Chanaca and Love

Remote Learning at the High School: History Department

This blog series focuses on how Ensworth’s High School teachers are coping with remote learning during the pandemic. We spoke with Tim Love and David Chanaca of the history department about the creative ways they have found to connect with their classes.
As American history lovers, Tim Love and David Chanaca work well together as a team, having led many immersive activities and field trips, including a yearly trip to The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. 

Their subject area and Ensworth’s Harkness table method rely heavily on personal encounters for teaching to be effective. With the temporary closing of Ensworth’s doors, they had to rethink their approach. Although not necessarily new to the tools used in online learning, David and Tim had to learn how to depend on them for the remainder of the year.

“The Ensworth administration was thoughtful and helpful in advance of our remote learning experience,” Chanaca explains. Mr. Love agrees. “The faculty training the week before was a big help,” he recalls. “It provided a number of great options and ideas from my colleagues to implement. This included some great ways to use Tigernet, as well as some information about recording lessons to flip the classroom.”

“Zoom and Google Hangouts have allowed us to continue our Harkness discussions,” says Mr. Chanaca. “We continue to approach our class with a personal and human touch, regardless of the use of video conferencing.” He has also discovered a benefit not available in a traditional classroom. “We have the option of recording these sessions so students can review their performance after the Harkness session,” Chanaca says.

Despite the challenges of quarantine, teachers and students have been forced to rethink their own preconceived notions about how teaching and learning work. The asynchronous sessions allow students to engage with the material when their mental energy level is at its most receptive. This helps better prepare everyone for the real-time remote discussion. 

“Learning and teaching always improve when someone questions old assumptions,” David explains. “This time of remote learning has allowed me to question what traditional techniques can be adapted to provide new strategies.”

“If there’s one thing I would like to tell parents is that these are not wasted days!” asserts Mr. Chanaca.

The demands and restrictions of online learning have made it imperative to focus efforts and create new and flexible ways to cover material. One solution Mr. Love has devised during this period is assigning different research topics to each student, with all of the material being covered by the entire class. 

“The best example of this was this past week with our Learning and Conditioning unit in Psychology,” Tim describes. “There are four major concepts that I like to cover in class. Instead of having the students read all of this material I assigned each student one of the four readings. They became experts on this. We had a class meeting on Zoom and I let the students walk the class through the information of their reading. This way we covered all of the information and we cut down on some of the workload.”

A member of the Ensworth faculty since the fall of 2014, Love teaches American Studies to Grade 10 students and an upper-level history course on psychology.

David Chanaca began working at the Ensworth Red Gables Campus, teaching Grades 5 and 6, before becoming the history department chair at the High School when it was founded in 2004. He, too, teaches American Studies, plus a World War II upper-level class that has become renowned for its oral history projects by engaging with veterans.

Although remote learning has spurred students and teachers into taking more active ownership of the educational process, Chanaca and Love both agree that no method can ever replace the give and take of in-person classes around the Harkness table.

“It is more important now than ever to teach civil discourse and personal interaction in a positive and knowledge-based approach,” Chacaca asserts. “No video will ever take the place of human interaction. Nothing can replace watching facial expressions, referencing a previous student comment in person, and using human connection to make verbal interaction honest yet supportive.”

“Yet,” David acknowledges, “Video conferencing has allowed us to continue to converse in a supportive way and also allows us to record both our verbal and written responses. In the meantime, Ensworth has kept its learning relevant, even innovative, while we wait for some sort of normalcy to begin again.”
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