5 Ways Remote Teaching Will Change My Classroom for the Better

Just over seven weeks ago I was feeling the full weight of test-prep season as a 4th grade literacy and math teacher in the NYC public school system. Every Monday, I met with my principal for data check-ins.

He began each of these meetings with a casual yet ominous mention of the days remaining until the state test:
“With only 28 days until the test…”
“With only 21 days until the test…”
“With only 14 days until the test…”

Point taken. This is the most important thing I should focus on.

Until it wasn’t.

Fresh out of grad school, I began the 2019–2020 school year with lofty ambitions for my classroom. But by February, those aspirations still felt like dreams, not reality. Daily struggles in classroom management had chipped away at my love for teaching, and weekly data meetings had convinced me that maybe I wasn’t as effective with my struggling students as I hoped to be.

Then came Friday, March 13th. The last day my class would meet in person. Once COVID-19 began its rampage through the city, everything changed. Remote teaching began.

The state test was cancelled and all subsequent data meetings. The Department of Education announced a new grading scale: no student would fail this year. Classroom management became much more, well, manageable. “Could everyone please make sure their microphone is muted?” Once the dust of the transition settled, I realized I could breath again as an educator. I realized that the way things were wasn’t necessarily the way I wanted them to be. Remote teaching forced me to recognize certain things in my classroom needed to change.

At this point, no one knows what next school year will look like. I imagine classroom management will be even more difficult if every student is wearing a mask. How will I know who is talking out? And I shudder to think of how the doomsday clock of the 2021 state test will feel when every teacher inherits students whose prior year’s education was unexpectedly interrupted.

Regardless of what next year entails, I hope my classroom will be different. Different in that more of my students will actually wash their hands(!), but different in other, fundamental ways. It’s embarassing to write these things down, because I should have better emphasized them all along. These aren’t revolutionary, and we certainly talked about them in grad school. But I needed the reminder, the refocus, the clarity. This is the opposite of those overwhelming emails with “475 suggestions you should implement during remote teaching.” (Oh, and fellow educators, I’d love to hear your top 5!)

1. Make Space for Social-Emotional Processing

During remote teaching, I hold a daily 1 hour live session my whole class can attend. The first 15 minutes of the hour is reserved for social-emotional learning, our “Virtual Morning Meeting.” Dedicating 25% of my whole-class instruction might have sounded crazy to me before lockdown, but with all the anxiety and instability right now, students obviously need time to process.

Structuring this time is important. The first week I failed miserably at this by assuming I could simply say, “OK, you have the next 10 minutes to chat freely with each other and catch up. Then we’ll begin today’s lesson.” Virtual chaos.

What’s been more successful is structuring those 15 minutes to include time to process something that’s on our minds. Today for instance we talked through a news story several had seen about how COVID-19 appears to have some scary side effects for children. Other days we’ve shared encouraging stories about good samaritans during the pandemic. It’s important to engage the range of emotions children might be experiencing right now. That need won’t magically disappear if we’re back in the classroom this fall.

No matter what we discuss, I try to keep the last part of our Morning Meeting light-hearted. Our favorite activity so far was a scavenger hunt around their apartments. Here I asked them to bring back their favorite stuffed animal.

2. Connect the Curriculum to their Home Life

Early on in remote teaching when my co-teachers and I were still trying to put all the pieces together, we fell into a habit of watch this video, take this quiz, watch this video, take this quiz. We quickly realized this was not the way to learn remotely (or ever!). So we had to get creative.

Last week, we went on a “decimal safari” around our apartments. I wanted students to realize how much decimals surround us, which in turn will engage their curiousity about the topic. Another worksheet just wouldn’t cut it. They searched for decimals on price tags, beverage containers, scales, and thermometers. One of my students who always told me math was too difficult for him commented how much he enjoyed the assignment.

I realized how our in-class routine had grown stale. Sure, I would make the lesson engaging by making real life connections. But the homework? Tear out page 324 and complete both sides. Page 324 had nothing to do with their world at home, but it had a lot of problems to complete. I emphasized the work in homework but forgot about the home.

3. Invest the Time in Technology

Any other teachers make the mistake of asking your students to sign up for no less than 12 different platforms in the first week of remote teaching? Yeah, guilty on that one. My apologies to parents everywhere for that.

Here I went, emailing detailed instructions to my 10 year olds on how they’ll access Google Classroom, log on to Khan Academy, practice on IXL, take an assessment on Newsela, navigate a Padlet, register for a Brainpop account, and so on. Then I discovered that most of my students don’t really know how to use email! Mr. Mann, email is so last decade. We prefer communicating on Twitch and TikTok.

