March 13, 2020. That was the last day I taught students who were physically in the same room with me. Like thousands of other educators across our nation and the globe, I sat at my desk late that afternoon and made a list of possible solutions for how to continue to educate my young charges. One consideration I had that may not have been on other teachers’ minds was that every single one of my students is dyslexic. Giving them passages to read at home and questions to write out answers to would not equal learning. So, what to do?

When I was wrestling with the decision on the best way to teach my students, I naively believed that this was a two week pause in the school year, and that we would scrub and sanitize our way back to in-person learning after spring break. Deep in my heart, I have to admit that even then I wondered how it could all be solved in a few weeks. I suspected that even if some of the students did return, some would be at home for the rest of the school year.

Throughout the school year, I had taught professional development modules on dyslexia for schools from Virginia to Florida using the Zoom platform. It worked well for me, and was user friendly. I wrote “Zoom Small Groups” on my brainstorming list, and kept returning to it as other ideas were listed then discarded. By Monday morning, my staff and I held a staff meeting on Zoom to introduce them to the platform. I had the best group of professionals anyone could ever ask for, and they were willing to make the leap with me in committing that all of our dyslexia department’s instruction would continue to be live, teacher/tutor led, and individualized. We spent a couple of days getting everyone set up with Zoom accounts, and practicing the mechanics of inviting parents to sign in, and remembering passwords and codes were an integral part of successful connections. Where necessary, loaner systems were procured and set up at the homes of both staff and parents. By Wednesday, our invitations to join meetings were sent to parents, and we launched out into the unknown world of virtual instruction.

“Tomorrow is going to be better than today,”  became our motto during those early days as everyone, parents as well as staff members, navigated the unknown waters. The motto proved to be true. We communicated, a lot, with everyone involved.  We scoured the Zoom information websites, looking for Share my Screen directions, and happily finding the magical “Improve My Appearance” slider. (If that were sold in a jar at the drug store, I would buy a case!) Every moment was not a good moment. Everyone did not participate every lesson. The situation was more stressful for some families than for others. We chose to look the other way when Grandpa answered a meeting notification in his pj’s with hair standing on end, or the potty training little brother streaking through the camera view.  Everyone was doing their best, and that is all that can be expected.

As the spring wore on, bi-weekly packet pick up days became the bright spot because it meant we got to see our students, albeit through car windows. I became more convinced of the soundness of my decision to put my staff through the rigors of live instruction. The real proof would come when we conducted our end-of-semester progress monitoring testing. Plans were worked out for exactly how we would conduct that testing within the parameters of the Zoom screen. I went first with my own students, so I could become aware of unforeseen pitfalls and we could devise work arounds. After 6 weeks of on-line tutoring and small group instructions, our resilient students breezed through the testing, not seeing to bat an eye at it coming in a distance format. My staff and I held our collective breath as we awaited the results.

Forty-three students completed the testing.  I set out these four categories: scores dropped lower than the December testing, no improvement in the scores compared to the December testing, steady improvement of 4 months to 1 year in all categories tested, and stellar improvement of 6 months to over a year in all categories tested. Scores were verified, reports edited and sent onto parents, and a stroke count made beside each of the four categories.  My excitement rose as I sat at a spare table in my living room working through the stacks of testing data and reports. I may frame the scratch paper I used to tally the testing results. In the end, one student dropped below the December score.  Two students showed no improvement. A whopping twenty-two fell into that steady improvement category, and eighteen were in the stellar improvement column.

It had worked.

They had learned, even in a time of Covid19.