COVID brought changes in learning

The concrete that builds education, like bridges, was first conceived as a dialogue of questions and answers. Socrates used it more than two millennia ago. This method of mind to mind and heart to heart discussions between teacher and student about the nature of things has mattered.

After the virus had made everyone more alert to each other's distance, teachers were obliged to wear masks. In the beginning, in the college system, we wore plastic shields over our masks, like astronauts on the moon. We were wary about walking in the aisles.

Then we moved to the computer, a screen to screen voice over, with settings on a side bar. Now the computer face became the experience.

The end of traditional classrooms had begun.

At first, with our space- helmet- plastic shield and masks on mouth, we managed classrooms in person. Then, quiet students had more excuses to stay out of discussions, unruly behavior was given a longer pass.

We asked if they were learning. We asked if this was teaching.

The usual teacher kibitzing between classes grew into a familiar, "How'd it go?". Was the material presented and understood and did they respond?

As time elapsed through this historical shift in education, in these few short years, the virus molded the dialogue and the student-teacher rapport. Lessons thru a screen, set on a coldly lit black-footed computer shadowed the futuristic sci-fi community's worrisome notes about losing humanity.

Teachers understood that touching another mind with heartfelt interest, in the insight and the gift of knowledge, is person to person.

Passion is important in learning. Teaching is both science and art.

The classroom is an experience.

The person to person dialogue holds experiences we may never forget. Elders will still converse about a teacher, an incident, an example. My sixth grade teacher enunciated the word 'next' to sound like next- ah.

We remember where we were when we learned a lesson. We speak about a subject and about human nature, what was done, the foibles of people and their grand dreams and hopes.

Once, it was that "I get what you're saying“ moment in a classroom that made all the difference. Some teachers will say that is the reward of the work. Why do you teach invariably will find an important fact that it is for the people, the students, the dialogue and the give and take.

In the news, a story concerned student complaints that, each year, are the same as last year. More computer lessons. The message is meaningful.

It conveys the bland and repetitive nature of sitting before a screen. It cries about the active manner of something learned and something gained against the shadow of a screen and seeing faces disconnected from bodies, removed from the grimaces and smiles of the group that sits together, laughs together, learns together.

Somehow, sensitive to the group and the hope, when we come together, not disconnected in place but breathing the same dust, sharing the air of Socrates and the dreams of gaining knowledge, we are alive. And we learn.

Tim Trenkle is a writer and educator at the community college and university levels. He lives in Dubuque.