Hindsight is 2020: Ending the Most Unconventional School Year

Saying goodbye to this non-traditional school year has not an easy road to navigate. We have written the playbook while finishing the game, built the plane while flying in the air. Throughout this process, teachers have tried to make a collective trauma feel like a new normal for students. By sending videos, emails, and cards, we have tended to our students' social and emotional needs. Through structure, routine, and instructional activities, we have tried to keep their minds engaged. Surviving weeks of instruction have been our goal, but now we have been tasked with saying goodbye. While my school year ended a week ago, many local elementary districts and school districts are currently wrapping up their final weeks on a national level. How do we say goodbye to students we cannot see face-to-face? 

Start by creating a heartfelt end of the year assignments. No matter the subject taught, find a way to connect. Flipgrid is a great platform that allows students to see a teacher's face. This webtool allows for us to talk asynchronously and engage in powerful nonverbal communication. Prompts can be as straightforward as giving a graduation speech or a last lecture to a class or as creative as delivering a math-gram message to say goodbye using vocabulary from a year of geometry. Students could showcase how many planks they can do in a physical education class or embody a famous person to deliver a farewell address in a social science class. Be creative, and keep the content, but don't forget to emphasize the importance of communication and human connection. Students might find an assignment like this fun or engage because they're bored and miss your face! 

Ask students to write. Literacy is a critical skill in all disciplines. Writing allows them to express their feelings and also share their reasoning and logic. From solving a word problem in math to explaining how World War Two was won, they can use their words to demonstrate knowledge and understanding. We are living history right now, so find a way to encourage students to write to express their thoughts, reactions, and perspectives of the world in which we are currently living. Find ways to make final prompts relevant to their lives right now, and they will not only be able to demonstrate academic prowess, but they will also be able to express their current feelings. These writings can give a teacher direct insight into individual students while allowing them to amplify their voices as primary sources for this pandemic. 

Have them create a visual representation of their work. Whether it be creating a portfolio website or making work visible on a platform like Padlet, find a way to showcase student work. My favorite final project was having students make a COVID Time Capsule. This project allowed students to apply essential skills from my class and reflect on themes from other units while still personalizing the experience to their thoughts, feelings, and reactions during the quarantine. Students who had been disengaged previously picked up this assignment and wanted to share their ideas. They wanted to be able to express what they were experiencing from their perspective and needed that outlet. In my drama class, I had students write quarantine related monologues. These monologues gave voice to many different perspectives of people living on the pandemic frontlines working in hospitals, grocery stores, and delivering food. These projects fit my classroom, but the intention behind them could be applied in any discipline from creating a marketing plan for an essential business to designing a new fitness center in engineering that adheres to the CDC guidelines. Students can get creative and use the skills they have gained from any class to capture our collective experiences during the quarantine. Through pictures, drawing, creative presentations, or other multimedia projects, students can showcase diverse skills and share what they've learned in innovative ways. 

During this time, it is important to note that subjects such as art, music, and other electives have been incredibly invaluable during the quarantine. These subjects have always been the heart of our schools, and their significance has only been elevated. These elective subjects are why students get up and go to school; these teachers foster safe spaces for all types of students. Now more than ever, these teachers have created opportunities to express themselves. These creative projects and assignments do not have to remain in the elective realms. Find ways to offer students choice and opportunities to use their talents in your classes by encouraging them to create a rap about history, make a video demonstrating Newton's Laws of Physics. Challenge them to use their painting, drawing, vocal, musical, or dance skills and pair it with a final lesson or project in your classroom. The results will not only dazzle but inspire other students to engage, too. By encouraging students to use their talents, they will see the relevance and importance of core content areas alongside their passions and personal interests. 

Aside from fun end-of-the-semester projects, we need to gather information by allowing students time to process the end of the year in a more formal sense. No matter what subject or level taught, challenge students to reflect on the class experience and their own experiences. A short, personalized survey with a mixture of likert-style questions and open-ended questions can allow students to share valuable information with us as teachers. Keep the verbiage on the survey clear and positive. Frame an assignment or survey as a tool that can help you to become a better teacher. Encourage students to share what worked well for them and what could have gone better. Remote learning is a new educational format. The best way to improve is to receive authentic and meaningful feedback. After gathering both qualitative and quantitative data about the learning experience, challenge students to reflect on their engagement during this time. What they have discovered about themselves will continue to impact their learning styles and abilities moving forward. 

