Dimming the Spark: Impact of Virtual Learning on Student Engagement and Relationships

I want to share some reflections on virtual learning from my point of view as an educator, someone who has spent my professional life teaching students, teaching teachers, and leading vision -driven institutions dedicated to bringing Best Practices to the field: Three months of virtual learning has dulled our children.

I do not say this to be critical of teachers, parents, or children. We are all doing our best. Rather, it is an observation about the importance of relationships in education. Children learn not only because they are inspired by content matter; truth be told, it is rarely the content. Our children learn because other human beings inspire in them a passion for inquiry. Learning is a shared journey rooted in relationships. Virtual teaching robs children of the human sparkle that drives learning.

Over the past decade I have been privileged to provide both academic enrichment and academic remediation to children from both private and public schools. I have worked with the children of seven hundred families in the NJ area, and it has been an absolute joy. I am the living embodiment of the saying that the luckiest people are those who make a living doing what they love. Yet, the last five months of work have taxed me. I can tell you that teaching five hours through ZOOM is more taxing than 12 hours sitting in my office face-to-face with my students. And the worst part? There is less joy... for us all.

The nature of my business means that I work with children who come to me already nurtured on the primacy of education in their lives. And within that group of kids I have all sorts of different learners. I have students who are educationally gifted, some who need to manage learning challenges, and others who could be described as typical learners, although we all know there is really no such thing. My task is to nurture their intellectual curiosity and to develop their tools of analysis.

As we join together to tackle challenging pieces of literature or controversial events in history, what I provide them is not simply engaging content, but the personal relationships that inspire them to be their best, to be willing to tackle challenges, to be unafraid to extend themselves into new intellectual territory, and to risk failure in order to eventually succeed. After all, Socratic learning is rooted in relationship, in the intimacy of engagement.

Together, my students and I are a learning community; the world is our classroom, and our lives inform the literature we learn. And that is why I love my work.

These children invigorate me. I feed off of their curious energy and they feed off of my passion for intellectual inquiry.

But isolation has taken a toll. My once hungry and curious students have become a little less hungry. They have less to talk about and less to think about. The opening question of, “How was your week?“ no longer elicits fodder for discussion. “Tell me something cool you learned this week?” is met with crickets. And I am challenged to fix it over ZOOM.

ZOOM robs me of the ability to look them in the eye and read either their hesitant confusion or their budding insight, critical if I am to join them in making meaning. Nor can I give the same searing stink-eye to the kid who gave me less than his best one class - a look that would normally ensure that next week’s homework would be stellar - because stink-eye loses its potency over a screen. And more importantly, my students cannot see the glow on my face when they have been inspired to some new insight, or when they have created a work of absolute beauty; glow doesn’t travel well over screen. And they can’t feed off of each other’s energy, the sense of pride when they’ve earned the applause and admiration of their fellow learners; applause echoes poorly as it travels through virtual space.

I now must invest twice the energy to get half the spark. And I’m heartbroken. When parents tell me that the kids look forward all week to our sessions, I am frankly surprised. I too often feel as though I am speaking twice as loud for half the answers. And so I am grateful to hear that our work has meaning!

​Human ingenuity and creativity spring forth from engagement in the world and from collaboration with others, yet I humbly accept that the only reality I can control is the one that life has presented. So I continue to speak loudly, to cajole, to badger, to plead and to challenge, in order to feed curiosity through the bars of a screen until such time as we can sit face to face and revel in the human connections that nurture true greatness.