Emily Hays Photo
At least two laptops needed at a time.
“Are there any volunteers at home who want to do this problem?” said New Haven Academy biology teacher David Herndon, addressing the portion of his class tuned in via computer. “Don’t all jump at once.”
His in-person students giggled.
Herndon switched his attention back to the physical classroom — and, like high school teachers all over New Haven, navigated a new normal of teaching two types of classes at once: Remote, and in-person.
New Haven high schoolers resumed in-person school starting on April 5, for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Last week was the first time high schoolers could attend four days a week, excluding Wednesday, the district’s deep cleaning day.
Others continue attending school via the internet. So teachers like Herndon have been learning a new two-step mode of instruction on the job.
On Thursday morning, 10 of Herndon’s biology students at New Haven Academy had chosen to study in-person. The rest were online. This meant that Herndon needed one computer with all his slides and class materials and another to show his remote students’ faces.
The subject of the day was the classic high school genetics tool, Punnett squares.
Each student looked down at three boxes, each split into four quadrants. As a warmup, each had to fill in the quadrants with the possible genetic outcomes for offspring based on the parents’ chromosomes.
No remote students wanted to share their answers with the class. When Herndon asked his in-person students, one raised her hand. He coaxed and cajoled two others into coming to the board.
Joseph Williams, 16, considers the Punnett square.
Sophomore Joseph Williams was able to quickly translate the second prompt (“Parent 1 = tt, Parent 2 = heterozygous”). He knew that “tt” meant that the first parent had two chromosomes with the recessive trait, while the second parent had one dominant trait and one recessive trait. He hesitated though over how to use that information to predict the children’s genetic outcomes. He wrote a few versions of lowercase and uppercase “t“s in the squares, erased them and tried again.
Herndon stood next to WIlliams, reassuring him and lauding him for coming up to the board. This in-person teaching help is one of the main reasons Williams is glad to be back in his school building. The exchange of body language between students and teachers makes teacher explanations more personalized to the student and easier to understand.
Detective-in-training Maleka Long, 15, ready to analyze DNA samples.
When it was Maleka Long’s turn at the board, she told Herndon that another student wanted to go instead. That student yelped that no, she didn’t, and everyone laughed.
Despite dragging her feet to the board, Long got everything right.
Long is back at school because her aunt wanted her to improve her remote school performance. The 15 year-old had a hard time finishing her work at home; it’s easier to finish in her classroom, where she can ask her teachers questions.
She likes learning about genetics and cell biology, she said. She might use these subjects in her future career as a detective. For a while, she was considering becoming a lawyer and then, inspired by the TV show “Law & Order,” switched back to her detective plans.
Williams: Pandemic school is weird, but you manage.
After the warm-up exercise, Herndon promised the students a quick lecture of two slides. He told the class about Gregor Mendel, the monk who bred pea plants thousands of times until he figured out the patterns of inheritance students now study with Punnett squares.
“He couldn’t figure out why he would cross two tall pea plants and get a small plant. Then he would do it again and get a tall plant. And he wore these cool, little aprons,” Herndon said, pointing at the slide.
Herndon glanced down at the chat in his remote, Google Classroom. He thanked one of the remote students for their question.
Herndon’s multitasking didn’t throw Williams. He was engrossed in how Mendel learned about inheritance before anyone knew about DNA.
“I like how they learned about genetics in the olden days. I like learning how their brains worked,” Williams said.
Herndon: The dog can’t eat digital homework.
At the end of the lecture, Herndon asked one student to pass out worksheets to everyone in the classroom. At the same time, Herndon released the answer sheets to his virtual students so they could work independently.
Herndon said he’ll probably keep some virtual assignments when the pandemic is over. Herndon has been teaching at New Haven Academy for 18 years; founders Meredith Gavrin and Greg Baldwin recruited him right out of his master’s program at Quinnipiac University.
“As a teacher, I prefer digital work. It allows both me and them to stay more organized. There’s nothing for the dog to eat,” Herndon said.
He has also found value in the Google Classroom chat feature. Students often find typing answers in the chat less risky than writing on the board.
The key to all this participation is asking questions that students know they can tackle. These can be subjective questions where there is no right answer, like what they observed in a video. He is already anticipating a lack of volunteers when he starts teaching more complicated Punnett squares.
“If it’s super hard; it’s crickets every time. If they are confident, they are more prone to answer,” Herndon said.
This two-step, hybrid teaching may end with this school year. The Connecticut State Department of Education is not requiring districts to offer a remote option in the fall. Some districts, like Bridgeport, are lauding the end of a draining experience for staff.
Still, remote and hybrid teaching have forced Herndon to experiment with digital homework and chat-based class. Some new tools, at least, are here to stay.
It's worth noting that David Herndon is a second generation NHPS teacher. His dad, Peter, was a favorite of students at Lee High School, before it was acquired by Yale. http://newhavenmodern.org/lee-high-school