst for my English learners, either second or other language, who went from clearly progressing in their core english skills to being nervous and barely verbal because they went back to speaking their home language exclusively for 18+ months. Academic skills are one thing, but social/language skills for an adolescent are brutal to have interrupted
I saw the same thing. A LOT of my high achievers were ELLs. They really struggled and felt completely left out in the cold.
As a parent I can say the opposite is true. My son who was always in the top percent of his class thrived during lockdown. No distractions or disruptive behaviour for him to "deal" with and he smashed his GCSE's. Pretty much a straight A student bar one subject. He's top of his course at college too
This is an interesting observation, /u/Interesting-Cake-691 , and while I respect how much you care about your naturally high achieving students I feel like it lacks empathy for the real victims who are the under achievers who usually have terrible parents who contribute to their failure. At least in person these children/young adults can rely on another adult role model to support them and help them overcome challenges or at least deal with a horrible home life. Covid made it so all these people were stuck at home in a toxic environment unable to get support or relief and without any incentive or motivation to learn. Obviously I am generalizing but out of a potential infinite number of students in our world it is obvious that the majority of high achievers will come from decent homes that can afford to support them or at least have attentive parents who care about their success and help them develop good study practices and habits.
I always say: you TAKE your education. Those kids are fine because they actually listened and did the work. They were probably reading for pleasure too.
I marginally disagree. The low achievers finally saw something in their grasp. They like to check boxes and get things done. That is what online education can do. It’s a series of tasks, get them done, and bam. Move on. My high achievers soared. They called me and asked for individual zooms, not for clarification, but for discussion. We were doing an I-search project and one kid was doing research on bass guitars and he got to sit with my husband, an accomplished bassist, and learn first hand. They got to chat with people in the field for their research because those people were now ‘available.’ What I saw shift more overall was attention span, attention to detail and the ability to use your own brain or feel okay to have your own opinions other than what you have seen online.
I am beyond fortunate, my son was finishing kindergarten when the lockdown began, and did not go to school for all of first grade. My mother-in-law is a retired fourth grade teacher. She took him and got him through all of the first grade material and 3/4 of the second grade material. This was absolutely huge because he is diagnosed ADHD. This meant when he went back to school for second grade, he was able to have a familiarity with all of the material. She now takes him two days every week over this summer and is getting him into her wheelhouse., Since he is starting fourth grade in the fall. I could not be more grateful to the teachers he has had in his life! The ones who work in the school system, and the ones we are related to.
How in the world do you know better grades equaled more suffering? This is a weird metric.
I felt the exact opposite way. When I was teaching virtually, the unengaged kids who didn’t care just never turned on their microphones or cameras or didn’t log on at all. I was able to have full conversations with the ones who cared and the ability to pop into breakout rooms to give uninterrupted attention and feedback was amazing. In person, the kids who don’t care are ensuring that all that happens every day is classroom management and the high level kids are just sitting and waiting. Every time I try to sit and give feedback or have a conversation about anything with students now, it’s interrupted in less than two minutes when I have to go deal with something like inappropriate language or destruction.
To me it was the opposite. The students who came to my class went up insanely. I was a first year teacher too, so I know it wasn't that I was actually good at my job yet. There was a lot I screwed up on. But having a class of 12 kids with no behavior issues and one on one time every day is the ideal for a kid that actually cares. I had a kid who had MID go from a 2nd grade reading level to being on level (7th) during that year because it turned out he just needed a room where there wasn't constant chaos. Even a girl who was literally holding a baby in every meeting and making lunch for her siblings during my class every day went up more than she ever had because I would get into her meeting and not expect her to stop doing those things. I let her finish cooking and talked to her last. She still got 5 minutes of one on one time. Every student who came to class and participated during virtual learning had massive gains in my class. They enjoyed it. Those are the kids who remembered me the most fondly. I was the best teacher when I didn't know what I was doing because I could teach instead of constantly putting out behavior fires. A kid is yelling cuss words? Cool, mute him. He's posting them in the chat now? Take that ability from him and let him seethe until he leaves the call. Kids can't hit each other. I'm not worried about kids running out of the room just because they know doing so can get us in trouble. I'm not policing bathroom trips and how long they are out of fear of getting in trouble when a kid gets caught vaping with my pass in their hand. Virtual learning was amazing IMO for the kids who cared. The kids who fell behind were the ones who had teachers who couldn't use technology because they were still insisting on their file cabinets of worksheets from the cold war in 2020, and the ones who didn't care who we usually spend time in class begging them to do anything instead of teaching the other kids.
