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Writer's pictureJudy Harris

This year, we are all first year teachers. 10 key strategies for online classrooms

I can remember the abject terror as the chairlift approached the top tower and I had to ready myself to slide off. I could kiss goodbye the smooth exit from a chairlift that was always mine when I was on skis. This time I was on a snowboard and I was not the expert I had been for decades. This time I was a beginner, a newbie, a very inexperienced, frightened woman who had already experienced why snowboarders affectionately named the kinds of falls they experienced things like “scorpion” which was when you caught your toe side edge abruptly and were violently thrown forward into the snow and your feet, attached to the snowboard, came up over your back and curled up toward your head. Ouch!


The start to this school year feels much the same. I am feeling as if I am, once again, a first-year teacher. All the self-doubt, the qualms, the mystery of how to handle a class is rushing back to me. The reality that my county’s COVID-19 cases are still above acceptable levels here in Washington state means we are starting the school year 100% online and that’s got me and teachers everywhere asking a lot of questions as we get ready for students to join us.

As I have joined session after session of online meetings via Zoom or Microsoft Teams, I have listened to so many teachers voice their concerns as they grapple with the new paradigm of online learning fulltime:


“I don’t have the foggiest idea how to do this.”

“I can barely navigate these brand new programs myself much less reteach to students so they can be successful.”

I don’t even know where to start.”


Their comments are shared by teachers across the U.S., possibly even around the world, this is a global pandemic after all.


Educators at all levels are hard at work, have been all summer, assimilating new learning, exploring new digital platforms for teaching, and readying their districts, buildings, and classrooms as the 2020-2021 school year begins in a new paradigm. As the comments above demonstrate, while educators are doing the very best they can to prepare for a brand new way to teach and present content, it’s under a very tight timeline and it’s not been easy.


As Catherine Crenshaw, an elementary teacher in Beaverton, Oregon said, “There are parts of this I am worried about and other parts I am not. I think the online piece of it is going to be okay. It’s obviously not ideal and I think it’s like everything else we do in life, it’s hard at first and then you get better at it. It’s going to be fine, we’re going to get it done.”


In addition to teaching in Beaverton School District, Crenshaw also tutors to students online so she’s had a headstart on how to keep students engaged without being face to face. But if an educator hasn’t had that opportunity to find out yet what works best, there are some best practices to keep front and center. Below are ten key points to helping you find success with your online classroom this year:


· Take the time to establish norms with your students in the online classroom. Use these norms to establish agreements about how the classroom will operate and communicate teacher expectations for student behavior. Then take time during the first few weeks to teach those agreements so that students have a clear understanding of how to operate successfully in your classroom.

· Clarify your expectations with students and families. Communicate these via email, text, and postings in your online classroom.

· Make sure students feel safe, seen, and heard. Now more than ever it’s important to build and strengthen relationships with your students. Taking the time to focus on the relationships will help with student engagement throughout the school year.

· Use your live (synchronous) sessions to build relationships. Use asynchronous time for homework, skills practice, and independent study. Build opportunities for students to authentically participate in every live session you facilitate. Use your synchronous time to pose a question and support student discussion as they seek answers while collaborating.

· Create opportunities for students to socialize online with their classmates. Recreate recess and “hanging out time” in the online experience. Remember that for many students, it’s the social side that keeps them coming back not the content. This is even more critical while we are online.

· Limit your digital platforms and programs to a very small handful so that parents and students can focus on learning content rather than learning yet another new program and so that parents don’t have to create logins over and over again for different programs and platforms.

· Use surveys and questionnaires to gather information from your students and to keep them engaged. Use this information to tailor instruction and activities.

· Consider flipping your instruction using mini-video lessons. Provide content introduction and teaching in a mini-video, then have students practice and collaborate while you are live and synchronous.

· Create and honor student choice in how students demonstrate their learning. In a face to face classroom we often offered choice that included demonstrating learning via a digital method. Now we are all digital, so flip that on its head and make sure they can show their learning in diverse ways.

· Help students create digital portfolios to demonstrate and record their learning in ways that can be easily accessible to parents and future teachers.


In his book, The Distance Learning Playbook, John Hattie says, “You are still an educator. You didn’t forget how to teach. You can still impact the lives of your students and know that you made a difference.”


Remember always that you are a teacher and students need you now more than ever. You will have moments, perhaps even days, where you feel like you are an inexperienced newbie, like a first year teacher all over again. But you will master these new skills and your teacher toolbox will expand.


Just like that moment I had to slide off the chairlift on a snowboard rather than on skis, quite literally shaking in my boots, we have to slide of our chairlift into an online classroom. We may stumble at times, we may even fall at times while we make this shift to online classrooms. But we are still educators and we most certainly haven’t forgotten how to teach.


Next week we’ll look at five strategies to help assess student learning in an online classroom.

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