For the past three weeks, every Tuesday at 9 pm, I’ve logged onto Ostatha Ikram’s Zoom to participate in what she and Ostath Georges call “Zoom Conversation Session.” The sessions are 45 minutes in length (however the most recent session went over 5 minutes), and for that period of time, I and three other students practice speaking, writing, and listening to letters like Alif, Baa, and Khaa - just a few of the first letters in the Levantine dialect of the Arabic alphabet.
Khaa, my least favorite letter, is a frequent source of humor during our sessions. Mainly because it’s a friction letter, which means that every time I pronounce it, I sound like I’m coughing up phlegm. My mom is grossed out by the sound, and sometimes says, “Leah, can you do that somewhere I can’t hear? I can hear you from the backroom upstairs.” To which I simply respond, “Where should I go? I’m in class.”
That “class” is my GOA course titled: Arabic through Language and Culture I. In recent years, I’ve become interested in Arabic. I think it’s a beautiful language, one spoken by so many people in our world. I guess it also seemed complicated - a trait that tends to draw my attention.
A former Latin student, I completed Lovett’s required three years of one foreign language and felt that it was time for a switcheroo. That opportunity came through GOA. Global Online Academy is a high school education program that offers courses for students interested in advancing or delving into subjects not offered at their high school.
There are currently nine students taking a GOA course at Lovett. I thought it would be interesting to get their thoughts about the online learning program.
I talked to Aiden Hahn, a 12 grader taking Graphic Design for the fall semester. Why Graphic Design? “I’ve always kind of had an interest in graphic design,” Aiden said. “I’m in my senior year, and going into college I wanted to see if it’s something I’m interested in taking.”
In the Upper School, students can take one GOA course every school year if they want to (no matter the length of the course). Aiden has definitely taken advantage of that opportunity—last year she took a Film course, which she says was “really fun.” The class even helped her decide that she wants to be a film major in college.
At Lovett, teachers and students use MyLion to upload, post, and submit learning material such as class notes, presentations, major and minor assignment prompts, and important due dates. For the current school year, my Arabic MyLion page is completely blank. That’s because GOA uses a platform called Canvas to do the exact same things listed above. I used Canvas before for a three-week summer program, but logging into it for a GOA course feels much, much different.
I asked Aiden about her thoughts on the Canvas platform. “I like how the modules are set up, it’s very easy to see,” she said. “However, I don’t like the grading page. It’s very difficult to see.” She also doesn’t like that when she sees her grades, they’re in comparison to the class’s average for that specific assignment.
Personally, I have all these qualms and more. Like MyLion, you can view assignment due dates on Canvas in a calendar format. Unlike MyLion however, all of your assignments (at least those of which the teacher does put on MyLion) don’t actually appear on the assignment calendar. Picture this: you log onto MyLion to see your assignment calendar, but unbeknownst to you, about half of the assignments aren’t actually there for you to see. It’s like expecting to submit three assignments due on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, but not realizing that you actually had to complete two more assignments on Monday and Thursday. I experienced that scenario during my second week of GOA. Luckily, my teachers were gracious and understood my misunderstanding.
Remember my 9pm Tuesday evening Zoom Conversation Sessions? Yeah, the reason why they occur so late at night is that different time zones are critical to the “global” aspect of GOA learning. I have classmates in Washington, D.C, Oregon, Washington, Chicago, and even Singapore. My two teachers live in Massachusetts and Kentucky. I’m pretty lucky in that all of our Zoom meetings are scheduled in Eastern Standard Time—I don’t have to do the math to figure out the time difference. However, sometimes on Tuesday night I do get caught by surprise when I realize that yes, Leah, you do have Arabic in five minutes.
For Aidan, the time zone differences “haven’t been too much of an obstacle.” She says it can be especially helpful if a busy afternoon only allows her to jump onto a call at 12 am. I’ll admit that sometimes it is hard to fathom that I have an additional class to participate in when my eyes are barely able to open.
To get to the question I’m sure you are all wondering about, I asked Aiden about the general class atmosphere. Is it rowdy? Quiet? Who’s the class clown? “The classmate interactions have been pretty great. I’ve gotten to know some of my classmates,” she said. This semester, her teacher has been much more engaged (more than her teacher last semester)—sending direct messages, making comments, and more! Teachers texting? That’s right! GOA students don’t have to email their teachers. All we have to do is log onto the Twist platform (direct messaging), and wait for a response. In my experience, the response time has been fairly quick—I’m talking within minutes!
As for what’s going well? “Considering it’s an online class, I think I’m doing well with keeping up with my assignments,” Aiden said, “…commenting on my classmates' discussion posts, it’s all going pretty well.”
For the most part, I agree with Aiden. I would add however that in my first six weeks of GOA, I’ve had a lot (and I mean a lot) of work to complete. Of course, I should add that learning a completely new language in and of itself requires an immense amount of work. We both agreed that sometimes we procrastinate. With work to complete every night for Lovett classes, AND GOA, some work just has to wait to be completed hours before the deadline. Aiden also added that it would be nice if the “Lovett-GOA relationship was more communicative” when it comes to end-of-semester grading. She stated “it took a while for my GOA grade to be applied to my GPA.”
But even with all the highs and lows, late nights, and heavy workloads, we agreed that the course was totally worth it. If you think about it, GOA really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity afforded to students all around the world. Plus, I must add, for someone who has never had a free period in high school, my GOA “free period” (really just a work period) is really nice.
Original source can be found here.
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