Hi all!
So, we've been at this whole "distance learning" for a few weeks now. I don't know about you, but, for me, I still marvel daily at how much can- and has- changed so fast in such a condensed period of time. Trying to recall September of this school year with any detail feels like trying to recall the September of my senior year in high school.
In terms of education, each day is a new adventure. For me- and, I'm sure, many, many other teachers, both Special Ed and General Ed alike- one of the major concerns that popped into my mind when I first wrapped my head around the concept of distance learning was: how am I going to make sure that all students are receiving the accommodations/modifications they need and are entitled to? How am I going to provide the same level of support to my students when I am not physically in the same room with them?
This concern, especially as a Special Educator, has not gone away, even as we gear up to enter Week 4 of distance learning. It has, however, gotten a little better, and I continue to experiment, refine, and try out new ideas as we continue venturing into the great unknown. I thought that I would take the time to categorize and collate some of the strategies I've been using, what's working and what's needed refinement, and the "why" behind some of the areas that I feel I've had the most success with.
Fair warning: this post is created from the POV of a Special Education teacher. Many of the accommodations/modifications below are technology-driven offshoots of what I try to do typically in an in-person class. However, that does not mean that some of these techniques can't be useful in a broader, General Education setting. In fact, some of the strategies I'm going to go through have been, more or less, adopted by a few of the General Education teachers I work with. My point is, I hope everybody in education can find something useful here, but please consider your setting when trying to adapt or implement a technique.
1. The "Pause Button"
So, I know I just took the time to go over how some of these strategies will work differently in specific settings, but this is one that, generally speaking, I think can be applied in some form to every distance learning classroom.
Essentially, this idea came out of the simple fact that everything we're facing is still incredibly new. Yes, we've got a few weeks under our belt, and some of this is even starting to feel strangely normal (which is kind of unnerving to me), but the concept, scope, and rollout of distance learning at this scale is still definitely in its infancy.
Like I mentioned before, a lot of these techniques have their roots in structures I implement in traditional schooling. The "Pause Button" is no different. Essentially, I make it a point to communicate my policy on "pausing" with students and their families early on in the year. Basically, if a student is working on an assignment at home and something isn't working, they have a question, or they're otherwise stuck, they, or their parents/guardians, are encouraged to send me an email outlining the problem.
After that email is sent? The student takes a break from the assignment.
This is hardly a revolutionary concept, but I cannot tell you how many times I've gotten positive feedback from students and their families regarding its implementation.
In essence, if a student or parent makes the effort to ask a question or convey that something isn't going well when I'm not right there to help them, they're given an automatic extension, no points off, no problem.
Most of the time, when we're in traditional school, the way this would play out is as follows: student takes a break with the assignment outside of school, student comes to school the next day, I help clarify or troubleshoot the problem with the student, student completes assignment through a no-hassle extension.
Obviously, this looks a bit different when implemented in distance learning.
Typically, I'll try to troubleshoot the issue from my end, either creating a chat-log or video to help out the student. Sometimes we'll arrange a Google Meet if the problem is especially tough. But the core of the strategy remains the same: if something isn't going right, it is okay, even preferable, to step away from the problem and take a breather.
That's it. It's really just that simple, but, I've found that without explicit, clear, and direct instruction that this is okay and you really won't lose points for missing a deadline, many students assume they have to keep powering through, even when something may be legitimately wrong with their setup or technology.
This structure is put in place to minimize frustrations, plain and simple. Student frustrations, parent frustrations, even teacher frustrations. There's no rush or panic to get it done, and it also helps underscore that it's okay that your teacher is not available 24/7.
Don't get me wrong; I pride myself in responding quickly to emails, especially ones from students or parents. But it's unrealistic to expect an immediate response at any time of the day, especially outside of "school hours." During school hours there're meetings, other classes, and roughly 60+ other students who might also have questions. After school hours, I have my own responsibilities, interests, and hobbies (though, admittedly, given the quarantine, this list has shortened somewhat, with the new Animal Crossing skyrocketing to the top!). It's simple not feasible to come to expect an unfailingly immediate response...but, when you're staring down an assignment that just won't load and is due in 2 hours, it's very easy to understand why students might get antsy.