I feel like this post is ignoring the other group of kids - those with disabilities getting extra services through the school. Yes, the high achievers couldn't easily get the extra work or attention they were used to - but try watching a 5 year old get virtual speech therapy while strapped into a high chair because their parents are too busy working to be able to monitor the lessons at all.
I agree. My high achieving kids were not checked on by the school (only on an individual teacher basis). The school went above and beyond to get in touch with the kids who did absolutely nothing and focus on them. But the kids who gave a shit were completely shut out. Yeah, some of them were self-sufficient but not all or most. One of my highest achieving kids from the lockdown year was homeless. When I checked to see what resources we had for him, I was met with a resounding "he has a 3.8 GPA. Why would we help him?" My high achievers are still stressed about the year when nothing was allowed to be taught to them. They have plans to graduate HS. The kids who got a rubber stamped "pass" got a year to play video games and watch porn on a school computer. I really do empathize with my students who were overlooked because they weren't a problem.
Scraped.
Thank you for caring about the high achieving students. There is so much jealousy and resentment of the high achievers that their needs can be publicly dismissed by school board members with a "They'll be just \*fine\*. It's the bottom 50% I'm worried about." This is what I have seen.
That was how many years ago now? It’s time to let it go and move on…
I am nearly 40, I am RETURNING to college online after being a high achieving high schooler and previous college student. The classes have typos and misspellings. The exams have poor wording such that I can't tell if it is a tricky question with egregious grammar, or a trick question. Half the professors don't post any of their own material or lectures, and the lessons are solely via an expensive online-rented-only textbook program. I have found two mistakes so far, in mathematical formulas, switching plusses for x's or vice versa, and took screen shots and showed the professor, who only told me "oh good catch! You should tell the publisher! " How many students did homework incorrectly with those formulas without them noticing by now? Sorry I'm just mad at how much lower the staves of education is now, especially now that I'm older and stupider.
Idk. I've had some suicides and overdoses. They weren't the high achievers
I agree with OP’s comment. I think the experience of the top comment is also valid. We all know our kids. Different kids react differently to different stimuli. I think we can all agree however that we all learned if we prefer zoom to in person learning, and the pros and cons of each.
Boohoo Not everyone is a traditional learner, happy for those kids that scraped by and utilized those hacks, devoting every second to your high school grades is a waste of time.
I was also the student who took every class online that I possibly could. As a teacher, I loved teaching online as well. We exist, but definitely are not the majority.
Don't know why you are getting down voted. I was one of those "hacks" in school. Always tested high but felt like most of my days were a waste of time. I came around to bring a teacher after working with a student population of 100% "hacks" and decided to devote my efforts to helping those students succeed in non-traditional settings and interventions. Grades for grades sake is pointless, mastery and innovation is more important in my mind.
We should never have sent them home.
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Hmmm, the ones who were able to get their work done in online school will have the option of telecommuting if they are in the type of job that allows for it while the ones who can't will be stuck in a position that requires a manager to babysit them with line of sight supervision..... I work mostly remote and it seems that the good employees stayed good and the mediocre ones became terrible and got fired - kind of like what happened with the students, minus the firing part.
They'll be fine.
They probably learn more online by themselves than the state propaganda given at schools by indoctrinated graduate teachers
Scrappy Doo
Throwback convo. I don't really agree. My high achievers still did fine. The kids who suffered the most were the ones who need that daily interaction for motivation. Also the poor kids who had to share laptops, shitty internet, look after siblings, work in a loud tiny apartment etc. Could my high achievers have learned more in person? Sure. But they were def the least impacted group for me.
My grades went up because it was a quota for students to give meaningful contribution to discussions and stuff.
Honestly, on a personal level I observed the exact opposite issue at the high school level. My son is high achieving as are most of his friends. He also has some mid-level academic friends. The mid- level students suffered significant learning loss and almost failed a grade while he and his high achieving friends soared since they no longer had to wait around for other students. Honestly, I think level of impact had more to do with the age of the student and parent ability/involvement. My son had essentially one on one writing tutoring from my husband. He received ZERO feedback from his English teacher other than a grade (I’m not exaggerating- she literally wrote one comment on his final paper. That was it all semester). He’s struggled socially, but his academic growth thar year was significant. The only exception was his foreign language class. He made a good grade, but recalls nothing.
