“Fractured learning model is pedagogically unsound, fraught with technological issues…Imagine being a student at home watching the rest of your class play their musical instruments in a music class. It just makes no sense.”
OSSTF Toronto President Michelle Teixeira decries the use of Hybrid learning in and article for Toronto.com
Michelle Teixeira is the president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation Toronto representing approximately 7,000 secondary teachers, occasional teachers, and professional student services personnel. – OSSTF Toronto photo
As we entered the third school year during which the COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on our schools, school boards were still required to offer remote learning options for students.
The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) assured parents, students and teachers that hybrid learning classes would be a last resort and that every attempt would be made to offer dedicated virtual learning. The problem? A lack of funding from the Ministry of Education for virtual schools, which was made available to the boards in 2020-21, was no longer being offered. Thus, when a higher than anticipated number of students selected virtual learning options for the 2021-22 school year, the TDSB implemented hybrid learning for the majority of its secondary schools classes. Over 68 per cent of classes at the secondary level are hybrid.
Hybrid learning is a model where some of the students in a class are learning remotely and some of them are learning in the classroom. This fractured learning model is not only pedagogically unsound, but it is also fraught with technological issues.