Category: General

Welcome back!

I am sure we have all had one of the most bizarre Septembers of our careers. What seemed like a crazy year last year has the potential to be topped this year. From wondering how many students would be in our class to uncertainties regarding our positions, we really need to be prepared for it all this year.

During the first week of September, I was declared surplus from my school and I was given a position in the remote classroom. I had just under a week to set up an online classroom and familiarize myself with the HUB and MS Teams. Thank goodness I started to dabble in them last year, knowing that I was seeing the last of Google Classroom (our school board will be moving away from the Google Suite.). Anyways, I was excited to start my grade seven online class beginning the third week of September. I notified the families of our platform and I was ready to go. Here are my reflections after an exciting two weeks of remote teaching.

What has worked:

Each day, we begin with a student selected song of the day which serves as our countdown to start the teams call(our class). Then, our call commences at 9:00 AM. We review the days schedule and then a student plays O Canada from a youtube link of their choice. From there, I use a powerpoint to navigate us through the daily lessons. I put the name of the subject on the screen and then in the speakers notes, I have my lesson plan. This has been incredibly helpful as the students see the name of the subject on the screen and I have my notes (which are visible only to me).

In language, we have visited newsela to read articles followed by a quiz and then a written response. Students have used the discussions section in the HUB to write a public post responding to a newsela writing prompt. On Fridays, we use the assignment section where students use the success criteria to complete a task for the week. Last week, we did a reading task where students were asked to use evidence from the task to justify the main idea of the article, “What is a Kelp Forest?”

In math, we visit numerous websites such as Which One Doesn’t Belong?, Visual Patterns, Would you rather, Mashup Math and Estimation 180 to get our math lesson started (about 20 minutes or so). This serves as our daily number talk. Students have turned on their mic as well as typed in the chat to share their thinking when solving problems from these engaging sites. Then, we spiral into the grade seven curriculum using the TIPS document. On Fridays, students complete an assignment in the assignment section to demonstrate our learning for the week.

In our other subjects, we have started using the discussions section as well as the chat feature in MS teams to share our prior knowledge about certain topics such as ecosystems, landforms, the elements of music and art and students have even started powerpoint presentations to share about one of their passions.

Everyday at the end of the school day, we access a feature in our teams app called “Praise” and students can select a badge such as: courage, teamwork, leader, coach, awesome, achiever, etc. to award to one of their fellow classmates. They send it through the chat and they can write an explanation for why they have given that badge to their classmate. This has been my favourite part of the day as students who really helped someone out during the class get some recognition (as in the moment, these acts of kindness can go unnoticed). It has been great to see students recognizing each other’s achievements and receiving them in return.

What I am still learning:

Some challenging things have occurred such as students navigating the new websites. Everyone’s online knowledge is very different as students come fully equipped with past experiences whereas others are unsure of how to do simple things on the computer such as copy and paste. I have had to demonstrate everything in small steps using my screen share feature to explain how to create presentations, copy and paste a document and open google drive. We are working through the kinks daily but I am remembering to slow down.

Teaching physical education or having DPA online is something we have not quite figured out yet. I have received creative documents from my colleagues outlining physical tasks students can choose from, but the team aspect of the subject cannot be mimicked. We cannot have the same experience that their in-school peers are having.

We have also run into the problem of having siblings or family members inappropriately “interrupting” our teams call, sometimes by accident or one time on purpose. Some choice words have been said on the microphone so it is important to continue reviewing the proper ways to use the microphone feature each day before we start our lesson. I am always reminding students to double check that their mic is off if they do not intend on sharing that way. We have also been using the hands up feature to avoid interrupting people.

What’s Next?

As I receive new students and new resources weekly, I will continue to try to engage my online learners. I have been fortunate enough to have many successful lessons thus far because my 30 online learners have been positive, engaged and have approached each day with a can-do attitude! I am missing the real classroom but as for COVID procedures, my students do not have to worry about social distancing in the safety of their own homes. I will keep everyone updated on our remote journey.

Hope everyone has a splendid last few days of September! Sending positive vibes your way in whatever classroom you are in 🙂

I’m the first person to admit that I don’t like change. I don’t handle it very well and I don’t handle uncertainty well either. I like to have all the information and I like to plan ahead. I know I’m not the only one! This is not the time for people like me. Our world is full of change and uncertainty right now. I’m learning to roll with the punches as we all have been during this pandemic. Almost all aspects of daily life have changed over the past few months. The change hasn’t been limited to our personal lives either, as the world of education has undergone some major changes too. Our jobs have changed drastically and the adaptability of teachers has never been so important.

This week definitely has a feeling of relief to it. I’m going to miss interacting with my students, but after the whirlwind (that’s putting it nicely) of a year we’ve had, I think every teacher is breathing a sigh of relief.

Unfortunately, that sigh of relief might feel very short-lived for a lot of us. There is so much uncertainty in the air about what the future of education looks like. What will September look like? Will we be back in classes as normal? Will we be distance teaching again? Will we be working with a blended model of both? Will we be safe? How are we possibly going to make this work? As much as we all need these answers, we simply don’t have them yet. It’s so easy to get caught up in speculation and worry. Our minds race through “what if” scenarios, which lead us to more and more questions and a lot more anxiety.

Social media can be a dangerous place during uncertain times. People speculate, share hypotheticals, and post their own ideas of needs to happen which can lead to misinformation and overload. Try not to get caught up in all of that.

We’ve worked hard to get to where we are this week. We’ve accomplished what was completely unthinkable up until it became our reality in March. Colleagues, we’ve earned this summer break. We need to honour our own wellbeing this summer. Of course, there are things we can do to prepare ourselves for possible scenarios and teaching models but we would be doing ourselves a disservice to speculate, worry, and try to create answers that simply don’t exist.