Basically, this very simple strategy boils down to patience. Patience for the students, their families, and the teacher.
And, giving that we are all stepping into a brave, new world (one where the reliance on technology is more than ever), I cannot recommend embracing patience highly enough.
2. Simple Layout Schedule/Daily Video
So, this one follows suit with the "Pause Button" in that it's really very simple. In fact, most of the entries on this list are exceedingly simple.
This is intentional.
For one, I like getting the most bang for my buck. Sure, some projects are a ton of effort for a ton of payoff, but there's nothing wrong with making minimal, user-friendly tweaks to increase efficiency and have everything run just a little smoother.
Secondly: everything is inherently more complicated through distance learning by the simple fact that you, the teacher, are not there to adapt and respond in real time. Questions that would take .5 seconds to answer in real life now have to be fully typed out, and there's a much greater risk for confusion and unclearness if you're primarily communicating over text. Even answering questions "in person" takes a boatload of planning: making a Google Meet, posting the Google Meet link, making sure that doesn't conflict with another class's Google Meet, making sure all the students saw the link/post, etc.
In some ways, distance learning feels like a slowed down version of traditional learning. So, for me, simple is good.
Enter: the Simple Layout schedule. I literally make a table in Google Docs each day, create a checklist of what I'd like students to complete that day, link any relevant material, and there we go. Sometimes I'll throw in funny pic or a joke of the day, but, yeah, it's really that easy.
It can be tempting to get sucked into the tech we're working with, and I'm definitely into finding new applications and new ways to be creative long range. But, for something like a daily schedule that students will be seeing some version of every day...
For me, it's: consistent, concise, and comfortable.
Pairing alongside this user-friendly schedule is my "Daily Video," which is helpfully linked on said schedule.
I make a video for each of my classes most days. They're largely pretty short (under 5 minutes), and the content essentially focuses on what's on their schedule for that day.
You may ask yourself, then: why does she make a video basically saying the same stuff that's already in writing? Good question!
Simply put, I like variety. I know some of my student prefer hearing me explain what they're doing alongside reading the written instructions, and, for some, it goes a step further. Some students might be full-on visual learners while others really appreciate auditory support, and this strategy is a super easy way to help appeal to as many students' learning styles as possible.
To that end, I also sometimes record assignment directions via Vocaroo or Flipgrid. This is another really easy workaround that takes practically no time, but makes a huge impact. I touch on some of these platforms in more detail during my "How to Clone Yourself" post; please feel free to check it out if you're curious.
I also think it's important to put out a daily, or semi-daily video for another reason: student connection.
These are weird times for all of us, but try to imagine what it'd be like living through this crisis as a child. The weather's finally getting warm, summer's on the horizon, but you haven't seen your friends in weeks, your family's likely stressed, you may have parents who are essential workers and pulling crazy hours, or you may have parents who can't work right now and are dealing with the paralyzing uncertainty of being sick or unemployed in this crisis.
If all that's going on in your life, and suddenly "school" is logging into an isolated space with no interaction or sense of community...
I think the videos help instill a sense of "we're still here" for the students. It lets them see us and helps remind them that they're not wading their way through these unsure times alone.
3. Setting Time Limits
Like the last two, this one is exactly how it sounds.
This is something I've done before in traditional school, but not to the extent I've found it helpful since the move to distance learning.
Heads up: this is one that, I, as a Special Education teacher, get a lot of mileage out of.
In short, sometimes, on my daily schedule, I'll set a time cap for my students. Instead of giving an estimate for how long I think an assignment should take, I put a hard range for how long students should spend on a particular task.
Why is this helpful?
