How do we teach from home? This is not a question most educators have likely ever considered – at least not seriously. While many other professions have shifted toward increasing remote work capabilities, it has never been a possibility for us, minus a few teacher work days here and there. Regardless, here we are, our worlds are rocked and we are trying to figure out what to do next.
The main message that I keep hearing over and over is that distance learning does not replace classroom learning. And that’s true – we should not expect to replace the instruction that we would be giving to students in the classroom. In a time of crisis, as we are all learning to become online teachers, many families are apprehensive at best, scared at worst, and all are uncertain about students adapting to this new environment. The reality, though, is that we cannot have the same expectations of students that we once did. We must be cognizant of each family and what the learning environments may look like in each household.
What we should expect – and strive toward – is to continue building a classroom community however we can. Community, defined by a feeling of wanting to be with other people or of caring about the other people in a group, drives so much of what we do as teachers. We spend the entire beginning of the year setting up our classroom communities and making sure our students feel safe and have a sense of belonging. We do this because we know it must come before learning can take place. Students need to feel like they are a part of their community in order to thrive. But this word does not have a physical place in its definition. We need to send a message to our students to let them know that we still care and that we are still a classroom community.
Here are some fun and easy digital tools to continue building your classroom community during this time.
- Youtube- This may be a familiar website, but until now I have personally never created an account. Create an account, make a video of yourself giving a positive message to your students and send it out to parents to show their children.
- Flipgrid- This website it amazing and can be used for almost any purpose of sharing and collaborating digitally. I sent one to my students this week asking them to share something that they have been working on at home! It was fun to see their faces and some students even commented on how happy they were to see each other.
- Zoom- This is another website that allows you to create videos, but you can control the commenting features. Zoompro is available to all teachers right now so there are more tools to try out.
- Padlet- These are essentially virtual sticky notes. Pose a question or share a picture and allow students to answer with their thoughts! This could be great for a morning meeting share!
- Jamboard- These are also like virtual sticky notes but there are multiple pages of them so teachers can add different questions or prompts on each page. This is a part of G-suite so it may not be available to everyone.
Try to find one way to encourage your students digitally right now. Try something new, even if it is not the most comfortable!
-Crafting Comprehension