Celebrate your accomplishments, reflect on what you’ve learned (I know I’ve learned a lot these past few months!) and take some time to distance yourself from distance learning! Our students deserve refreshed and rejuvenated educators welcoming them in September.

The detailed school reopening plans will come and when they do, we will roll with the punches! That’s what us teachers do best, isn’t? Not to mention that this is a great opportunity to model adaptability for our students and our own children. Even for people like me!

Think about a 7-10 split in bowling. You aim right down the middle and knock over all the pins except for the two at the back corners. Happens to me all the time!

“The ball is the lesson, the pins are the kids. We aim for the middle. We do the best we can. The pins that are left standing we often have another chance to kind of get to them, but at the end of the day those two pins that are staring back at you are the kids who need the most support and the kids who need the most challenge. So, we end up choosing one and the other one is left standing.”

Watch below to hear how bowling really is just like teaching, and how a professional bowler can teach us a valuable lesson about inclusive education that you might not have thought about.

Shelley Moore is a teacher, researcher, consultant and storyteller in Vancouver, BC. If you haven’t heard of Shelley yet, then I’m pleased to be the one to introduce you! I was first exposed to Shelley’s online content during a PD session at my board and have since found her analogies, knowledge and passion to be extremely valuable for my own growth as an educator. Her research and work has been featured at national and international conferences and is constructed based on theory and effective practices of inclusion, special education, curriculum and teacher professional development.

For teachers both new and seasoned, Shelley offers video content as well as other online learning opportunities that are sure to bend the way you think and open your eyes to things you may not have thought of before. If you enjoyed this analogy, wait until you hear her use baked potatoes to explore scaffolding complexity. You’ll probably laugh along the way, too.

I hope you spend a few minutes checking out some of her content! I just couldn’t keep this fresh, entertaining and helpful resource to myself. You can follow Shelley Moore’s channel called Five Moore Minutes on Youtube, as @tweetsomemoore on Twitter, or at www.fivemooreminutes.com .

Distance learning has offered rewards and challenges that I’m sure no educator could have seen coming their way. As our school year’s end is approaching, I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on  the overall experience of distance learning for myself and my students. While I could probably write for days about all of the ways distance learning was impactful, I wanted to highlight one in particular.

In many cases, my relationships with my students changed.

At the onset of this wild ride, I was mostly worried about my teacher-student relationships changing, and not in a good way. I worried about how removing the social interaction of being together in the same room would negatively impact our relationships. I worried about the loss of our high fives, inside jokes, and the ability to play with each other. I dreaded the thought of simply assigning work from behind a screen while they completed it alone. Luckily, that’s not all how this turned out.

I was pleasantly surprised with how well I was able to maintain special, personal and close relationships with my students even over distance learning. I teach grade 3/4 and worried that my students’ lack of proficiency with technology and even just typing on a keyboard would add increased barriers to our communication. They floored me with their ability to adapt and overcome that. Every day, I exchanged instant messages with my students and was able to maintain the same banter and tone that we would if we were right beside each other in the classroom.

However, the most impactful change to our teacher-student relationships came from outside of the curriculum, outside of my planned program, and outside of anything either of us were expected to do.

With many of my students, the ability to stay in touch digitally and in real-time (we’ve been using SeeSaw as our main platform) allowed me to become a part of their daily life at home. Many of my students welcomed my presence with open arms into their daily activities and this opened up a new way for us to interact.

After a few weeks of getting used to online communication, my students started to send me photos and videos things that weren’t school work. I was getting pictures of Lego creations, arts and crafts, forts made out of cardboard boxes, or handmade jewelry. One student sent me a photo of lunch that she had cooked by herself for the first time. Another sent me a photo of flowers she had planted in her garden. Another student sent me a photo of a fox he saw in his yard. The other day, a student sent me a photo of herself doing a handstand in her pool that she had just mastered.

These offerings from my students acted as a catalyst for what I think was our most valuable learning together throughout this whole thing. Personalized, authentic and real-time exchanges that were child directed. A chance for me to engage them in critical thinking, prompt independent inquiry and point out their learning in one-on-one manner.

It might have been easy for me to fluff that off as typical kids being excited to show things off to their teacher, but there’s a Kindergarten teacher in me. And that Kindergarten teacher’s heart jumped with joy because my students were allowing me a window into their learning through real, authentic, hands-on learning and play. With them sharing their small projects, interests and curiosities with me, I could add to their experiences by noticing or naming academic concepts, prompting wonder, and pointing out their growth through their exploration.

It reminded me so much of teaching kindergarten, where the same relationship of observing a child’s play and drawing the learning from it was my main approach to teaching. This can totally still happen in grade 3 and 4, but when the world for them to explore is expanded beyond our limited classroom walls it is so much more enriched. To illustrate this, I had an entire conversation with one of my students about the things she noticed and wondered while she and her family explored a creek in a forest. That’s not something that can happen often in a primary/junior classroom (unless you’re lucky enough to teach near a forest!).

As time has progressed, I’ve shifted my approach with some of my students to simply building a relationship with them through what they are engaged in and interested in doing. It has added so much value to distance learning for those that have been struggling with engaging academically. We now have a class blog that I will post their offerings to, as well, so they can see what their peers are doing and accomplishing. Many times, other students will try something similar and send me a photo of it to post on the blog in response. This has led to inspired, busy, and most of all socially engaged kids.

Yes, my class’ overall engagement with the assigned work has declined significantly over the past few weeks – a trend I’m sure we are all seeing – but the one thing that hasn’t declined is the daily sharing of things they are proud of.

And, to me, is that better than them completing their assigned math? Of course it is.