Giving Straight A's During a Pandemic!
Now that I've got your attention, let me clarify. This has nothing to do with student-grades. These Straight A's are about our practice as educators as we manage this rapid, unexpected, and unprepared launch into distance/remote learning: Address-Adapt-Adjust-Assess. At the moment, we are all somewhere between crisis response, treading water, and managing instruction. This post is meant to showcase steps we can take to maintain focus on teaching and learning, while also maintaining motivation for ourselves and students: Address needs and equity concerns, Adapt instruction, pace and space, Adjust practices and expectations, and Assess impact and learning,
First we need to recognize that these components can't all happen at once. As we phase our way through remote learning, the cycle continues and repeats. As educators, coaches, specialists, or administrators, we need to let our learning from each phase inform the next. Lean on your coaches- it's what we're here for!
Address Needs and Equity
Now more than ever, a personalized approach to meeting the needs of all learners is essential, beginning with access, and not just through Zoom. Making sure kids are able to connect technologically is only one piece, and it's a near meaningless piece if they aren't connected emotionally. It has become abundantly clear that supporting students and learning doesn't end at the classroom door anymore.
Adapt Instruction, Pace & Space
It's an understatement to say that educators have had to shift their instruction. Every educator has had their world upended and had to learn more (and faster) than they would ever choose. That being said, powerful opportunities for growth, collaboration and evolution/revolution have emerged. Teachers are finding new ways every day to meet the needs of their learners, deliver content, and engage students, whether it's small video-conferences, shared docs/slides, or new edtech tools to allow students to show what they know from home. Every teacher had become a learner. Every digital learning coach I know has become very popular all of a sudden, particularly with the unfamiliar faces!
Adjust Practice and Expectations
Beyond adapting to new instructional model, platform, pace, and space (as if that's not enough), educators, coaches and administrators are in uncharted waters with new navigational tools on one hand, but we all still know what effective and impactful teaching and learning can look and feel like. Remote learning doesn't call for the replication of the classroom experience in the sense of schedules or structures, but it does amplify the need to remain connected, build community, and maintain an environment of learning, even if that's a virtual environment that can seem overwhelming at first. Setting the tone for a continuity of learning is the best first step toward establishing a virtual learning community.
Assess Impact and Learning
This remote learning experience has turned teaching and learning-upside down and inside-out. Educators have had to explore new ways to package or repackage and deliver (sometimes physically) content, and engage students in ways we've never imagined. Once we begin move beyond the initial crisis response or management mode, we are seeing the types of student engagement, learning experiences, and student production that are more creative, authentic, and meaningful. When the dust settles, hopefully we can use this opportunity to reflect on the methods and mechanisms we have discover to capture and showcase student learning, let go of specific practices or traditional structures that may not have been as critical as we believed, and closely evaluate the full impact from each phase of the Address-Adapt-Adjust-Assess cycle. This impact should be assessed as it would if we were in our brick and mortar word: how it as affected our ability to deliver content, students' ability to access and respond to instruction in ways that demonstrate knowledge and understanding effectively and meaningfully, and the social-emotional health and well being of our learners.
How about it? Doesn't every student deserve these Straight A's now and always?