I made a lot of assumptions about my students’ comfort level with technology. My classroom got MacBooks this year, and I quickly discovered many students didn’t know how to use the trackpad. Most were familiar with touchscreen devices only. Even after multiple attempts, some of my students still didn’t get the hang of highlighting text and adding comments in literacy programs like Newsela. We bailed one month in, choosing instead to print out paper copies so students could use a highlighter and pencil. I wish we had stuck it out. Yes, it take a tedious amount of time to get students used to a new educational platform, but remote teaching has convinced me the investment is worth it!

It also takes time from a curriculum standpoint to integrate technology. I’ll admit, sometimes it’s just easier to assign that tear-out worksheet from their textbook rather than invest the time in building out a more interactive assessment. But remote teaching has changed that. While technology is no substitute for a teacher, it’s a great partner. I see an educational power couple in the making.

My favorites: I’ve loved using Khan Academy as a supplement to my own math instruction. I can see it being a great differentiation tool in the classroom since I always have so many small groups, so little time. And while I’ve used IXL in my classroom before, I never really took the time to explore its diagnostics. Google Classroom has kept me so much more organized, and seeing how easy it is to analyze an exit ticket on a customized Google Form should make that never-ending stack of papers that is definitely still sitting on my desk in my deserted classroom jealous. I also plan to continue virtual field trips, not as replacements for actual field trips, but as more frequent, no-permission-slip-needed supplements to a lesson. Hats off to the cultural institutions and educational programs that have opened up access for schools!

4. Encourage Individuality and Expression

I miss my students. I don’t necessarily miss teaching two-digit by two-digit multiplication as much as I miss teaching it to them. I remember at the beginning of the year when we were just getting acquainted with each other how much we focused on sharing parts of our lives and our interests. Nothing kills individuality like a standardized test. Nine months into the school year and those budding personalities were reduced to a performance level on a data sheet. I’m glad remote teaching has brought back some space for individual expression.

Every Friday we spend time letting each other into our lives through our class Padlet. We share pictures of our pets, showcase a talent such as singing, dancing, lip syncing, or baking, and post silly GIFs for each other to enjoy. Every day I take attendance by asking a question via Google Classroom. Would you rather be able to fly or breath underwater? If you had a time machine, where would you travel to? What’s a good knock-knock joke? If you could meet your great-great-great grandparent, what would you ask them? I know it seems trite, but I absolutely love reading their responses. It’s a daily connection back to those personalities I miss. A daily reminder that when I eventually return to the classroom with oh so challening dynamics, there are 25 individuals wanting to be known.

During test prep season, most writing assignments focused on state test style questions. It was fun for no one, myself included. Remote teaching has freed up time for more reflective journal entries. I’ve learned so much more about my students just letting them free write or journal. Many wrote about how their parents worked on the front lines, either in the healthcare field or as essential workers. They wrote about how they had lost family members. They wrote about fear, anxiety, and frustration.

Open-ended journaling was always the first thing to go when the focus turned to content, content, content. When I’m stressed as an educator, I tend to default to either/or mode instead of both/and mode. But we can have rigor and free writing, because that writing helps the novel we’re studying, Number the Stars, come to life. After all, the protagonist is a 10 year old who is living in uncertain times, who has experienced the death of a loved one, and who wonders if she’ll be brave enough to help her family and neighbors in crisis.

5. Remind Myself: In All Things, Empathy

I knew that some of my students had really difficult living situations. It’s one thing to “know about” something, it’s completely different to be invited into the difficult living situation on the video session every day.

It’s the 10 year old student of mine who I see trying their best to pay attention to my lesson while babysitting their toddler-aged sibling because mom is sick.

It’s the student logged on to my class while two other siblings are simultaneously logged on to their classes all in the same room. I try not to get frustrated reminding them to mute their microphone because it’s so noisy in that one room.

It’s the student who frequently has a different background on their video call because they’ve had an unstable home situation and now live in foster care.

It’s the voice on the other end of the phone call that I used to assume was an “absent parent,” that we now call an “essential worker,” trying their best to balance their job, their fear and anxiety, and their parenting.

Sure, I may be viewing the frustrating dynamics in public education through rose-colored glasses right now, but if I’ve learned anything from remote teaching, I’d rather be viewing my students through rose-colored glasses than a computer screen.