week 9: summary of Distance Learning: A Gently Curated Collection of Resources for Teachers

This post was published March 2020 a couple of weeks after the country shut down in response to covid-19. The post seems to be a response to the initial feelings of overwhelm and uncertainty how to chart the new territory of virtual learning. Here are some components of Gonzalez’s post that resonated with me.

-Get Physical: I’ve been walking or going to the gym for an hour plus almost daily with another teacher since covid began. This has been a highlight of the last year as it also provided a time to fill my relationship bucket with this friend and I know has helped me physically, mentally, and emotionally in tremendous ways. 

-Connecting and Communicating with Students: I wish I had more time and energy to devote to strengthening connections with students. There are lots of little things that I do daily, but I want to be doing more handwritten notes and special activities. I have both synchronous and asynchronous opportunities for communication and learning in my virtual classroom, but I wish I had more time to devote to strengthening asynchronous content and resources.

-Keeping Everything Organized: I’m proud of the organization in my google classrooms this trimester. I have topics categorized by week and every single post has the date that it was covered in class as the first part of the title. These dates then match to the assignments in the gradebook.

-Options for Delivering Content: I would like to push myself to learn how to create good digital videos. I think it’s neat when kids can hear their own teacher’s voice. I’ve been intentional to use a variety of tools/platforms for delivering content in order to keep kids on their toes. However, I’ve thought more this year about examining the purpose of different tools and making sure it strengthens my instruction.

-Options for Demonstrating Learning: It’s been really nice to have the flexibility to not use district provided tests this year and rather create my own shorter assessments. I’ve struggled coming up with creative assessment ideas for mathematics.

-Make Social Interaction a Priority: Some of our kids are really struggling right now lacking this social interaction. It’s sad and scary. But on the flip side, what’s the best way to provide this social interaction when you also have content to cover? I was watching two of my student’s screens in a breakout room and they were talking about very inappropriate topics.

At the end of each year I draw a bubble map to reflect on my big takeaways/growth from the year. It’s interesting how the pandemic has forced us to examine pedagogy and practices from a new light. I’m hopeful some of this increased insight I’ve gained will transfer back to my in-person classroom in the fall.