Learning to Adapt: Teaching in an Online World

Being able to navigate and be successful in this digital age has become more essential than ever before. Many teachers were forced to adapt and work within the new online world and it was quite messy! Common complaints of elementary and secondary students (and their parents) were inferior online classroom organization, poor or inconsistent communication, unclear learning objectives, lack of collaboration among students, inability to contact the teacher, and/or feelings of isolation by students and parents. All of these issues combined led to a lack of motivation and poor learning outcomes for many students. Teachers, students, and parent's experiences in 2020 definitely highlighted the need to take the online teaching world more seriously. Nonetheless, although adapting and change is necessary in order to have success in this new normal, it is still scary. This blog post is all about confronting these fears or challenges, and finding ways to adapt to create a quality and meaningful learning experience for students.

When it comes to my teaching practice, two things I hold of utmost importance are relationships and student well-being. These two things are the foundation for everything else that happens in the class no matter the subject. My biggest fear today is creating a classroom climate that does not embrace relationships and student well-being. Whether in person or online I want to be able to bring my students into a space that is welcoming, safe, challenging, exciting, engaging, accounts for student interests, voice, and choice, a space that promotes participation, taking risks, making mistakes, and exploring new ideas together! I want students to leave my class feeling satisfied and uplifted rather than dragged down and overwhelmed. I think my greatest challenge if I were asked to teach in an online capacity would be creating that same active classroom climate in a virtual sense. My teachable subjects are Health and Physical Education and English at the I/S division. I am used to getting involved in the activities with my students because I not only like to role model the behaviour I want to see, but I find I can connect more with them and on another level when I teach and learn with them. Transforming this in-person hands-on learning will certainly look different online, but I think it may still be possible to create relationships and promote student well-being in other ways.

Strategies to Promote a Positive Classroom Climate/ Build Relationships

In order to foster student well-being, I will need to promote an environment that welcomes students. When students are learning in a virtual capacity, I think it is important to recognize that students may been feeling anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem, poor social self-concept, and other mental health difficulties.

Key Learning #1: Simplicity & Consistency are Key to a Solid Foundation

In order to help students, feel welcome in the virtual environment, it has to be easy to understand and navigate. This means that the class should have established routines, visual cues or charts (i.e., calendars, visuals for specific tasks, same formatting on handouts and assignments, colour codes). The format from week to week and meeting times should stay the same. Though we want to provide our students with the world, we should stick to 2 additional resources that are easy to navigate. Assignments and due dates should be posted and easily identifiable, weeks should be listed alongside their topics and dates, a submission section, a grade section, and an appointment section should also be easily accessible.

#2: The Bricks and Mortar is Getting to Know your Students. Personalize the online space!

There should be a place for students to get to know you and each other. Providing a space for that personal touch will allow you to see what their interests and previous experiences are, and what they have in common with each other. A Learning Management System (LMS) should include:

• A teacher introduction page that is visual and expressive of who you are as a person and a place where students can post their introduction pages. Ask them to share their favourite hobbies, colours, success stories and biggest struggles with regard to the subject, what they want to learn, their real-life interests, a problem they may want to solve in the world, etc.

• A personalized home page or a newsletter of the month that could be co-constructed with students (possibly include the activity of the month, their biggest success as a class, student work worth recognizing, their biggest challenges as a class, what they learned, what they never want to learn again, etc.).

• Time at the beginning of your class as you would in a regular class to debrief anything interesting from the week and get to know each other.

#3: The Rooftop: Step outside in order to let students shine.

Keeping students motivated and engaged means quality of projects over quantity and making sure they have the tools in order to do these innovative and creative assignments that involve technology. Although tests and written assignments are good forms of assessment, it is important to allow for some creativity by building on those 21stcentury skills.

• In English, have students practice critical literacy by doing a video or audio book review and then attaching the QR code to your virtual library book!

• Additionally, we can use QR codes to gamify learning. For example, while progressing through a module or assignment, students can uncover QR codes that are clues or answers in Amazing Race style challenges.

• Think of ways to create real-world problem-solving projects. As we move further into the year, collaborative projects involving student voice and choice can put classroom culture into practice. Projects like climate change awareness campaign or alleviating community-specific problems that involve a practical component can help students feel more motivated to learn.

• Collaborative projects such as acting out a scene from Shakespeare and submitting it in a video format can also be a fun and exciting way to engage with content.

These are some of the few suggestions that can help build a positive classroom environment and promote relationships. Putting these strategies into practice can promote a sense of connectedness and belonging amongst students. Working cooperatively (although online) would help build students develop social-emotional learning skills which will positively impact their well-being. As they experience competence in these tasks and are recognized for their work not only by a grade but in meaningful ways (e.g., their real-world impact) they will begin to feel more competent and confident in themselves and hopefully more curious when it comes to their learning!

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Resources:

1. Learning to Teach Online: https://onlineteaching.ca/module-4/

2. Class Lecture Notes

3. Creating a Virtual Classroom Community: https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-create-community-virtual-classroom

4. Setting Up Easy Access to Digital Content in Elementary Schools: https://www.edutopia.org/article/setting-easy-access-digital-content-elementary-school

5. Scoping study into the approaches to student wellbeing: https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/appendix_1_literature_review.pdf