It’s been just about 2 months since the last day of the 2019-2020 school year. A year I will always remember due to the COVID-19 pandemic that sent all of us home on March 16th not to return to “physical school.” Instead we were tasked to “teach” and “learn” from home from March 17th-June 9th. We now know that “reopening” school for the 2020-2021 school year will entail full remote learning. Students will begin the school year from home. Over the past 2 weeks we’ve been working behind the scenes to calibrate class lists, synchronize schedules, and figure out what a full remote learning experience is going to look like. There will be a lot going on at the beginning of this very unique start to the school year including…

1. Teaching students how to use their laptops.

2. Teaching families how to access the Canvas platform which is where all of the learning experiences will come from.

3. Equally important to this remote on boarding will include community building. This community building, establishing relationships with the students, will be crucial in a way that words cannot even begin to explain. It won’t stop with on boarding either. Our district is dedicated to maintaining and cultivating the social/emotional well being of the students we serve.

Knowing this I want to take some time to reflect back on the historic moment I shared with 18 families. I teach my students that a reflection is a way of looking back at something. I also teach them that in order to do so, it is important to look back at that “something” through a particular lens. The lens I am choosing to use to look back at “teaching” and “learning” from home is that of a critically reflective teacher. This is something I learned about years ago, while working on my PhD, in a book by Stephen Brookfield titled: Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. There's a section in the book that encourages teachers to engage their students in something called a Critical Incident Questionnaire. So, in this post, I will take on the role of “present” teacher reflecting on the past in order to better inform “future” teacher. The questions I will use to reflect include…

1. What about “teaching” from home engaged me most?

2. What about “teaching” from home did was I most distanced from?

3. What about “teaching” from home did I find affirming/helpful?

4. What about “teaching” from home did I find puzzling/confusing?

5. What about “teaching” from home did I find surprising?

What about “teaching” from home engaged me most?

The thing that engaged me most while “teaching” from home was my desire to help the families I serve make this shared experience as painless as possible. That desire took many forms of communication because I knew that if this situation we found ourselves in was going to go well it was going to be because of the manner in which I communicated my families.

Remind-I am a big fan of this app and will talk about it again later in the piece. Early on and throughout the quarantine, I used Remind to keep families up to date with what was going on with their children. I also used it to reach out to families if I had questions or concerns and they used it to do the same. 

Phone calls-In an age where we all have phones but rarely use them to make phone calls, the pandemic forced us to use these devices to actually talk to one another. We needed to. As I mention later in this piece, I had to be tech support for several families as we got the students “up and operational” on their Chrome books or personal devices. Phone calls were necessary during this process so that each of us was clear about what needed to be done in order to help students start remote learning. Phone calls were also needed as I attempted to touch base with families to see what I could do to help beyond being technical support. Sometimes I just listened to what the family was going through and offered emotional support.

FaceTime-I had my share of these sessions early on in the process. Mostly to help with technical problems that families were having getting their child on line. FaceTime was integral to my being able to see (literally) what the families were (not) seeing so as to guide them through what needed to be done to resolve their issues.

Zoom meetings-I had to establish office hours with each family and meet with them weekly. During these meetings I would give an overview of how their child was doing with assignments. I would also give updates as to what was happening at a district level and always provided space for families to share their concerns. Many times I would meet with a family more than once a week as different situations came up and needed to be attended to either on my end or their end. I felt a real sense of connection with the families I serve as a result of these weekly meetings and will say more about that later in this piece. Of course I had Zoom meetings with just the students as well. This was my main way to work with them directly. I met with students twice per day. Once at 10am and again at 1pm. I recorded each of these sessions and posted them to Google Classroom and (when we were mandated to switch over) to Canvas immediately after the “live” session. Students who were unable to attend “live” knew they would be able to access the content when it worked for them via the recorded sessions I was posting.

What about “teaching” from home was I most distanced from?