While surveys may look different at the early elementary level to upper high school, we should challenge students to reflect in ways that are meaningful for their developmental stage. Not only should we gather information about our class structure and instructional delivery, but we should take this time to challenge students to reflect on their actions and take ownership of their learning. How did they fair as students? How did they manage their emotions? What challenges did they face at home that impacted their feelings? Having students self-reflect on their actions and feelings during this time can allow us to target students who may need additional support in the summer. Gather social and emotional information and use that information to follow up with students in the summer. We might be off the clock, but as we have learned by teaching remotely, the clock may buzz at the end of a basketball game, but the clock in the teacher-student relationship game doesn’t end.

Ultimately, this is not the final goodbye. If anything, it has made me internalize the notion that my students will always be my students. Bound through uncertain times, we will forever have shared this historic time. In the end, it is okay to have fun. It is okay to shift gears away from tests and exams to reflect, create, and share. Teaching is a work of heart, and that love is what got our students through this time. It's that love that will continue to get through whatever they face beyond our classroom, too. 

Transitions and Takeaways: How Quarantine Schooled Us for the Fall

As we wrap up an extremely unconventional 2019-2020 school year, emotions are heightened. This goodbye was not the one we wanted and certainly not one we ever could have imagined. Still, there are several lessons to be learned. While I did not get to hug my students goodbye on the last day or pose for senior selfies as they joyfully strolled through the halls after senior breakfast, we did have moments that I will remember forever. We endured an extraordinary experience together, which in some ways will bind our memories and connections even more significantly than ever before.

As we step away from our makeshift classrooms now in living rooms, basements, or corners of our homes into the summer sun, we should take time to pause. We just endured a trauma. We brought our students through a collective trauma while attempting to offer some sense of normalcy and structure to their lives.

My students handled this quarantine with amazing grace and strength. They struggled, as we all did, but they learned the importance of vulnerability. They learned how much they value human connection, and they even realized that they missed school. Some had to work; some took care of younger siblings. Some closed their Chromebooks for a much-needed break; others found their strength in completing their school work. In whatever way they chose to cope, they all filled out their attendance on a Google form that contained a daily question and a video message that I created each morning at 6 AM in the hopes of staying connected, motivated, and inspired.

No matter what school looks like in the fall or well into the future, some themes remain the same. Conventional education, as we knew it, is most likely gone. Perhaps it will return to a more traditional look and feel for younger grades, but the older the student is, the more we can use the lessons from today to mold their experiences. So what are those takeaways?

 

1. Always be prepared.

As the Boy Scouts teach us, preparation is essential. We were given a moment's notice to shift all of our curricula to e-learning. Some teachers were more versed in educational technology or blended learning principles. Regardless of technical prowess, none of us were fully prepared for the social and emotional toll this situation would take on our students. None of us were fully prepared for the social and emotional toll this situation would take on us. Regardless of what tools or LMS platforms we use, we need to be prepared to find ways to foster relationships, encourage engagement, and support students academically and emotionally. As such, we need to seek out training and create plans to efficiently and effectively meet the needs of our students.

Having a standard building and district plan can help to create continuity and provide support for teachers. Thank goodness for the approaching summer months to become prepared for a tentative fall schedule. Now that we’ve built the airplane while flying, we can take time to land, regroup, and enhance our preparedness.

2. Classroom structure is important.

What helps increase comprehension and alleviates stress? Structure. Having clear classroom structure and routines allows students to know what to expect and increases personal productivity. The best feedback I received from students was that they liked having a week of content at a time. They liked knowing what was coming for the week, when assignments were due, and how a day fit into the week. During reflection time with students, they expressed feeling surprised often when they only knew what a class was covering in a single day. Similarly, they felt overwhelmed when they had an entire month’s calendar pushed out at them. Providing students with week-long guidelines gives them enough flexibility and understanding to manage their time better, prioritize their class load, and feel confident in their ability to finish. Students will find more success with a clear classroom structure and a picture of what is to come in the immediate time frame.

