Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Category: Connecting

  • How you Zooming?

    When we were told to keep in contact with our students, it didn’t have to all be via Zoom.

    I was reading through the comments on a Facebook post just now about fighting with children to do their homework and to get on their Zoom meetings. When I saw this comment (I hid the commenter’s picture and name):

    I just don’t understand how we are supposed to work full time and do this!!! The school work is a full time job! Tomorrow my daughter has 3 zoom calls in one day. YES 3 calls. And she has minimum 1 or 2 per day and 3 on Thursdays now ??

    I blame this on M. Roberge’s blatant distrust of teachers when he wrote in a letter on May 20:

    Continuation of distance learning The school year is not yet over, and must continue at a distance for all preschool, elementary and secondary school students in the CMM. To that end, I would like to remind school staff that full-time work is expected until the end of the school year. While the terms and conditions under which this work is performed may vary according to the needs of each school, the following guidelines must be observed: - The aim is for students to maintain their acquired learning and to continue their essential learning. - A weekly work plan provided by the teachers allows students to create a work schedule and structure their learning. - Increased availability enables the teaching staff to answer questions from both students and parents. - At the elementary level, a member of the school team will contact the student directly at least three times per week (by telephone or video conference). Contact should be more frequent with more vulnerable students. - At the secondary level, a teacher aid will be assigned to each student, while a resource person will be assigned to students with an individualized education plan. These staff members should contact the student at least once per week (by telephone or video conference), in addition to the group meetings held remotely. - Increased availability enables non-teaching education professionals to support vulnerable students and hold individual virtual meetings with students. It bears repeating that these guidelines must be followed. Now that the school staff in the CMM are able to devote all their energy to the continuation of distance learning, all students must be able to receive high-quality pedagogical support from this week forward until the end of the school year. I also want to remind you that the same conditions apply to students outside the CMM who continue their learning from home.

    Nowhere in that letter did it say that we must teach via video conference all day all the time but we were reminded. And it bore repeating. That the school year wasn’t over. (Because, I guess, without that reminder we’d all be playing hooky and leaving our students and our professionalism to blow in the wind…)

    So, the easiest way to prove you are doing something is to go live with it. And so we can thank our minister for the growing practice of the multiple daily Zooms for our students (which goes against research about focus and learning). Because, also, we weren’t given time to learn about teaching & learning from a distance. To figure out that a 6 hour school day does not translate into 6 hours of zoom / homework. To figure out how to transition ourselves and our students into this new way of teaching & learning.

    Here are some what ifs that I have been thinking about that may help to ease this transition.

    What if…

    … we used video conference for connection instead of prioritizing delivery of content?

    (because what our kids really need right now is a sense of connection with their peers and teachers)

    What could connection look like?

    • Thinking about different ways to help students structure their learning than through video conference. Focusing on what will be helpful for our students and their families during a difficult, sometimes lonely time.
    • Providing easy access to content outside of the video conference. Organizing all of a child’s content on a website or in a Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams with explicit instructions is helpful. And when I say all, I mean for all subject matters. Parents are receiving many (many) emails from different teachers – English, French, Music, Art, Phys Ed, Science, Math…. and things get lost in inboxes. It adds to the scattered nature of our minds during this pandemic and can help make us feel inadequate as we try to juggle them all along with our own work emails and meetings – not to mention the online grocery orders…. If we can provide one link to everything they will need, that can be huge. A Google Site or Microsoft Teams is ideal since all teachers could easily collaborate through these platforms.
    • Reserving video conference time for asking and answering of questions, for talking together about learning.
    • Allowing multiple ways of connecting – allow students to use the chat feature. Before banning it (some teachers have disabled it), teach students how to use it as a learning tool. For some, they are more comfortable writing in than speaking. That is ok, that is more than ok. That is allowing for multiple means of expression within a conversation.
    • Keeping the meetings short. Connection has to do with showing that we care and support our learners. If we start to work beyond their attention spans, if we start piling on to their already fragile cognitive loads (We’re in a pandemic. All of our thoughts are scattered and fragile) then we are no longer caring and supportive but actually adding to their stress.

    … we video conferenced in small groups?

    (because not all of our students need the same things at the same times. And our students who we think require more assistance may actually only need different assistance.)

    What could small group video conferences look like?

    • Dividing our classes into smaller groups and connecting with them at different times.  Instead of one video conference for the whole group that lasts an hour each day, do multiple small groups within those same time slots. As a result, we could tailor each intervention to the children in front of us. For some students, they may need us to do content delivery. For others, they don’t but they do need to interact with us about the content.
    • Sharing in small groups. When we want students to share, each child doesn’t have to stare at a screen and wait for 20-30+ other children to share before their turn. And the smaller the group, the more likely it is that more people will actually speak. The larger the group, the more likely it is that we will end up asking Anyone? Anyone?
    • Addressing student needs during their learning instead of asking them to log on again for remediation. The students who need different kinds of support often have to endure a lesson that they don’t understand only to have to log on for more video conference once it is done. I always feel sorry for that.
    • Relieving our students and their families from the utter exhaustion that daily and multiple large group video conferences bring on.

    Those are a couple of the what ifs I have been thinking about as we get going with distance learning in our classrooms in Quebec. We have an opportunity for greater connection, greater learning while being forced to think differently about it. These are things I will be bringing with me into the coming school year, though no one really knows what it will look like yet!

     

  • Well-being of children and opening schools

    Yesterday afternoon, the Quebec government announced the reopening of schools during this current worldwide pandemic.

    Last week, they suggested as much, citing herd immunity as a main reason. But over the weekend, perhaps in response to Dr. Theresa Tam’s statement about the practice, they changed their reason why. In fact, they replaced it with 5 reasons why and made sure to underline that herd immunity was no longer the driving force behind the reopening of schools.

    Here are the 5 reasons why, as presented by Premier Legault (these are notes I took during the press conference on April 27. Here is Legault’s Facebook post, in French, that outlines the same points)

    1 – Well-being of children. Especially for those with learning disabilities. (Asking teachers to pay special attention to children who are having difficulties).
    2- The risk is limited for children. Children with health problems or who have parents with health problems, parents should keep them home.
    3 – The situation is under control in hospitals so if children and teachers get sick we can treat them.
    4 – We have the go ahead from public health (earlier I had read that M. Arruda, the director general of public health had wanted to wait another week but I can no longer find that reference)
    5 – Life has to continue, children should see their friends and teachers again. I don’t see children staying at home until a vaccine is ready in 12 or 18 months

    Calls herd immunity a secondary benefit.
    We are reopening our schools for social reasons and because the situation is under control in hospitals. (Legault)

    School is to be optional and teachers are expected to teach those who choose to be in school and follow up with those at home. (Roberge)

    For the past 3 weeks of the 5 weeks we have been out of school, we have sent links to activities that could be completed at home at a family’s discretion. We will continue to do so until we return on the 19th (in MontrĂ©al, still considered the epicenter in Quebec as of last week, and if the situation in the hospitals does not change), all the while preparing our classrooms for face to face teaching in a pandemic. Some teachers have also connected with their students in other ways, through Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or other platforms.

    If schools do reopen on the 19th, we will still be asked to connect in those ways all the while caring for the children who come to school in very unusual circumstances – 2 metre distancing in classes, recess, etc… and with no protective gear provided or mandated for staff or children. Some students and teachers won’t be present because of age or underlying health issues. This is not a return to school as it was nor is it a return to school for everyone.

    Premier Legault said that we are reopening our schools for social reasons and that the number one reason is for the well-being of children.

    There are vast options for nurturing our students, for providing for their well-being, that lie between the sending home of un-monitored schoolwork and the opening up of classrooms. Online learning can be a safe, caring space if we plan for it.

    We can work with small groups, in a stations approach. Colleagues can manage these small groups together, sharing the load and learning together. A group can work with the French teacher while the other works with the English teacher and then they switch. A resource teacher can also be at another group, to keep the groups as small as possible because we know that the smaller the group, the more opportunities each group member has to ask questions and express themselves. Resource or technology teachers and consultants can accompany teachers as we experiment with new solutions. As I wrote the other day, this is possible with tools that are made available to us by our government and our school boards.

    Yesterday, our Education Minister, Jean-François Roberge, promised LTE equipped tablets for students and families in need for distance learning. This begins to address the issues of equity and accessibility that worry me and can help to make this kind of online work accessible to more learners.

    I can already imagine all of the arguments against this kind of thing – in my previous career as a technology consultant for the Province, I heard them all! The reality is, if we put the arguments aside and try, we will find that it works.

    I am not suggesting that this can replace the kind of learning environments we had in our classrooms before we shut down but we won’t be returning to those spaces if we return on the 19th anyways. It won’t be business as usual. It won’t be equitable with some students and teachers in the buildings, some at home. I am scared and worried. Others are scared and worried. How will our children react? My son wants to return to school so he can play with his friends … But he won’t be able to play with them unless they are 2 metres apart so he is scared and worried. We can create safe, nurturing, closer to equitable learning environments online if we all stay home, like our Federal (and Provincial!) government suggests.

    (Of course, today Legault will be announcing the plan to reopen businesses… Was the well-being of children really the driving force?)

  • Learning (or should we call it connecting?) Online in Troubled Times

    Yes. Especially at this tumultuous (yet, for some lucky people, incredibly boring) point in time, we need to be talking about connection when it comes to learning. (When I say connect, I mean primarily as in human connection but also as in infrastructure.)

    Connecting Online in Troubled Times.

    There have been a whole new slew of online meeting and learning memes since we have started to work and school from home. Most of them refer to either inappropriate dress (or lack thereof altogether…) in meetings or the extreme boredom, exhaustion, and frustration of them. I could include a ton of pictures of actual online meeting fails…but they involve real people and my friend Avi reminded me how sad it is for them to be reminded of their fails all the time, so here’s a joke video that pretty much sums them up.

    But we have a desire to connect, a desire to connect to some kind of normalcy in these very un-normal times so we try to be productive online. Meetings, classes, more meetings, more classes. If we just continue as usual, but online, then we can quasi pretend that we aren’t going through traumatic life shifts. That not only “everything will be alright“, but it is alright.

    I hear from some parents, “If only teachers would teach online, that will solve things for me and my children!” I hear from our Ministry of Education (though the last I heard from them was quite a while back…), education consultants, and PD presenters, “Here are lists (and lists and lists and lists) of things you can do to make learning happen. To solve things for those parents asking for solutions.” And so teachers forward these lists to parents weekly but they say, “No! We don’t want lists of things to do, we want…online teaching! We want you to do your jobs in our homes!”

    It is all very exhausting and overwhelming. I started tuning the lists out a few weeks ago. At this point there are soooooo many lists that whenever I do need an idea I can just Google what I need and I’ll be ok. But as more of my own learning and connecting experiences are taking place online (and I used to do a lot of online learning and connecting in my former job!) the exhaustion is returning.

    For the most part, these experiences are presenter focused. That is, a very traditional lecture-based presentation….despite the possibilities that online learning has for connection, collaboration, and interaction.

    Last year, I experimented with working in stations during online PD sessions and I find myself reflecting on those experiences now.

    The magic of online stations (which are very doable with breakout rooms in Zoom or Via ‘ateliers’ and even manageable with multiple Meet rooms) is the same as the magic of classroom stations work: the relationship and connection that is created when working with small groups of learners.

    At this point in history, after months (in some cases) of being apart, connection needs to be the driving force of online learning – whether for professional development or for student development. We can’t just throw content at our students or participants. We need to design opportunities for them to connect with us, with each other, and with the material.

    Some of our students have suffered great loss with sick and dying relatives. Some of our students are alone at home with parents who work at home, yet are in another room for much of the day. Some of our students can’t meet with us online because they don’t have the tech to do so. Or they can’t meet with us because their parents work in essential services and they are at emergency daycare services. All of our students are grieving the loss of their friends, their lives, their fun, their experiences during this forced time at home. Many of them are scared of this loss and of this virus (and so are we.) We can’t ignore these very real facts.

    Consider this when arranging to meet with your students or teachers online. How are they connecting with you and with their peers? Are you muting them all because it is just too noisy (and taking away their means to connect and express)? Or are you planning for small group work that they will do in separate meeting rooms so that they can talk with each other and the presenters and not be overwhelmed by 20+ learners talking at the same time? Are you making sure that you have time to connect with each of the small groups so they can ask questions or say things that they may not be brave enough to utter in a large group?

    This works. I know because I have lived it a variety of levels. And if you can do this with teaching partners, it works even better because each of the small online breakout rooms can have a teacher to guide the conversations and check in with students. And the bonus is that we teachers get to support and connect with each other as well as we, in turn, support our students and their families in these very troubled times.

    We are not teaching. We are connecting.

  • The human touch of tech

    Today I read this, written by Nathan Smith, Director of Technology at the College of Education & Human Services of Utah State University.

    “…Connecting with our students in meaningful, positive ways – making each of them feel wanted, important, safe, valued, and needed – is to me the real “art” of teaching. I call this aspect of teaching “the human touch.” Technology used in education needs to enhance the human touch…”

    What Nathan calls the human touch, I refer to as relationship. I just love how he put it. It is so simple, so true. If we use technology (and really, that phrase ‘use technology’ is so contrived and artificial) to help our students succeed in ways that make sense for them and what they are learning then we are living and practicing in the realm of human touch. That will forever be my goal.

  • Making sense of teaching by starting with why

    I haven’t read the book so this isn’t a review or commentary on the book but rather a reflection on the idea of starting with why, which just so happens to be the title of a book as well.

    When people ask what do you do, you teach.
    When people ask what do you teach, you teach elementary or high school, English or French, or Math, or History.

    But it’s not often that I’m asked why I teach. Maybe if we went with the why more often we’d make more sense out of teaching.

    Why do you teach?

    To create mathematicians? Why?
    To help kids raise their test scores? Why?
    To get kids to write? Read? Why?
    To get kids to sit in a row, quietly taking notes? Why?
    To get kids to question? Why?
    To learn about human relationship? Why?

    Why do you teach? And when did you figure that out?