Episode #11 Tips & Tricks Teaching Distance Learning During the Pandemic

On this episode I'll explore the reflective practices that I've learned about teaching distance learning during the pandemic. You'll hear some humorous stories and learn what still motivates me this school year. 


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Transcript

  Hey, everyone, it's Jebeh here, and I'm going to share with you some key takeaways. From my experience this school year, I know I'm almost done, I feel like I got to play my rocky theme song like I do every year at the end of the school year to say, finally, I made it to the top of the stairs in the school year. So I'm going to share with you some reflective points, some moments, some things that I really had to learn how to advocate for myself, and I feel stronger doing it that way. I feel like in the world of education, we are at the cusp of more of that concierge type of education, where you could do the traditional in person schooling, or if your families are jet setters when things open up. And you want to still keep your lifestyle of traveling and doing what you want to do. And your students will come with you and also learn wherever they are. And so I feel like as educators, we got to get comfortable with this new mode of education and education as a whole. 

So my whole purpose of this podcast is to share my love and passion of African culture, African American literature and African Studies. So those are the types of things where as an educator, we are already inherent on stopping pausing, what does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it sound like? You know, I can just see your wide charts in your brains right now, y'all I know. Right? So teaching in this mode, I'm also feeling like, Yeah, I do need to figure out, what does this look like for moving forward? What does this sound like? What does this feel like? And does it feel like we are going to be in this not pandemic wise, but it does feel like this new mode of learning is going to be with us. I feel like for a very long time, I rate educators, you know, we've been through some things, and I'm not saying something because it was so bad. 


What we've been through teaching virtually was literally like, you know, trying to fly a plane with train parts, right. And this stuff was very, very hard. And you know, I was sitting back, of course, you know, me I like to reflect, but I was like, dang, they didn't even have a pandemic methods class, you know, when I went to St. Scholastica. Like, what, you know, did you even ask the registrar like, you know, excuse me, when can I register for the plague classroom management course, like, that was not even a thing. But for me, it was like, wow, we were really shocked. Of course, we had no idea what was happening to the world. So we were all in crisis mode. I feel like, you know, when we shut down in Minnesota, where I teach, that we were trying our hardest to figure out this system of how are we going to translate all this stuff that we need to teach our students before the end of the school year?


 And how are we going to navigate that? I honestly felt like, where I was, that the time of training was not adequate to enough time to feel prepared as an educator, you know, as when it hits the end August. We are searching Pinterest, we're trying to get some, you know, fun ideas for how to revamp our, you know, our classroom, you know, get that, you know, excited motivation again, you know, I have my first six weeks book by Harry Wong, and I have it tabbed and, and highlighted, you know, when I always pull that out the end of August, that's when I get into k new school, your teacher mode, but nothing could have prepared us nothing could have prepared our world of going into this new realm. So when we did shut down at first, you know, last to organize last spring, I can't believe it's been already a year. We were in that crisis mode. We were crisis teaching our kids were crisis learning. And I felt like when we had that summer to take a breath, I felt like we still were trying to cope and realize kind of like that. 

Whoa, what just happened here? You know, we were still in that fog of what has happened this past spring, right? We were We were trying to grapple with things that were happening socially. We're trying to grapple with things that were happening with our health and our neighbors and our friends. And we were protecting our own selves and our own little bubble. But as educators, we're also thinking of how are we going to get through this fall? How am I going to approach my teaching style, how is my style, my methods? How Are my kids going to interact when we're in the middle of a pandemic in the fall? So when I came into the notion of, 

Okay, I'm going to be teaching distance learning, I got myself into that learning mode of literally trying to find things on YouTube, on how to do these learning platforms, that would be easier. We didn't know what type of learning platform we were going to start out with in the fall. But when we did finally get to that, I spent a lot of my time trying to map out a schedule, our district gave us that directive of how many minutes we were supposed to have live in person training. Teaching, you know, are synchronous and asynchronous. So the student wouldn't be in front of the computer for a long time, because you know, screen time. So we had our directive, okay, these are the minutes we need to fulfill. And then me and my teacher team kind of came up with an idea of, Okay, how am I going to map out how many minutes I'm going to be teaching live reading lessons? How many lessons Am I going to be teaching life math, and science and social studies and health and everything else that's wrapped up to be Oh, my goodness, how am I going to do my guided reading groups? How's that going to look? So those are the things that we're talking about building that plane with train parts, and not knowing exactly how am I going to fly this thing, right the look on his face, like, wow, and he looks to me like, wow, you're gonna really make me work for it. 

And he did. He got me linked up with the cable news center, the QC TV, Quad Cities television out in Anoka. Shout out to rob Johnson. He was the news director there and he got me on my start on editing and video. Sound and he even let me interview my classmates, because I wanted to be this journalist. I want to be like mini Oprah. Right? So long story short, now this is important. So bear with me. I know just be patient. So I took my love of broadcasting. I took my love of going to undergrad at UMD And studying communication with a Poli-Sci minor, I still had that love of becoming a broadcaster. So my first love when I graduated, I worked at WDIO, channel 10news in Duluth, Minnesota. As a weekend producer, great experience there. Shout out to Steve Goodspeed. And those are the those three mentors of mine, Dr. Martin, Mr. Rob Tronson, Mr. Steve Goodspeed, these three mentors of mine really believed in me and thought, Okay, this girl, she's really she's really passionate of what she wants to do. 

Now, fast forward to 2020 you know, I was teaching in person had this great vibe with my colleagues, you know, I'm working really hard. You know, my even taught my, my first son in fifth grade. But when this pandemic hit, I decided, you know what, I'm going to use my first love, my broadcasting love my producing love. And I'm really going to make this special for my fifth graders this year. Now, I'm teaching 36/5 graders to different elementary schools with two different principles. And what I've learned is I have to keep things of course, consistent for my students, and consistent for my families. And what I noticed in the beginning of the school year, when I'd have my morning meetings, my rah rah, Sis, boom, bah, you know, Sal strategies, getting our students, you know, socially emotionally focused and, and ready to start their day.


