‘We can’t lose you’: social media and school culture during remote schooling

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent school closures forced educators to seek new means of engaging students, especially in schools serving low-income communities hit hard by the pandemic. This exploratory virtual ethnography, part of a larger study on the culture of progressive (or student-centered) schools, follows one innovative urban high school as it shifted from in-person to remote schooling. It documents how the school attempted to use Instagram to reach students and counter the social isolation associated with the COVID-19 shutdown. We find the school used virtual spaces to enact culturally sustaining pedagogical practices in the absence of ‘real world’ interactions. The school’s Instagram emphasized positive relationships, celebrated resilience in the face of challenges, and affirmed student cultures and identities. Our data suggest that this forum played an important role in sustaining school culture and student-adult connections during an extremely challenging period for the school community.

KEYWORDS:

• School culture
• progressive schools
• culturally sustaining pedagogies
• emotional labor
• COVID-19

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the National Science Foundation (Grant #2017107) for its support of this project. This article also benefited greatly from the feedback of two anonymous reviewers and journal editor, Felicitas Macgilchrist, and from feedback from Annette Lareau and Judith Levine. Finally, we are eternally grateful to the educators and students at Bell for welcoming us into their community and sharing their experiences with us. An earlier version of this article was presented at the American Education Research Association’s annual meeting in San Diego (April 2022).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 All names are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by a grant to the second author from the National Science Foundation (#2017107). This research was approved by Temple University’s Institutional Review Board.