The pandemic made teachers learn to love tech

In the spring of 2020, 77% of American public schools moved to online distance learning when the pandemic hit, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to the pandemic, you could say that schools were trickling into the digital age. Then, when COVID changed everything, they were basically tossed into it.

Some educators adapted quickly, like Bebi Davis, who was working as a vice principal in Honolulu at the time. She’s now principal of Princess Victoria Kaiulani Elementary. Going totally virtual, she said, meant introducing an onslaught of technology — videoconferencing, classroom management software and messaging systems. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes asked Davis about the school system’s experience adopting so much tech all at once.

The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Bebi Davis: I’m a techie. I was a robotics, physics, chemistry teacher, so for me personally, it was, I think the hectic part was getting everybody on board. And then, when you look at equity, a lot of folks didn’t have connectivity. So we had to collect a lot of data, [and] while we were collecting COVID data on who was getting sick or who wasn’t, we also had to start collecting data on who was connected and who wasn’t connected, making sure all the kids had a device, who’s still having struggle with it and how we can best support them. Even making sure somebody was always there to learn the new tech, in case a parent walked in for help with their device, because tech is really good, but, I mean, tech doesn’t always cooperate with us.

Stephanie Hughes: So this all happened five years ago. What technology has stuck around in the district?

Davis: I think we’ve gotten very comfortable with one to one. It’s the expectation now.

Hughes: One device for each kid?

Davis: Yeah, elementary to K to 12, we feel comfortable kids using tech devices. We’ve got to the point at my school where my teachers, I’m now teaching them [artificial intelligence], so they have access to all of that. But now I’m teaching them how to teach the kids how to do that.

Hughes: There’s a lot of interactions that you have as an educator with parents and with teachers. Is tech involved in those in different ways than it used to be?

Davis: Yes because what we do now, and like, if a teacher, if a parent, doesn’t want to come because they’re busier, they, you know, driving from work to school, that they can make a meeting, they will ask for a virtual meeting. Prior to COVID, we didn’t have virtual meetings, so that was not an option before. So I think we reach more parents that way, also where they can come in virtually. There are times when parents want to do it face to face, and then something happens or somebody gets sick, and then they’ll say, can we switch over? And it’s like 30 seconds, you can get them on, right?

Hughes: Are there any other examples of how you think the technology you adopted during the pandemic shows up in the educational experience today?

Davis: I think whatever we learn, we’ve learned how to be flexible and not to be afraid of tech. From COVID time to now, I think it really laid a platform for us to take what we’ve learned and grow from and get accelerated with it and not to be afraid.

Hughes: Tell me about how virtual education has trained how you guys learn as educators.

Davis: There are times when we need access to, we need to learn certain new strategies or scale of getting trained, and if, in the past, many times we had to travel to the mainland or a different state, different island, now we can do things virtually. Like I remember when I was doing my principal training, it was all, it was all virtual. I did that do face to face the whole year. Now it’s face to face again, but that whole year I spent, everything was there for face to face. When they brought trainers and it was virtual, the folks were still on the mainland, and we were all here, but we were getting trained. And, um, currently we still use that platform. They cannot travel to Hawaii, but they can do the training virtually. We still have some of that. Folks prefer to come to Hawaii to do the training, but there are times, you know, they may be stuck in another country. I’ve done an interview for teachers now from other countries, virtually. So that’s another thing.

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