Well, some activities, like reading a choice book or completing some practice on NoRedInk, can theoretically go on forever. Just saying to read or do some practice on NoRedInk could result in wild variation from student-to-student. One student may read for 10 minutes and think that's fine, while another might insist they've got to keep reading for hours to get credit.
Additionally, if students are working on the same assignment (or pieces of the same assignment via chunking) over a longer period of time, setting time limits on each section can be an effective way to manage their progress.
There are typically two ways that I set time limits: hard floor or hard ceiling.
Example of hard floor: Please read your independent choice book for at least 20 minutes. You may read longer than that if you like, but 20 minutes is the minimum.
Example of hard ceiling: Work on NoRedInk practice for no longer than 10 minutes. Set a timer; after 10 minutes is up, please save your progress and exit the program.
Each of these methods have their own benefits, and you can combine them if you're really keen to prescribe the exact amount of time a student should be spending on an assignment.
Heads up: This does mean you have to consider this mechanic when grading. For example, "grading for completion" has to be changed to "grading for time spent" or "grading for progress," since students will work at different rates even while spending the same amount of time in an assignment.
The big upside to this one, especially in terms of distance learning, is that it gives teachers a degree of control over how long their classwork is going to take. Getting "teaching timing" down is one of those skills you pick up as you go in education, but the benefit of being in a class with your students while they work and making adjustments on the fly is somewhat stymied by distance learning. You can't see, in real time, that this lesson is going way fast or way slow, or that one student's speeding through while another is taking their time.
It's harder to estimate what the time spent on a certain assignment will be while distance learning, and this can lead to students finishing all their classwork for you in 15 minutes on some days, to taking 3 hours to finish what was supposed to be a 45 minute assignment on others.
Having a time limit baked right in gives you back some control when setting realistic goals, and it also adjusts student expectations accordingly. I know this work will take 20 minutes to complete, because that's as long as I'm allowed to work on it.
Obviously, this technique won't work for every assignment, but I've found it to be a helpful staple as I continue navigating distance learning. It's also helpful that a number of the platforms I utilize this strategy on come with a built in timer. Personally, I'm fine with the "honor code" of Independent Reading Logs, but it's cool to be able to pull up a timed log of student progress through Newsela or NoRedInk to make sure the time limit was complied with.
4. Personalizing Student Assignments/Google Feedback
This one's a neat trick for anyone using GSuite and Google Classroom.
One of the big jobs of any ICR teacher is finding the perfect balance of modified content for their students. The goal is to provide supports and structures for students to reach success without too dramatically changing the content of the gen. ed class. This can be accomplished through a number of ways, from providing extra support in the classroom, to changing the timeline of a specific assignment, to downright reducing, reformatting, or modifying the content of an assignment.
Each assignment, and each student, is different in this regard. Which is why being able to assign customized work to a single student is such a game-changer through Google Classroom.
This probably isn't news to those already "in the know" about Google Classroom, but you don't have to assign every assignment to every student. During the assigning process, you can click or un-click individual students from an assignment's pool. This enables you to tailor content to the individual level if you so choose, exempt students from certain assignments, or provide them with specific materials that only they need.
This is such an easy feature, but it's so impactful. It's also only visible on the teacher's side of the equation; when students log into Google Classroom, they only see what they're meant to see, i.e. what's assigned to them.
This is also a great feature when constructing digital partner work or team games. For example, an upcoming game that I'm designing for my 8th Graders requires trios to work together to solve puzzles and figure out riddles. By using this strategy, I was able to create personalized (and teacher supervised) "chat" areas that each team could use to discuss tactics.
Another cool thing you can do through GSuite is comment directly on student work. This is another technique most "in the know" Google Classroom users probably already do, but, given that digital feedback is now largely the only form of student feedback we've got on hand, I can't overstate how essential it is that we utilize it to its fullest potential.
5. Common Planning/Modification Doc
This one really is a no-brainer, but I want to spend some time on it because I feel like it can be really easy to overlook if you're not careful.
