John Vas uses the word serendipitous to describe the decision he made back in January to change how he “invested” the funds he received from the Jennings Foundation after being selected the recipient of the 2019 George B. Chapman, Jr. Teacher Award for Excellence in Mathematics Education. What he didn’t know at the time is that substituting one technology for another would serve as a huge boon to Olmsted Falls High School when all classes became virtual during the coronavirus pandemic.

The project Mr. Vas outlined in the award application in spring, 2019, involved purchasing technology students in his mathematics classes would use to create video tutorials for their peers.

“One of the best ways to learn math is to teach math,” explains Mr. Vas, who has had years of success himself creating video tutorials, which he posts frequently on YouTube. The videos allow students to pause, rewind, or re-watch a lesson as often as they like to review a concept they don’t understand. His goal with this recent project was to have teams of students research a mathematics topic, design an engaging min-lesson to teach the topic, develop a strategy to deliver the content in video format, and collaborate with students in a digital marketing class to record, produce, edit, and publish for peer review.

“Whenever I ask students to show peers how they did something, they respond, ‘Wow, I really have to learn it to explain it to somebody else.’ And that is what I hope to achieve by asking students to create videos for each other,” he remarks.

Originally, Mr. Vas intended to purchase a stand alone video lightboard with award funds that would allow viewers to see both the face of the “peer teacher” and what he/she is writing on the board at the same time. After researching the product, however, he realized it would not be the best use of the money. His intention, he explains, was to purchase a tool that would benefit not only his students but also his colleagues throughout the mathematics department. Because the video lightboard requires a dedicated “studio” setup and a lot of support equipment to operate correctly, he was concerned it would be impractical and would not be useful to other teachers.

After ruling out the purchase of the lightboard, Mr. Vas was admittedly a bit panicked about what he would do with the project money.  That concern changed when he discovered a student using an iPad Air with an Apple pencil in his class last December. “The student told me this device had changed his life,” Mr. Vas remarks. “I saw that it transformed had him as a student. His work in my course improved by 10-15 percent from first to second quarter. So, I dug into it to see if that device could be used by my students to create videos, and I realized it could.”

Investing in this technology, Mr. Vas says, would not alter the end result of the project  – students would still create tutorials to post on YouTube, they would just use a different device to do so.

With great anticipation, Mr. Vas received 10 new iPad Air devices and Apple pencils in early March and was just beginning to introduce students to the technology when COVID-19 closed schools throughout the state.

“I was not able to get the student video project going this year, however I was able to repurpose the investment,” Mr. Vas explains in an e-mail several weeks after the shutdown. “When I changed the project from a stand alone video tool to the individual iPads with Apple pencils, I felt this was the right thing to do for many reasons, but it has worked out so well for us during school closure. The iPads are now being used by teachers to create instructional videos and engage their students during this distance learning period. Had I continued with the original project proposal, the entire investment would be sitting in an empty school. Now, teachers are using the investment to help students learn. I am very grateful to MHJF for making this possible.”

Recognizing the invaluable role technology such as this has played during school closures, Mr. Vas reflects on the void technology alone is unable to fill:

“You can replace face-to-face instruction, but it is not nearly as effective. So much is lost without the ability to pull a student aside, look him in the eye, and say, ‘How can I help?’

Even though communication is distributed instantly in the ‘digital age’, that doesn't mean it's received or understood instantly.  Things just happen slower now. Everything is delayed... I send an email, hope a student reads it, track down those who have disengaged, etc.  

Technology became critical during this period.  It has gone beyond a ‘flipped classroom’ model to a ‘no classroom’ model. With a ‘flipped classroom’ model, there is still the opportunity to engage with students and provide feedback.  That part is considerably more difficult now. I was fortunate in that I had done video lessons before, but the interaction and feedback with students is hard to recreate remotely. There are a lot of technology tools out there to facilitate this, however it takes a lot of time to pick a collection of them that works best for an individual teacher.  

Students changed too... Most of them became nocturnal.  [I'm convinced that is the natural state for young adults.]  Many of them became primary caregivers for younger siblings while parents went to work. Many of them started working full time, and it seemed like this happened almost overnight. Even the most motivated students struggled. The message of, ‘Come on!  Let's go!  You can do this!’ just doesn't have the same impact over email or video conference as it does in person. 

Mr. Vas became a high school mathematics teacher 13 years ago after spending 15 years in the corporate world as an engineer. “I always wanted to teach, even back when I was in engineering school,” he remarks. As for receiving the Jennings Award, he adds: “I am terribly honored to receive this award. I know the candidates are all high-powered educators, and from that standpoint I am very honored. But at the end of the day, it’s all about the kids. I won this award because I have amazing students. If I didn’t have amazing students, I couldn’t be an amazing teacher.”