One thing I was most distanced from while “teaching” from home was the perceived need to have meetings on days where that time could have been spent doing something to further help the students and families I serve.

What about “teaching” from home did I find affirming/helpful?

One thing I found affirming while “teaching” from home was my decision, earlier in the year, to go “all in” with Google Classroom prior to having to work remotely. In August of 2019 I had no way of knowing that I would be “teaching” from home for most of the 2020 portion of the school year. What I did know was that I had a class of students that I felt would benefit from using Google Classroom. I wanted to use the platform to provide my students with space to think, write, and read. I wanted them to see Google Classroom as a public space, within the institution of school, where they could see themselves as a different kind of student; one who could express herself in ways that cannot happen when filling in bubbles on a test sheet or filling in the blanks on a worksheet. 

Getting a group of students acclimated to a platform like Google Classroom isn’t that big of a deal in a time where these 9 and 10 year olds were born into what I would call “the age of screens.” They come into the classroom with a knowledge of technology that would have seemed like science fiction to the 10 year old version of me. The only thing you have to be willing to have (in order to teach students something new) is…like most things in education; patience. Patience when it comes to teaching the class the logistics of accessing assignments in Google Classroom. Patience when it comes to teaching a class what Internet etiquette means…how to read and respond to things that others are saying and what it means to think, write, and read in a public space within a public institution. 

It takes time to get there but once you’re on the other side there is so much opportunity that using a platform like Google Classroom affords you. In the process of getting this year’s class up and operational on Google Classroom we were simultaneously building community through our comments back and forth to each other. We were building a sense of what it means to think critically by reflecting on our own learning at the end of Math lessons. We were learning how to be independent learners; completing assignments at our own pace using resources from the Internet along with our imaginations. Finally, as it became more clear that remaining in school to complete the 2019-2020 academic year was not in anyone’s best interests due to COVID-19, we were actually training for “teaching” and “learning” from home. From March 17th onward, I created a narrative with my students and their families that our use of Google Classroom “in class” set us up to be very successful as we figured out together what “Virtual School” meant. Sure, there were moments of frustration, days where I spent most of the day being tech support for the families I serve. None of that support included how to use Google Classroom to think, write, read, and complete assignments. Most of the tech support involved helping families get on line. On those days I thought to myself, at least I don’t have to teach my students what Google Classroom is and how to use it. We’d trained for “this day” and we were going to get through it together and, in the end; we did!

What about “teaching” from home did I find puzzling/confusing?

One thing that both puzzled and confused me while “teaching” from home involved some of the curriculum decisions that my school district made related to what learning from home was going to “be” as well as look like for my students. 4th and 5th grade student’s learning took place digitally meaning they were to use their Chrome books, which they could come to school and get March 16th, or their own personal devices, to complete assignments. For the first few weeks teachers were charged with creating content and the subsequent assignments (learning opportunities) for students to engage with via one of two platforms, Google Classroom or Canvas. Our efforts at providing these opportunities gave families time to “settle in” to what learning from home was going to “be” and look like. During this time I made sure that my assignments looked very similar to what the students were already doing in school while using Google Classroom which was, at the time, my preferred platform. My intention was to show families early on that this situation, while not desirable for many reasons, was going to be something that we would be able to get through because we would build on the experiences the students were already having, with technology, in the classroom. In previous posts I document how those early days went and while there were difficult moments, we got through them together! 

