Learning Virtually Redefined

“[The pandemic] is a portal,” wrote novelist Arundhati Roy in April 2020, “a gateway between one world and the next.” Last fall, soaring coronavirus rates cast a pallor over back-to-school season. As school doors shuttered, communities left behind their familiar worlds of in-person learning.

At first, the uptick in professional learning Zoom workshops, online lectures and virtual self-guided learning opportunities grew out of necessity. But in time, educators discovered an untapped wellspring of opportunities for greater equity and access. Almost overnight, online sessions reached educators not just in urban centers but also those in isolated regions and with limited mobility. Some had previously thought attending in-person training impossible. “Having an opportunity to take an [LFJ] PD is a dream come true,” wrote one Learning for Justice professional learning participant in a post-session survey. “I would never be able to take time off to travel to a larger city to attend an in-person workshop.”

Facilitators and trainers had begun imagining a new world. This world contained breathing room to contemplate the meaning of liberatory education. In this new world, educators adapted schooling and training for remote platforms—and in the process, redrew the boundaries of learning.

Expansion Brings Access

The rise in virtual options meant many educators at schools with limited economic resources no longer had to contend with their communities’ competing priorities for anti-bias trainings. Learning for Justice Professional Development Manager Sarah-SoonLing Blackburn reflects on her time as a classroom teacher and how professional learning couldn’t compete as a priority for her school. “My classroom used to flood every time it rained,” she remembers. “So, [the administration] isn’t thinking about, ‘OK, what great social justice training can we get for people?’ They’re like, ‘How do we use our budget to fix this roof that’s been leaking for five years?’”

Many under-resourced schools with high teacher turnover rates reserve professional development for foundational teaching skills. However, with widespread remote access, educators could design their own professional learning priorities. Cornelius Minor, a Brooklyn-based literacy coach, says last year he engaged in the most professional learning of his entire career. “People can select the professional learning they want and [access] it à la carte, for free,” he says. “It’s really democratized professional learning.”

Increased accessibility doesn’t only benefit those on the margins. When more people can access a space or conversation, everyone’s experience improves. Disability activists dubbed this phenomenon the “curb-cut effect,” after the sidewalk aprons they advocated for aided pedestrians at all ability levels. Civil rights advocate Angela Glover Blackwell later applied the term more broadly, and educators have observed it in this past year’s virtual shifts in professional learning.

Blackburn and LFJ Professional Learning Facilitator Kimberly Burkhalter witnessed the curb-cut effect in their virtual sessions, when an adaptation intended for a minoritized group brought benefit to all. To better serve attendees with hearing loss, they began using Google Slides’ automatic closed captioning in their sessions. While the facilitators initially did this solely for a particular group, educators without hearing loss reported on how helpful they found the feature. The pandemic’s constraints allowed them to spot gaps in their sessions’ accessibility they may not have known otherwise.

Virtual learning has likewise borne fruit in the social realm. In virtual sessions, attendees can forge connections outside of their usual spheres. Meeting thought partners from different professional contexts brings fresh perspectives and insights. Social justice educators feeling isolated can find solidarity grounded in shared passion.

“Some educators feel really attacked in doing the work, and it’s reassuring to them to know that there are other educators who are doing the same work and support them,” notes Blackburn. “It helps remove some of that self-doubt that starts to creep in, because if you feel like you’re the only one, you’re like, ‘Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe what I’m doing isn’t the right thing.’”

While building robust virtual community is possible, it does require the right conditions and thoughtful design. Educators need reliable internet access to participate. And without the ease of face-to-face networking, facilitators must foster a shared sense of purpose. With Zoom fatigue and the ease of going off-camera, it can be difficult to tell how participants are engaging.

To prevent this pitfall, facilitators can accommodate a broad spectrum of learning styles using uniquely virtual features like chat and breakout rooms. “I loved learning the capabilities of an engaging Zoom,” wrote one LFJ session participant. “This is new to us. Annotating, breakout groups, the poll idea, it was all very engaging and added to the training.”

“Love this as a model of digital learning,” wrote another. “Chat, short video, breakout groups. All effective ways of engaging! These are the qualities of the meetings which lend themselves to retaining my attention.”

From Isolation to Invention

For education consultant shea martin, social distancing only intensified the inherent isolation in their daily work, and they attribute this isolation to taking up the work of an anti-bias educator. “A lot of times,” martin says, “when we are teaching or working and doing really difficult work that’s pushing back against systems, it can be a very isolating experience in general. And so this increased isolation was just really hard.” martin sought solace remotely, reaching out to friends and colleagues Kass Minor, Elizabeth Kleinrock and Kelly Wickham Hurst. They brainstormed solutions and, soon thereafter, Liberate and Chill* was born.

Liberate and Chill* operated as a virtual collective for equity, justice and anti-bias, anti-racist (ABAR) education—a collective that has grown since that early outreach among friends. Its mission employed three key principles: learning, community and continuity.

“The first goal was to ensure that people and teachers were still getting quality anti-bias, anti-racist professional development during this time,” martin explains. “The other piece was to encourage and create community networks of care online. And the third was to ensure that the people who’ve committed their lives to this work, like consultants, are able to keep the lights on.”

Liberate and Chill* offered modules on ABAR education, 10 Q&As with social justice educators, a BIPOC affinity space, an LGBTQ brunch, community groups like “knit and nurture,” and open conversations about education and justice. Hundreds of participants gathered on Sunday nights to lesson plan together, splitting off into subject area breakout rooms, then coming back together for video gaming, fiber arts lessons and the reassurance of community.

“It became huge almost overnight,” remembers Cornelius Minor. “There were hundreds of teachers coming together. That really taught us that people want to study beyond what their schools are giving them.”

The collective’s success demonstrated an important fact: Physical proximity is not a prerequisite for solidarity. In fact, when communities drop the expectation of geographical closeness, rarely centered experiences and identities can come to the fore.

For those with historically oppressed identities, this presents a precious opportunity, as seeing oneself mirrored in others is already too rare. In this way, virtual community provides an oasis for soaking in safety and connection.

“Rarely ever am I in spaces with all of my people,” Cornelius Minor says. “That was a really cool aspect of it—where there was no need for the cultural translation work that has to happen, where we could just be. Even if we weren’t doing school stuff, we could just be.”