- How did you redesign your teaching and learning environment during the coronavirus pandemic?
- Share your challenges and celebrations with teaching during the coronavirus pandemic.
Tina Marie
Devlin, Instructor /Health
Promotion, Education, and Behavior / University of South Carolina
Before the
pandemic hit in 2020, I was teaching in a face-to-face environment with over
100 students. I also utilized Blackboard as well to post announcements and
assignments. When the pandemic hit, we transitioned to an online modality at
USC. I communicated with my students extensively via Blackboard and email that
we would continue to meet 2x/week at the same time via Blackboard Collaborate,
but attendance would no longer be mandatory. I completely revised my syllabus
and continued to update it throughout the Spring 2020 term (I called it a
"Fluid/Flexible Syllabus"). I spent the first 2 classes after we
transitioned online asking students about their emotional well-being and how
they were coping with such a huge shift. I continued to post online Announcements
about "seeking counseling services" on and off-campus if the students
needed it. I focused on the student's needs instead of course content for the
remainder of the Spring 2020 term. I continued to teach online in Fall 2020 and
Spring 2021. I am more flexible and understanding of student's needs during
this time. If students are not emotionally and physically ok, then learning
will not happen.
The celebration
I can attest to is that I am more comfortable using Blackboard. I had to learn
very quickly how to use Collaborate which is a great tool for students and
instructors. I continued to maintain positive relationships with students
during the pandemic. I implemented activities throughout the Fall 2020 and
Spring 2021 terms that allowed students to connect with me and their peers
every week in a digital space (this has been very successful and beneficial). One
challenge experienced is that when technology is not working (slow internet
speed, outages in one's community), you cannot teach online or do anything. I experienced
major internet issues in Fall 2020 in my neighborhood/community which impacted
teaching and my full-time job. Also, it is a challenge to devote 100% to
teaching when working a full-time, demanding job (which is my situation).
Sometimes student emails are not always answered quickly, or I may miss an
email or two or I may not have time to design robust learning activities. Like
so many of us, we are juggling many things right now and we are also dealing
with our pandemic fatigue and stress.
College Instructor
/ University of South Carolina
Fortunately for
me, all of my courses have always been taught asynchronously. The pandemic did
not alter the way the courses were designed or structured. However, the
pandemic did cause me to be more student focused. Instead of taking one or
maybe two courses online, students were now challenged with taking multiple
courses online. I developed a lot of empathy for students. In addition to
learning new course content, they were also responsible for learning new
technology and new methods of learning.
In addition to making sure my students understood the content of my
course, I was also charged with assisting them with time management and
planning.
The challenge I
faced personally was balancing my home life with my work life. I had two
children who were also home participating in e-learning. The celebration was
working with CTE and having the ability to assist faculty to build and design
their courses.
Middle
School Teacher / 7th Grade / Math / Columbia, SC
I had to
redesign my teaching by increasing independent learning experiences as opposed
to whole class lectures and group activities.
Self-created and online teaching videos, tutorials, and assignment
checklists were utilized. In order to
engage students, I had to check in often to make sure students were focused on
the content. This involves constant
questioning through chat, surveys, google forms, edPuzzle videos, etc. Without being able to actually see students,
this was crucial to keep students focused. Group work was done in virtual
breakout rooms. The group activities that I count on to help students tie math
concepts together, were not as effective since many students were not
comfortable unmuting their mics and speaking out loud with their classmates.
This year has
certainly been challenging without being able to see and interact with my
students. I feel alone quite often while
speaking to and staring at students’ profile icon, which is usually an animated
picture. Many factors were out of my
control, such as students not turning on their camera, or walking away from
their computer. I knew that while logged
in, they were missing important information, which I would have to repeat,
several times. Although this year was a
struggle for us all, students, teachers, and parents, I do feel that I have
been able to help students a little more during one-on-one tutoring
sessions. Since it was online, I was
able to focus on student's needs without the distractions that could come from
a classroom full of energetic middle schoolers.
Sheila Gfell,
Middle School Teacher / 8th Grade / Math & Algebra I / Columbia, SC
The greatest
change that I had to make was finding ways to make virtual students participate
in class. The students wanted to sit silently on their computers and not
interact with anyone. I used breakout rooms a few times every week, directed
questions to virtual students, used applications like Jamboard and Classkick so
that their work would show in real-world time. I would have a student in class
write on the board for a virtual student. The virtual student would explain how
to solve a problem while the face-to=face student would write it for them. We
also used Screencastify, students and teacher, Flipgrid,
and other apps to help students feel as though they were part of the class.
Challenges were
realizing that learning would look much different and be more difficult even
for the brightest students and finding a way to overcome that obstacle. On top
of that, there were logistical problems such as shortened class time. Outside
of being virtual, only having 42 minutes a class period was the biggest
obstacle. Giving homework was nearly impossible to do after students had
already spent 7 hours on their devices and yet we still have to achieve as much
as we did before. The demands made on teachers were overwhelming. Finish
teaching this class, wash the desks down, get students in the room, start the
meet on your device, start the meet on the panel, have a DPA to prove
attendance, take attendance and teach in 42 minutes. On top of that, let's
continue to observe and evaluate teachers with the same rubric as before while
asking teachers to teach dual-modality with no training and expect students to
learn the same amount of material. In my humble opinion, these standards were
impossible to meet.
Donnie Brown,
Middle School Teacher / 8th Grade / South Carolina History / Columbia, SC
I had to create
lessons for in-person and online students. I was not able to give handouts
which I believed in the lack of participation from many students. I also was
not able to plan field trips to take students on to bring history to life. I
believe in trying to bring history to life and felt my hands were tied many
times this year because I couldn't take students anywhere nor could I pass
around items I had since they were online students.
Middle
School Teacher / 6th – 8th Grade / Theatre Arts / Columbia, SC
Instead of
hands-on activities that Theatre arts has always relied upon, we had to
completely shift to an examination of others' performances and technical
design. The students have not been able to fully act since March 11th, 2020.
Our focus has gone from Stage performance to some attempt at acting for the
camera.
Elementary
School Teacher / 3rd Grade / Sumter, SC
Due to the
pandemic, I've had to redesign my teaching and learning environment so that it
would be conducive for learning. For example, for virtual students, I had to
make sure the assessment or activity that I used was digital and easily
accessible. Google apps such as slides, docs, forms were used to create
surveys, informal and formal assessments, etc. When we phased into the hybrid
model, I continued using the digital assessments for all of the students. The
difference was that the virtual students had to use the virtual manipulatives
as opposed to the hybrid students would have their own set of manipulatives
that they could use in a socially distanced classroom. In a nutshell, the use
of technology has increased and varying forms of how students share their
learning have been a little different.
One of the
challenges that I encountered while teaching during the pandemic was having to
start the school year teaching virtually. At the beginning of every school
year, I looked forward to decorating my classroom and preparing to engage in
in-person ice-breaker challenges to get to know my students. But this year has
been different. I had to brainstorm creative ways to build relationships with
my students through the computer screen.
Another challenge was finding ways to collect accurate assessment data
of the student and not their parents or older siblings.
Amid the
challenges, there were also celebrations. Some of the celebrations include
being able to collaborate and share "teaching hacks" and strategies
with other educators all around the world. Also being able to have more than
80% of my students return to the classroom expressing how excited they were to
be back in school and to be in my class in person.
Micah Vaughn, Elementary School Teacher / 4th Grade / Self Contained (All Subject areas) / Sumter, SC
While teaching during the coronavirus pandemic a lot of the teaching methods had to revert to a digital model. We started off the school year virtual. Most paper activities that I would normally do with students had to be digital. Starting off the school year virtually I had to stress (this year more than ever) the importance of constant parent communication; considering it was a few months before I would have been able to see any of my students face to face. The learning environment has changed in the ways that we are able to work collaboratively together. Most of the activities were done independently or while practicing some sort of social distancing. Teaching during the coronavirus pandemic you had to be extra prepared and ensure that you had a backup plan just in case technology issues. At the beginning of the transition, it was really trial and error and revamping things to make it better for students, parents and myself. Social Emotional Learning/ Morning meets has been a consistent part of our day to ensure students are ready to start their day.
At the beginning of the pandemic, it was very challenging not being able to physically be in the classroom with all 21 of my students. Teaching from a screen was a struggle but I could not let my students see my sweat. There were a few tech issues, but we kept pushing through to ensure that the students were still learning and engaged as best as possible. Another challenge was that we were not able to properly access students like we would normally to gather legit assessment data (considering that we are not sure if students are actually completing the assigned tasks). On a positive note, 90% of my students were logged on each day and the parent communication overall was great which made thing better. Now that we have most students face to face it is great to see how much they have grown from the start of the year.
Cite this blog: Washington, G. (2021, March 31). Teaching During COVID-19: First-Person
Stories from Educators [Blog post]. Retrieved
from https://pedagogybeforetechnology.blogspot.com/
