Motivating students to stay engaged with online instruction can take some creativity.
Working at a special education learning center in Los Angeles, Luca Messarra found the promise of choosing a book to read for fun after a lesson kept his 9- to 11-year-old kids going. Although access to physical books was limited during the pandemic, he found digital versions in the Internet Archive that made all the difference.
Messarra’s individual work with students moved online in March 2020, in the early days of the pandemic. He continued to help them learn to read and write by doing drills remotely, using online instruction materials provided by the learning center. It did not have access to digital works of fiction, but Messarra says those were the books that most excited the students.
“That was the most fun because it was an opportunity for them to see the fruits of their labor. They could read a book, finally,” says the 25-year-old who lives in Palo Alto. “It’s far more entertaining to read a book than to do drills over and over again. That was the highlight for a lot of students—to finally be able to read a book of their own choosing.”
Since wrapping up his job at the learning center, Messarra has been enrolled in a graduate English program at Stanford University where he is specializing in digital humanities and postcolonialism.
Looking back on his teaching experience during the pandemic, Messarra says he values the resources from the Internet Archive. “It was incredibly helpful and quite essential to boost the morale of students. They were bored and frustrated because of the pandemic,” he says. “For one of my students, it was his goal to read Harry Potter. Once he was able to read it, he was super excited and eventually bought the book because he was having such a good time.”
“Hog Meat” by Daniel Webster Davis. No politics, no racism, just perfect. I love this poem because whomever wrote it must’ve felt just like I do when I sit down to a big sloppy mess of BBQ ribs.
I love the Internet Archive, and I love my fellow man. I despise politics, I haven’t watched a news broadcast in a decade (sucks when I find out years later about earthquakes & viruses, but I’ll manage), and I have zero social media accounts. I choose to live this way because I hated the way it made me feel angry and scared all the time. It’s amazing how much happier life is when you begin to see people as your neighbors again and not as your enemies.
I picture the poet who wrote “Hog Meat” as someone with a big smile on their face, who wrote a wonderful poem about something they truly enjoyed. Life IS the simple things. There is still joy to be had!