Those of us who work in a co-teaching model know how coveted common planning time is. I am a firm believer that classes run better with a plan; sure there will be deviations and there might be those occasional moments of off-the-cuff brilliance along the way, but those are kind of like appreciating the unexpected scenery during a long trip. When I board a train, I like to know where I'm headed and have an approximate understanding of how long it'll take me to get there (or I will when I can board a train again). Plans are like this to me.
So it's obviously really important that you make time to still plan together as co-teachers, even though we're no longer in the same place and can't just have that easy, in-person conversation about how we want the next assignment to rollout.
The way that I've accomplished this with my ICR classes so far is through another, very simple, doc. Essentially a table with an area for gen. ed plans and a box next to it for modifications/accommodations, I can't oversell how clutch this doc really is. It goes beyond just agreeing on a general assignment; this is one-stop-shopping for a five day forecast of lessons and, very importantly, the mods that'll be accompanying them.
Remember the time limit strategy I mentioned earlier? This is where that goes as a note so everyone involved knows we're grading Susie on time spent rather than completion. This is where alternative versions of assignments get linked, where overall estimations of how long a lesson should take are stored, and where adjustments are made after initial rollouts.
It keep everyone in the loop in one convenient place, which minimizes frustrations, saves time, and helps us all stay a little more organized.
6. Asking Questions
So, this last one is actually a bit of a "trial-and-error" story for me. Which, like I mentioned earlier, are to be expected when traversing this new space, and should be reflected on and used when refining earlier practices into more efficient and useful ones.
Before we leapt into distance learning, I created a "Questions Doc" for my students to use whenever they, you guessed it, had a question. It was a fairly basic thing: student writes a question next to their name, I respond, student gets answer.
And, while this system definitely works...some natural improvements have sprung up over the course of the last month.
First and foremost, this system was not the way students were accustomed to contacting their teacher online. Student-teacher email or parent-teacher email is obviously still very popular, but I didn't realize just how often students use the "comment" feature in Google Classroom to ask a digital question.
Simply put, students (or teachers) can send a public or private message directly through Google Classroom, usually by adding a comment to the assignment they're struggling with (or the teacher can create a discussion thread on Stream).
This mechanism is a lot more natural for students because:
- They've been using it this whole time.
- Their comment is connected to the work they've got a question about.
- They have the option to make their comments public or private.
- Teachers can toggle their settings to receive a notification whenever a comment in Google Classroom is made.
Safe to say, this blew my dinky Question Doc out of the water.
At first, some students did occasionally use my doc, but the vast majority preferred the comments. I'll admit, I've grown to prefer them too: like I mentioned, these comments can send you an alert to your email once they're written, which, for me, made them way easier to keep track of. Instead of constantly scrolling through three different Question Docs for three different grade levels, now I can focus on my other work while occasionally responding to an alert that comes through my phone.
I bring this up...mainly because I foresee this happening a lot as we continue to explore and refine distance learning. Ideas we were really excited about may not work, or may need to be recalibrated, and, rather than sticking stubbornly to an iffy idea we're proud of, I think it's really important that we all approach this experience with a healthy dose of humility. None of us have all the answers. We might have a few that're working fine, some that might work for a little while, and some that need some TLC, but I'd be extremely suspect of anyone claiming to be an expert in distance learning after a grand total of a month in the trenches.
Like with our students, this is a learning experience. More emphasis needs to be put on the process and progress rather than the pursuit of perfection. We need to be patient with each other and ourselves.
I hope you've gotten something out of reading this post, and I hope you're staying healthy and safe.
As always, these techniques may not work in every situation or for every student. Just reflecting on my own experiences, I have some students who faithfully tune into my daily video every day and I have others who've never once watched it. And that's okay. Just like in the classroom, every student operates differently. I don't want, or expect, my students to all behave identically; that would be super boring. My goal here is to offer support and structure in a way that's accessible, but also mixed in with a healthy dose of choice.
I hope that's come across. A big thanks to all our health care and essential workers; please know you've got our continued support now and when this crisis is over.
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