I led a webinar the other day about remote learning, and as I was prepping for it I reached out to some great teachers and principals I know around the country and asked, “What’s working?” I heard from elementary, middle school, and high school heroes in all parts of America, from New York City (Hang in there, NYC. We’re with you, and there’s not a stronger group of people anywhere…) to Ohio to Texas to sunny Southern California.
And some common themes emerged.
1. Relationships first. This is being screamed from the school rooftops, or where ever teachers and principals are working these days. Take care of the kids. Reach out. Let them hear your voice and see your face. The students are used to structure and to having a teacher within shouting distance. Now they’re in various environments, and they’re feeling stressed like everybody else. We’ve always said the kids are more important than the learning - now it’s time for educators to Zoom in, Google Meet them, and Google Hangout for a while.
2. Relax. Deep breaths, people. As Nikki Gordon, a great math teacher from SoCal told me, “The motto is ‘Keep It Simple.’ Neither the teachers nor students signed up for this situation…” How true. Don’t overload the students. Don’t overload the parents. Don’t overload yourself. There’s only so much you, and they, can do.
3. “Less is more.” These insightful words of Priscilla Gonzalez, a teaching ninja from Texas, summed up what a lot of people are telling me. When we combine all the subjects of a school day, factor in what the students can accomplish without us, and try to keep them from going back to their Xbox, we’re left with a few hours of remote learning each day. Any teacher who treats remote learning like a regular school day will be miserable. The trick is to zero in on activities that will engage students, get them to think, and can be done in a reasonable amount of time. Hint: Gen Z kids LOVE to evaluate and create.
4. Let the students plug in…but get them to unplug. We’ve given them Chromebooks, Google classroom, Flipgrid codes, and Zoom times. But balance is good. Get the students to read a book (not an online version, but a hard copy book with a cover, a spine, and pages) do an assignment or two on paper, and actually talk to somebody.
5. Make it equitable. Of course, some students can’t do their work online because they don’t have access to the internet, an older sibling is tying up the bandwidth, or the Chromebook that worked so well in school suddenly doesn’t work as well after that Coke got spilled onto its keypad. Know which students can’t get online, and make sure they have paper assignments that engage them and get them to think
6. Now we actually want them jumping around. In class we spend a lot of time trying to get students to settle down and focus on their assignments. But we have a new goal with remote learning: trying to get students to exercise for at least 30 minutes each day. Research shows physical activity helps kids learn. And this isn’t just the job of the remote PE teacher. We’re all in this crowded remote learning lifeboat together, so when we’re sending out assignments, we need to remind students to stretch, walk the dog, do a Gonoodle, or do some push ups between Nearpod lessons (or build the pushups into the Nearpod lessons…)
A final refrain I heard from quite a few teachers is, “I’m glad I was already having my students use a lot of technology, because they already know how to log in and start doing the work…” That’s a critical point, because we are now in the “new normal.” Remote learning might be here for the rest of this school year, and the virus experts are warning of a resurgence next winter, which means we might be going through this all over again. When the world returns to normal and we welcome our students back to school, whether it’s this spring or next fall, we need to be preparing for that future day when we might be closing our schools again and searching our computers for our remote learning lesson plans. If there’s a next time, at least we’ll have a better idea of what works. For now, the best things we can do as we teach are to stay healthy and take care of the kids.
And relax.