A student can stare at a textbook without understanding a word. The same student can click through an online lesson on their school Chromebook and finish every question without being able to explain what they just learned.
Either way, the assignment gets marked complete. The learning is another question.
A recent video from educator @rafacreatesedu got me thinking about the debate over laptops and textbooks. Rafael raised a question that stayed with me: what really changes when we swap a laptop for a textbook, but leave the teaching the same?
Students need opportunities to think, practice, and receive meaningful feedback. Teachers need time to notice where a student is stuck and figure out what might help.
That’s the part that connects so closely to our work at Pacific Learning Academy. One-to-one teaching gives us time to learn the student, and the flexibility to do something with what we learn.
Families often find us when something in their student’s school experience has stopped working. A student is struggling, falling behind, or becoming increasingly reluctant to participate. The family knows their child is capable, but school has become a daily source of frustration.
Sometimes, a change of environment makes a noticeable difference. A quieter room. A different pace. The chance to ask a question without an audience.
But one-to-one teaching asks more of us than providing a quieter place to sit.
Our teachers take time to learn the student.
That means finding out what the student understands now, where they want to go, and what is getting in the way. It means listening to the student as well as looking at their work. And it means being willing to change our approach when the first explanation doesn’t connect.
A missing assignment tells us that something wasn’t completed. It doesn’t tell us why.
Did the student misunderstand the directions? Miss a foundational skill? Get overwhelmed by the number of steps? Understand the concept but struggle to put it into writing?
Those situations call for different responses. “Try harder” doesn’t give us much of a teaching plan.
The same is true when we choose materials. A printed page can create a useful space for focused reading or working through a problem. It can also become an exercise in copying answers without understanding them.
A laptop can offer a helpful simulation, an accessible text, or a way to get ideas onto the page. It can also offer a very tempting collection of unrelated tabs.
The question we need to keep asking is: What is this tool helping this student do?
Consider a student who can explain a complicated idea aloud but gets stuck when asked to write a paragraph. A teacher might begin with a conversation, help the student organize those ideas, and then work toward the writing goal. Typing or speech-to-text might be useful along the way.
For another student, an open laptop may keep interrupting the task. Closing it and working through a problem on a whiteboard together might make the next step easier to see.
A third student might finish a page of correct answers. Asking them to explain one answer or apply the idea to a new example helps the teacher check what they understand and what still needs work.
That is the kind of flexibility one-to-one teaching makes possible: noticing, checking, adjusting, and checking again.
But noticing, checking, and adjusting all take time. Teachers also need the flexibility to change course when they see that a student needs something different.
Over my years in education, I’ve watched the pressure to cover more curriculum leave less room to linger. To explore an unexpected question. To try a creative approach. To spend another day on something students are beginning to find interesting, or something they haven’t quite understood.
Even twenty years ago, I was seeing departmental exams shape what happened in the classroom. I understand wanting to make sure students in different sections of a course meet the same expectations. Shared expectations have a purpose. But when a common exam starts to determine the pace and direction of every lesson, what happens to the teacher’s ability to respond to the learners in the room?
A student asks a thoughtful question that could lead somewhere interesting. Another needs more time with a foundational concept. The teacher sees an opportunity to let students build, investigate, or create something. How much room is there to follow through when the next assessment is approaching and there is still material to cover?
Those are questions about the conditions we give teachers to teach in. Replacing a laptop with a textbook doesn’t, by itself, create that time.
At Pacific Learning Academy, our one-to-one structure gives us room to respond to one learner during the lesson. We still have learning goals and expectations for mastery. Knowing where we’re going helps us make thoughtful choices about how to get there: when to pause, when to practice, and when a student’s interest offers a useful way into the subject.
Learning the student means being able to act on what we learn about them.
A textbook may be part of that lesson. So may a laptop, a whiteboard, or a conversation.
Whichever tools we choose, we need to know why we’re using them, notice whether they’re helping, and keep learning the student.