While teachers like me were creating daily content the school district was hard at work creating a more unified curriculum. That curriculum would be distributed via digital learning plans that the students could access via the Canvas platform when we were ready to start what the district called “Virtual School.” In the days leading up to this “Virtual School” launch, I began to look through this curriculum with my colleagues. In doing so, I noticed something that both puzzled and confused me. Many of the lessons, more so for Math than any other content area, were written based on assumptions that were not, in my opinion, in tuned with the socio-economic dynamics of many of the families that our district serves; including several of the families I serve. Specifically, lessons implied that successful completion of an activity required families have access to certain supplies such as (but not limited to) paper, protractors, scissors, glue sticks, printers, printer ink/cartridges, printer paper, etc. Please be clear here, I am not saying that all of my families did not have access to these things. What I am saying is that writing a curriculum that implies these things are necessary to successfully complete assigned activities is problematic. If I were to have delivered these lessons as originally written, it was my opinion that I would have placed undo stress and anxiety on families without access to such materials. My mantra throughout this whole situation was that I wanted families to remember that I was compassionate, helpful, sympathetic and empathetic with regards to the circumstances we were all dealing with. My colleagues and I made our concerns known to our facilitators. We also made decisions to revise the curriculum, taking out the experiences we believed to be problematic and replacing them with experiences that we felt all students would be able to successfully engage in while showing that they were in fact; learning!

What about “teaching” from home did I find surprising?

The one thing that surprised me while “teaching” from home was the sense of connection I cultivated with families as we shared the experience. I consider myself to be very connected to the families I serve. Always have. Throughout my 31 years of teaching I’ve figured out that the closer I can get to the families I serve the better support I will get from the family as it relates to their child’s education. For years I’ve used an app called Remind to keep in close contact with families. Sure, we have conferences with families still but, in this digital age where everyone has a phone that is capable of receiving text messages (and the occasional phone call), an app like Remind has served both teachers and student’s families well. 

Prior to the quarantine I felt like I’d yet again established really good contact with just about all of the 18 families I served. That all changed on March 16th. As families came to pick up their child’s Chrome book, I informed them that the Remind app would be THE way for us to stay connected as we attempted to establish what “teaching” and “learning” from home was going to “be”/look like. I used the app in many ways. For starters, I would create a morning message for families to read. In this message I made the adults aware of what assignments their children would be working on and where they could be found both on Google Classrroom (in the beginning) and (when we transitioned to “Virtual School”) to Canvas. I also made Remind the place where adults could reach out to me if they had any questions or concerns. I also used Remind to post Google Documents when I had more to share than the limited space that Remind offered for group messages. I used the app to reach out to adults when I had questions about their children. 

Our district required that we set 15 minute blocks of time to meet with each family weekly, in an attempt to share with the family how their child was doing and provide them the opportunity to ask questions and/or share their concerns. The platform we used for this was Zoom. My main goal during these meetings was to be supportive, compassionate to each families respective situation, and to listen (when at all possible) more than I spoke. I used the Remind app to “remind” families of these meetings and when we couldn’t Zoom we used Remind to chat back and forth.

Over the course of the Spring I came to look forward to each of these meetings. I learned so much about both my students and their parents/guardians through these meetings and by the end of the school year, felt a connection with each family that I have never felt with any of the 30 other classes I have had the pleasure of working with. That was, in real time, a surprise. However, as I conducted the End of Year conferences that our district required of us it occurred to me why I felt this connection. We (myself and the families I serve) were placed into a unique situation that neither of us could have ever dreamed of when the school year began in August of 2019. As a result, in order for this situation to be “remotely” successful, we needed to have clear lines of communication. We had to be willing to support one another in ways that just wouldn’t have happened under “normal” circumstances. During our “remote” learning experience I was both teacher and technical support, among a host of other things. I’ve never, until this Spring, ever provided the level technical support I did for the families I serve. Parents/guardians had to have a real hands on approach to their child’s learning. In the end, we did it and in the process grew closer to one another than I expected.

Final Thoughts

As I look back at the reflection I’ve created here I feel a sense of contentment. None of us asked to be placed in the situation we were placed in on March 16th. “Teaching” and “learning” from home could have gone in any direction the following day as I sat at my laptop trying to figure out what it all meant. One thing I know for certain now is that because of the choices and hard work I put into the experience I can “let go” so to speak knowing that I did what I set out very early to do…I made sure that remote learning was as painless as possible for the families I served. I treated everyone with compassion, dignity, and respect. I was present every single day regardless of what was happening around me. I did my part.