Teaching During Quarantine: Become the Leader of the Pack
How will you respond when you are thrown to the wolves?
If you are reading this, you can first agree to two essential truths.
First, you care passionately about the craft of educating. Second, education is never complete.
Allow me to elaborate. There are countless teaching styles put in practice by countless unique educators who are, in fact, unique people. Some of us shout on top of our desk and dramatize education into a full-blown performance. Some of us follow a much more reserved presentation. Regardless of form or method, the fact of the matter remains. You care.
Now my second statement may need a bit more of an explanation. Formal schooling, as we all know, ends in either high school or college. However, as educators, we surely understand in our ever-changing field, that we cannot stop learning. In what is one of my pedagogical tenets, a love of learning is essential to “keeping up” with the next wave. This is a duality. As we possess a love of learning, modeling passion for the students will garner this phenomenon as well.
“Out of adversity comes innovation.” — Benjamin Franklin
With this established, allow me to move forward with my message. Many of my education peers may feel we’ve had our world flipped upside-down, and that is certainly a justified feeling. Remember, as Benjamin Franklin said, “out of adversity comes innovation.”
With this in mind, I propose this period of alternative learning as a time to innovate on any level you feel comfortable. We are presented with a golden opportunity to evolve as teachers, not only as a collective but individually as we see fit. In other words, we are in the midst of an opportune time for instructional risk-taking. This risk-taking can take many shapes, however, there are two specific questions to guide this.
1. How should one go about identifying what to improve on?
- What aspect do you think you have the most room for improvement in?
- What do your students need?
Much like a lesson plan, you need to keep your goal in mind before you can properly accomplish it. There are two common questions that can always provide answers to the “what.”
The first is this: in which aspect of your instruction do you have the most room for improvement?
I particularly buy in to the idea of identifying the area I feel can grow the most in and then working to make that a strength. For example, in the past year, I identified pushing students to comment on each other's work as an area of focus. Over the course of the year, I have employed several different strategies such as Socratic seminars, human timelines, and four corners as well as technology-based avenues such as the discussion features on Google Classroom and Parlay Ideas (I strongly recommend this tool.)
This method of identifying improvement requires reflection, which is an important tool in its own right when evaluating the product of instruction. However, in the current context, it may not be timely. Nevertheless, I strongly urge you to keep this concept in mind.
Following along the lesson plan theme, sometimes the lesson just doesn’t go according to plan. In those instances, your students are telling you (verbally or more often, non-verbally) that you need to try something else. This is even more relevant now, as there is little doubt that students can offer a wealth of feedback as to how the alternative instruction is going so far.
I would propose open dialogue as much as possible and canvassing the class. This shows up in my classroom through the student-elected chief-of-staff for each class, but it also appear as a simple Google Form or other survey formats.
In the scope of professional growth, you should always keep a pulse on what your students need. Last year may have gone exactly according to your preparation and style (very impressive) but there is a near-guarantee that this year, the kids will be different. Students share similarities of course, but educators often fall for typifying the students into prior experiences. Outside of the context of our quarantine, I would strongly urge teachers to re-evaluate in the early weeks of the school year to identify what this crop will need and to seek out the tools to provide.
2. How should one seek to improve?
- Professional Development
- Networking
- Putting what you find into practice
The trusted first method of seeking teaching improvement is of course through professional development. In the midst of our current environment, many conferences and workshops are being canceled, but there is a plethora of online resources to pick up the slack. Commonly used websites would include Coursera, Google for Education, Stanford Online, and countless others. Refer to this article for what just barely even scratches the surface.
Networking is another powerful method of acquiring additional professional development. The possibilities are endless as you can interact with so many different perspectives. Social media can even serve as a platform to provide new ideas and spaces for conversations.
On Twitter, you can find a gold mine of perspectives by searching for educational chat groups by hashtags. For example, #worldgeochat and #edchat are two of many that I have participated in myself and found something to bring back to the class. Here is a fabulous list to start off with, and here is a comprehensive curated list, complete with a schedule.
Another popular social media site, Instagram, has become a great space to find and share ideas. Instagram has not only formed a niche of social interaction based around teaching to develop new strategies and ideas, but also serves as a wonderful source of inspiration and commonality. A simple search can not only find you a creative new way of thinking but also a shared experience to spark a conversation in the name of innovation.
Finally, as with all professional development, this is all for naught if we do not implement it. As previously mentioned, now is as much time for educational risk-taking as ever. Oftentimes I find myself jazzed up from a conference or course, ready to light the world aflame with new ideas, but then hesitate to fully commit to implementing these ideas.
Remember, in a classroom, it is important to have a culture of risk-taking. And just like the students who are afraid to speak out, if we are afraid to fall flat when trying something new, we run the risk of stagnating and our content may become stale.
Importantly, however, I want to caution against too drastic of a change. With so much shifting day-to-day in the current climate, there is certainly something to be said about stability. Ultimately, you know what is best for your students and how much is just right.
These, of course, are broad suggestions for a broad scope, all in the name of instructional improvement. It is important to reiterate that improvement may be best in some cases to be institution-wide, while some adjustments are best done within a class or subject.
Regardless of the scale, one thing is for certain, we have yet to perfect education across thousands of years. These tumultuous times may have some of us feeling that we are in uncharted waters, with technological sharks swimming about, but we are at the same time presented with an opportunity to continue to evolve. I will leave you with this call to action:
