Minnesota students began learning from home Monday, a new normal that may last the rest of the school year as the state tries to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Some 870,000 Minnesota public school students are transitioning to distance learning under orders from Gov. Tim Walz.
Many started Monday morning, although St. Paul and Minneapolis are on spring break and will start a week later.
The unprecedented shift in learning was not without technological hiccups.
Students and teachers had problems accessing at least two online programs.
The online learning platform Schoology acknowledged around 9:30 a.m. Monday that some users were “experiencing degraded service.” More than an hour later, the company said site loading times had returned to normal, but more problems popped up later in the day.
The student engagement platform SeeSaw said around 10:30 a.m. that site visitors were getting error messages. An hour later, the company reported the problems were resolved.
St. Paul Public Schools built its distance learning plan around both tools that saw problems Monday. Students in grades K-2 will be expected to engage with SeeSaw daily on district-owned iPads, and older students are to log into Schoology each day.
“I know that many are using the same technology across the country and there’s been some glitches in that, but we appreciate the ability to get that going,” Walz told reporters Monday.
Walz gave the school closing order two weeks ago to allow administrators and teachers time to figure out how to make distance learning work for the state’s public district and charter school students. They’re not scheduled to return to their classrooms until April 30, at the earliest, but the governor could extend the closing.
While implementation is expected to be a work in progress, officials said schools were prepared for Monday’s launch.
“Our educators are ready for this,” Deputy Education Commissioner Heather Mueller said. “As educators and as professionals we have been trained to not only be experts and professionals in our context, but also how it is that we can deliver instruction through a variety of platforms.”
For example, in Minnesota’s largest school district, Anoka-Hennepin, staff went to work to prepare more than 13,000 Chromebook laptops for students in grades 4-12 in the suburban district who needed computers. Students picked them up last week. Younger students for now are using a blended online-paper curriculum, but officials are considering handing out Chromebooks to them, as well, spokesman Jim Skelly said.
In the Stewartville School District, in southeastern Minnesota, middle and high school teacher Jim Parry helped prepare students by posting videos on YouTube aimed at helping them overcome their fears.
“If we don’t take chances on new experiences, we limit our potential to grow as human beings,” Parry said into the camera outside an empty school. “Having the right attitude is everything. … There are a lot of people that are anxious, that are scared, they’re not sure of how things will turn out, they fear failure. If we let these emotions control us, we won’t have a chance to experience personal growth together, as a community.”
To ease the burden on students and staff, Minnesota canceled its statewide standardized testing for the rest of the school year.
Mueller has stressed repeatedly that parents aren’t expected to be teachers, and they are urged to reach out to their children’s teachers if they need help.
“The implementation of this is not going to be seamless for everyone, and we recognize that, but we do know that it is better than doing nothing,” Mueller told reporters on Friday.
This report includes information from Josh Verges, Mara H. Gottfried and the Associated Press.
