The New Beginning of the End
You’re nearing the end of the school year and summer is just in your reach. Your students have finally began to mold into their daily routine and boom. Everything has been flipped upside down. You’re forced to teach all of your kiddos from home…. now what? You’re forced to face new technology struggles on top of tending to your family as well as teaching your children and their parents how this is all going to work. It’s a hard and difficult time filled with many emotions and struggles. Challenges will come but like usual, we will overcome them. Teachers are important. Teachers are heroes. Teachers can do this!
Routine
The first and most important thing that as a teacher you need to do is get into a routine. Treat this time as you would the beginning of a normal school year because it kind of is. Your kids are entering a new virtual classroom, a new learning dynamic, etc. A routine can be the foundation of your peace of mind. When your home becomes your classroom it can become quite overwhelming to get everything done. Make schedules a day or
even a week in advance to give yourself time to fully prepare. Most importantly when creating your routine don’t forget about mealtimes and self care. If getting up early, getting ready like you would for a normal work day and getting to work makes you feel better, DO IT! If sleeping in a little and wearing comfy pants with a nice top to your virtual meetings and classes feels good to you, DO IT! It’s important that you can get the hang of your routine so you can give your kiddos the best virtual education ever. It’s a learning experience for us all. Break it down, day by day. It’s important to remember that we’re all going through this and learning together. Below I dropped a link that provides tips and tricks to establish an online routine:
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Teaching from Home
Teaching from the comfort of your own home can be both rewarding and challenging. You get to snuggle up in your favorite sweats and blankets while working but you don’t get to see your kids and for some of them be their safe place. It’s okay though. We will all get through this together. We are far from perfect but we are trying and our kids know that. Below I’ve provided multiple resources to help ease your transformation from classroom to home.
Setting Up Your “Classroom”
Spread the loveWhether you teach entirely online or have a physical space, your digital classroom needs to facilitate successful learning. There is no one right way to arrange or present education to your students. However, there are markers and go to ideas for a healthy digital learning environment.
What to expect
“Inside Digital Learning” asked instructors from across the country who teach online courses to answer one of two questions: What is the best piece of advice you received from a colleague, family member, friend or other person before you started teaching your first online course, or what advice would you provide to a new online instructor?
As school closures increase in the wake of the coronavirus, we’re partnering with our Teacher-Authors to help administrators, teachers, and parents support student learning remotely. In these unprecedented times, teachers are stepping up to the plate in powerful ways, and doing everything they can to keep their students on track from afar.
Resources to continue learning
As you probably know, Google Drive is far more than a place to store files online. It also includes a suite of versatile creation tools, many of which perform the same functions as the ones we use in other spaces.
Talking to your students
Your students are young. They currently are struggling to understand why they can’t see their friends, family, their teachers, etc. Help your students by discussing their feelings, discussing the world and its turmoils. You, as their teacher, are where their knowledge and understanding is driven. Help them understand. Some students come from a relatively poor background and struggle with emotions, hunger, inability to access technology from home. They all need you. Below are links provided to help you build a solid foundation to begin a conversation with your students.
Raff’s priority in communicating with students has been to ensure that they felt “safe, heard, loved and understood.” Many of her students who emailed her said they missed school. “I really didn’t want school to close. I knew that I would miss you too much and I do.
Remain calm and reassuring. Remember that children will react to both what you say and how you say it. They will pick up cues from the conversations you have with them and with others. Make yourself available to listen and to talk. Make time to talk.
At the Foreign Language Immersion and Cultural Studies School in Detroit, DaJuanna Travier’s 5th graders can raise any topic on their minds during their Friday restorative discussion circles. This past week, they wanted to talk about the coronavirus. They asked Travier if the virus is man-made, or if it was purposefully created to hurt people, she said.
Editor’s note: You can download a PDF of the guide . A new coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 is spreading across the globe. Kids like you are likely wondering, “Will school be closed?” and, “Should I be worried about getting sick?” To help guide you through a confusing situation, here are answers from science to all the questions you may have.
Additional Resources
Sponsored by World101 and Listenwise Disclaimer 1: This post was written in the Spring of 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 outbreak, so a lot of the information here is discussed through the lens of distance learning launched by a global pandemic.
Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.
