THE SCHOOL OF ZOOM.

PART I: Episodes From the Pandemic.

March 11, 2020. The middle of spring break for students at all education levels– elementary, middle, high and college. This was also the day that would change the course of education for these students, for March 11th was also when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic and schools across the United States began the shift to fully-online education. This shift would end up having an impact on education as a whole, an impact that is still being felt by students, parents, teachers and even high positions in higher education.

What does this impact look like in numbers? Turn to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a test that is administered to fourth and eighth graders and is used to mark progress in the areas of math and reading. In Memphis alone, this test showed a 14 point decline in eighth grade math and overall, 65% of eighth graders were behind in the area of math. The other three categories on the test showed similarly high rates of students being behind, with 47% of fourth graders being behind in math, 59% being behind in reading and half of eighth graders being behind in reading. The test showed that students in Memphis fell behind in greater ways than other large cities during the pandemic, with Memphis-Shelby County Schools prioritizing helping students recover from the losses that happened during virtual learning.

These losses translate to the stories that parents and educators share about this time. Center Hill High School visual arts teacher Whitney Lantrip detailed the struggles her students faced during virtual education.

“Kids came back almost two years behind, and if they had a learning disability or already were behind their grade level, it was just tacked onto that. Some kids came back five or six years below their grade level,” Lantrip said.

As a visual arts teacher, Lantrip also described the struggles she faced as well, including a lack of engagement from her students– “I had disengagement from my students and they had a lack of resources at home that I provide in the classroom. I had several students fail that year as opposed to the past and future since 2020,” Lantrip said.

On the parents’ side of things, these struggles translated to what tests like the NAEP showed– falling behind in various subjects, including reading and math. UT Martin Health Science Center senior research specialist Derek Norman shared the stuggles his two children experienced with virtual learning for their second and third grade years.

“Both had some amount of educational delay, which was very common. One of our children had a more marked delay than the other. That same child is now dealing with massive anxiety since reentering the classroom, while his sibling seems to have suffered no adverse effects emotionally,” Norman said. Norman’s son experienced falling behind in math, while his daughter experienced setbacks in reading. As of this interview, both children’s issues have been resolved.

On the other side of the equation, other parents and teachers have reported an easier time when it came to preparing and teaching over Zoom or other virtual learning tools, whether it was the transition to virtual, retaining information taught over virtual, or passing classes.

Musician and podcaster Daniel Green echoed this relative ease when it came to his children’s virtual education.

“Education-wise, they are ahead of their classmates thanks to virtual. My kids find some of school now to be a review, but I have bright kids,” Green said. The role Green took in his children’s virtual education was a guiding one, ensuring technology was working and ensuring his children were participating in all of the lessons.

Another teacher who echoed a similar sentiment was Center Hill Middle School English teacher Melanie Shoffner, who described having a difficult time in the beginning, but gradually fell into the rhythm of online teaching.

“Having to teach both online as well as in class posed a challenge because I never met online students. Communication with online students was difficult at first. I created daily videos and corresponded with emails and weekly Zoom meetings. I was also fortunate to work with a team of teachers that made working in those conditions better,” Shoffner said.

DeSoto County Schools, the school district Shoffner works for, also helped to get teachers ready for the online-heavy semester.

“The first few days of school before students arrived was a bit scary. We had a new platform to learn and use. Thankfully, DCS decided to change the school schedule, creating a half day for students and a full work day for teachers, and then an extra week of planning before the official first day of school,” Shoffner said.

A mixed bag of experiences form the stories that teachers and parents share about going through the public school system either all online, or mostly online, but what about the collegiate setting? How did college students and department heads adjust to moving all online?

College senior Warren Lester shared his experience when it came to virtual education, and the transition that came with it.

“At the time, I was slightly annoyed by it but adjusted to it. That first semester wasn’t great as no one was prepared for it at all, so classes were a bit sloppy. The semester afterwards, while we were still virtual, was much better and flowed smoothly,” Lester said.

Lester also reported his grades taking a hit during virtual, but described being in a great position mentally at the time, something he chalks up to school taking up less of his time and being able to devote more time to his friends. But what about the educator side of things, the people in charge of preparing and presenting material for their students to learn and retain?

PART II: The Sound of Music.

Ease and smoothness is something that Director of Bands Albert Nguyen did not experience when it came time to move the various Bands (Athletic, Symphonic and University Bands) online. As the Director of Bands in the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music, Nguyen’s job is to oversee these three Bands and formulate their various programs and curricula for each year.

“We pivoted as best as we could. I remember getting, of course, getting emails about the extension of spring break, and then while all of that was happening, we started to have online meetings about how to move forward at that point, and it happened really quickly. We essentially shut down everything because at that point, playing instruments, we knew that these were going to be major aerosol spreaders and so, we needed to learn a lot more about what we were able to do with band and luckily, at the University of Colorado and University of Maryland, they were doing specific research on the impact of wind instruments, dancers and singers and the spread of aerosols. When that started going, we finally were able to develop some kind of plan for the band area and assist the School of Music,” Nguyen said.

The Spring and Fall 2020 semesters were a period of firsts for the Band program at the University, with Nguyen citing his biggest challenge being the move online.

“The transition onto online at the end of the semester and most of that fall semester of 2020, that was difficult. I didn’t go to school learning how to be an online band director. The biggest challenge for me was to figure out how we do large ensemble in a way that would be meaningful, and I think we did as best as we could,” Nguyen said.

Skill loss and falling behind were two prevailing issues during the pandemic, but the first priority for Nguyen was ensuring students did not lose their skills and worked to retain them, something he describes as “sharpening our knives while we wait for the moment to be able to come back.”

“That was the most difficult part of the transition, was figuring out how to keep students engaged and to find ways for students to continue to stay on their instruments, so that when we came out of this, all the skills weren’t lost,” Nguyen said.

Where the Band program was hit the most during the pandemic, was numbers. Students who were in band as high school juniors or seniors ended up dropping out of band when everything shut down and moved all online.

“The high school seniors and the juniors that would have stayed in band to continue, ended up dropping out, and then that changed their career path, or their extracurricular path when they came to college. Often, we noticed that senior classes got smaller because that was their last semester in band, everything got shut down and they just quit. The seniors did end up coming back to school, to college, but not all of them stuck with it. Where we really saw some atrophy with numbers was in the number of juniors who during the pandemic quit choir, quit band or quit orchestra. That meant when they converted over to college freshmen, those ensembles were not part of their daily experience, so they didn’t join them at the college level. Number-wise, that is where we started to see a hit. A little bit in skills, but I think where it hit us the most was just the sheer population of students,” Nguyen said.

Concert ensembles were another aspect of the Band program that was changed during the pandemic, with once 50+ person ensembles being reduced to sizes of anywhere from eight to 14 members. Composers during this time also began tailoring their pieces to fit these smaller bands. Pieces made for bigger ensembles were changed for these new smaller groups, and the ensembles themselves shifted towards playing smaller, chamber music pieces.

All of these changes Nguyen oversaw as the Director of Bands, whether it was ensembles being stripped back or pieces being changed, were all part of stemming the spread of the virus, but also ensuring students kept their instrument skills and didn’t falter in their instrument.

This balance between stopping the spread of the virus and ensuring students learn and retain information and skills doesn’t just apply to the band program, it was a large part of education during the pandemic and was something that left an impact on all students and educators, one that is still being felt, two years past the day where it all started, March 11, 2020.