We establish routines and patterns in traditional classrooms. Likewise, we need to find ways to increase that structure in digital environments. Finding ways to mirror that structure in and out of the classroom can help us be more prepared for the shifts in learning that we may be doing moving forward. We need to anticipate being ready to leave school and be out for two weeks, one month, or longer. Having too much information pushed out to students can be overwhelming. Not enough information available frustrates them and makes them unable to budget their time.

3. Vary your instructional approach.

After talking with my students about structure, the amount of information provided, and the instructional approaches that their teachers took, one common theme was variety. Students said that some teachers provided too much rote work, meaning that they did the same learning activity day-in and day-out. Reading passages and worksheets have their place, but they are not the best practices. As educators, we know that worksheet after worksheet is ineffective, and we would never do that for eight hours a day in a regular classroom. In a remote classroom, with the summer to prepare, we need to up our game. Finding tools that can vary the learning experience will engage all types of learners. Tech tools that involve video creation and different learning modalities will allow students to learn in a variety of ways, much like what we would do in the classroom.

While we cannot recreate the classroom experience fully, teachers can use their toolbox of instructional approaches to find ways to challenge students. My students’ favorite tools were EdPuzzle and Flipgrid. They liked EdPuzzle (especially in math) because it forced them to interact with the video. They loved Flipgrid as it allowed them to engage in discussion asynchronously. In my classroom, I found that students seemed to be highly engaged with Pear Deck Student-Paced Mode. If I had to teach or introduce a concept, I made the presentation a Pear Deck, and I was amazed at the increase in engagement and interaction with course concepts. Taking risks leads to powerful learning experiences, even if the lesson fails. Do not be afraid to vary instructional practices; the results may be better than you ever imagined.

4. Leave no man... or gym uniform behind.

One of my biggest regrets on the last day of school in March was that I assumed we would be back in two weeks. I left many materials behind that I would have liked to have. For me, I left books. Others left technical equipment such as document cameras or other devices. Students left their gym uniforms, which then fermented in lockers for 70+ days. Whatever we left behind, the lesson learned from this quarantine is leave nothing behind if there is a warning of a school closure. In the future, closures will hopefully be much shorter and infrequent, but we must be ready for them. It is easy to take our school facilities for granted. Working from home comes with countless layers of challenges, but by taking a moment to stop and reflect on a few small items that may make the time at home easier or more productive definitely will pay off in the long run.

5. Be vulnerable.

Vulnerability is often associated with weakness. While I see the world shifting on this statement, I grew up being told by society that being emotional was a negative attribute. Emotions are our strength. Wearing my heart on my sleeve is what draws students in and keeps them returning. Creating a space for them to express frustration, and then giving the tools to take action to overcome a situation is empowering and life-giving. We are allowed to feel what we feel, but then we have to find ways to cope. We need to put our own oxygen masks on first before we put on everyone else’s mask. Processing through these experiences with my students at our weekly Google Meet check-in gave us all a space to be honest and receive encouragement. They each said a goal during those meetings, and I would follow up with personal emails later in the week. Holding them accountable for finishing their Calc homework or running the two miles that they wanted to accomplish kept them motivated, showed them I cared about them beyond how well they wrote a paper and gave us a sense of normalcy. I joked with my seniors that this would be the time that we were fighting - that they would be experiencing overwhelming senioritis, and I would be on their case about getting in that last paper. We would be fist-bumping as they walked out the door, and they would be showing me pictures from their ditch day adventures. While we did not have the opportunity to do those things, I believe that what we gained will prove to be far greater someday.

There is no playbook with how to cope with what we have all experienced. There is, however, a distance learning playbook that Jim Knight, a leading educational coach, is crowdsourcing with approximately 70 instructional coaches from around the county, but that is a blog post for another day. While we are still processing the challenges that have recently crossed in front of us, we know that the meaning of hindsight is that 2020 certainly makes us more prepared for whatever presents itself in the fall.