We stand in awe of the area teachers who in two weeks have put together a system of long-distance learning that lets them and their students stay home while the students download and perform the lessons their teachers have prepared. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this is the only alternative to shutting down schools entirely.

So many factors have gone into making this work. Schools have been investing heavily in providing laptops and tablets for their students to use in school. Now, when they need them, the students have the equipment to access their lessons at home. Educators and programmers have been developing lesson plans and programs to take advantage of the technology in school, not suspecting the could be the basis for a stay-at-home school period. We’re sure no one was expecting that the technology and programming would be pushed ahead so quickly. “Some day,” people probably said, “remote education will be the norm,” but they probably expected it would be years before that became a reality.

Along comes the COVID-19 virus and suddenly long-distance education is here. TEachers are doing it because they have to. We are sure that educators will be studying the results of this forced experiment. Will students learn as effectively through computers instead of sitting in a classroom with a teacher? What lessons worked and what didn’t? How can it be improved in the future?

Someday today’s teachers may be looked upon as the pioneers who blazed the way into a new age of education. Today, we can still say, “Way to go!”