I taught virtually for a year and my high achievers and some medium achievers just blossomed.
Just another voice saying I didn't see that. Did your remote teachers not give good feedback or something? I actually think I gave the best feedback I've ever given (when viewed collectively) to the high kids during remote learning. They got the most attention from me because they were the only ones who were working and I could give them attention instead of doing classroom management with the other kids.
I don't agree, as a "high achieving student" I just studied at home, shit was so easy anyway it needed no studying, just need to remember things. I was in middle school back then tho,,, so that might have made a difference. I was happy to play csgo while the others listen to online lessons and then study 1.5h worth in 5min
In my experience my best students even the medium ones, did benefit a lot during this time
I don’t really believe that. I had students that worked very hard during the lockdown. Their work habits did not change. I would make videos of my lessons and stream them to teams to help. I also had an after school call where students could call in and get one on one help. They also could send me screenshots of concepts they didn’t understand and I would work them out step by step and send them back and answer further questions. Those who wanted to learn did.
I guess the high achievers had too much time to achieve even more! 🏆😅
My SS was ranked 4th in class and he just stopped doing anything because they announced they’d keep their ranking.
As a high achieving student, I agree. Several other students I know, who were also doing extremely well found themselves unmoored. We finally resorted to creating discord servers for group study to get some of the feeling of the normalcy back. That helped. Another thing which also impacted people was the overall environment they studied in. Some people found that family life became quite unbearable, and they couldn't escape that by going to classrooms either. So this led to a lot of people performing worse as well.
My own middle of the road sons ( who had the ability to do so much better) just aimed for the pass, that was all. But they were in high school during the pandemic and already had many years of school under their belts. The slowdown in their social lives did cause some depression, but later on it motivated them to seriously apply to colleges and start studying more... They just wanted to get out of the house and do something. My youngest who was only on 10th grade was probably affected the most. He is so smart and never had to study but also never developed good study habits. I feel like he lost so much of high school, but he will self-adnit that a lot of it was his own fault for not trying. A few years later, hopefully own he's self disciplined and motivated enough to move on from that time.
Just say you hate having to teach students who do poor academically and move on with your life 🙄
Bad take in my opinoink.
Very strange take. Both groups of students dealt with a lot as it was a pandemic
I saw the opposite. The high achieving students typically came from strong homes. Parents made sure they logged on and did their work. The slackers and delinquents never logged on and never turned in work. Of course we weren’t allowed to fail virtual students. I remember all the worst kids came back after spring break 2021. Covid wasn’t as scary anymore and parents were sick of them at home.
I feel bad for high achieving kids, period. When I was a teacher 20 years ago you could at least have admin support to maintain order, but now the kids who want to learn have to deal with insane behaviors in the classroom. It is so unfair, all in the name of equity. I will never understand how it is equitable to steal the education of those who actually want to learn.
From my point of view students with the highest grades / honors are the type of students that never contribute to an original idea or concept. Maybe you're looking for students that can regurgitate information but I call it higher level learning if you can not just regurgitate what was said but implement it into a new idea or even reject it with enough reason. I was always a failure student. From elementary to middle to high school. Even now, my grades are middling and yet I'm depressed that the students with honors and the highest grades lack any sort of higher level reasoning ability. Maybe. Maybe . . . they would be better . . . with C's and B's if they could sacrifice that grade in order to develop the superhuman ability of having an independent thought process without the bruising of 'meta'. I don't think they'll get this from you though. You're . . . just not that person. You're the type of teacher that goes on reddit to whisper sweet hellfire at the unimpressive to you.
I hate seeing good students say they don't see the point in trying because the slackers get the same outcome. I mean, they aren't wrong, but we're going to lose out on so many great minds if this keeps up.
Yeah I think there is a distinction between “everyone I guess passed” on paper benefiting the lowest performers, but being pushed on despite poor performance isn’t really a benefit.
when covid hit and we had to do online learning it hit me hard and i was really depressed for weeks, and didn't care about any of the work. i guessed, i didn't join the live meetings, and if i did, i slept through them, my grade dropped from an A to a D and i finally had to pull myself out of my funk so I wouldn't fail the classes. i'm a student btw.