I took it upon myself, and when I was teaching my live synchronous lessons, I noticed that the kids have the power to log off, you know, in person, they can't just take off and run in the hallway, okay, maybe one does, but they always come back, they know what's up.But when you're teaching, virtually, you have to be comfortable with the fact that, wow, I can't control the other side of my screen, I can't control what the students are going to be listening or learning or had to leave for a reason that is out of my knowledge. So what I decided to do with my love of broadcasting, with my love of filming, I decided to do it double time. So I would teach live. And then I would pre record my lessons, pre record my reading, pre record my math, pre record my science and social studies. So if a student is not available, or didn't come to my Google meet, I still have to show them the standards and benchmarks, I still have to teach them the standards and benchmarks.

 So they can, you know, promote to the next grade level. So what I decided to do, and it is it's very tedious, I feel like my own boys at home are like, Oh my gosh, the doors closed, mom's recording, right. But those are the things that I had to do. Because that was the only way I would get full engagement with all of my students. And like I said, I can't control what's going on in their homes, but I can control all of the material that needs to be shared, and all the material that needs to be learned and taught. So my biggest thing, if you are in this thick pandemic teaching world right now, please pre record your lessons. Another thing that I do is think about it if a student is not present or participating that day, of course, they're absent, right?

 Because in person, if they're not physically in your classroom, they are not present, they are not participating. So all those recordings that I would have, I would push out, that wasn't like, you know, that was live. That wasn't live with my students, I would push out after the school day. So at 215, if you missed my live lesson that early in the morning, it would be pushed out at 215. You know, and that would help some families too, because then they would know, oh, Mrs. Edmunds has this lesson. And even if for my students that were there at my synchronous live lesson, but they forgot something or they miss something, they could always replay it back. And that's something I found very valuable. With my students, I feel like they were more confident because they knew if they couldn't reach me after school hours, they could see me perform that same lesson again. 

Another thing too, that I love to do is my read out loud you know, I've shared my favorite book so far. Trust me, there's more where that came from. But I love reading books out loud. And since we only have a limited amount of time To read out loud, in person online live, I decided, you know what I'm going to do it like a podcast, right? I'm going to whip up my GarageBand. And I'm going to record me reading a chapter. And my students love it. They give me great feedback when they are on the learning system. And, you know, I'm on seesaw this year, and they are giving me feedback of what they what they heard. You know, they even asked me questions of Oh, my gosh, what is this character going to do now,
or, oh, that was so funny. So those are the kinds of things where I get to have my students, you know, still feel like they're at school, but in a different sort of way. So I really, really feel like, you know, having that pre recorded lesson, it's a lot of background work, but it is so worth it. 


Because just like we all know, educators, we're always doing more than we are animals that you know, compensated for, but it's for the love of the students is for the love of knowing that I am making a positive impact on this young generation, it is well worth it, it is our return on investment by investing our time to our future. So I think that is so so very important. Like I said, you know, tutorials are your friends, I can't tell you how many waking hours I have watched and re watched some YouTube videos, just to kind of teach me even how to do long division for a fifth grader, you know, those are the kinds of things that you do. Before I wrap up here, communication is key. You know, I got my undergrad in communication, I just remember my grandma going, you got your degree to talk like, really what is communication? You know, and she even told me, she goes, you're meant to speak to the children. And I kind of, you know, thought to myself, like what mean, and now she was right, I was meant to speak to the children, you know, and that's my passion is to speak and to instill my knowledge in what I know, to the younger generation, I do a weekly newsletter, and I send it out at the same time, every Monday morning at 7:25am. I send a copy to my administrators, so they know where I'm at. 

I also in the beginning of the school year, I even did a little video tutorial for my students of what to expect when you're with me, you know, where should your space look like when you're learning, make sure you're in a comfortable space, make sure you have your materials ready with you right at the top. So you're not running around your house frantically trying to find your social studies notebook. So those are the types of things where I've set up very clear expectations. I also realized, when I was starting in the beginning of the year, my students were getting kind of flustered with my timed schedule. And I'll put that in the show notes. So you have an idea of kind of what that schedule could look like in your classroom. And what I decided to do was, instead of having the times on the side, I'm leaving that part blank, and it's more like a checklist. Because they're learning from home. They're not getting on the bus. So for them, my main concern is you show up at your designated synchronous times. That is the expectation and the parents know, that's the expectation. But the second thing I also wanted them to know is maybe that science project is going to go longer than that 30 minute block that I had, you know, scheduled out, just get it done. You know, that time I felt like made my students not all of them, some of them really like that time. But a majority of my students felt more flustered. 


And as a teacher, you're constantly reevaluating your day to day day to minute, you know, any type of transition. So for me, giving them that checklist that they can print off at home and literally check off as they go. They gave me more thumbs up, they felt more in control of what they needed to take care of for the day. Now, like I said, it's not a perfect system. But it is so valuable. Setting up clear expectations on how you behave in your Google means. I tell you, I have seen some things and that I tell you it's for another podcast that I'm gonna have to write because trust me, oh, it'll make you blush. So those are the types of things where you sit back and go. Make sure you are dressed like you are ready to go to school like you were in person. Even saying that out loud. You might think oh my gosh job you really have to tell them. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen You know, little baby siblings with nothing on but a diaper and a smile, and you're still trying to teach common denominators, right? Like, Oh, please keep that diaper on, please keep that diaper on. And then before you like, Oh, nope, exit, you have been kicked out of the meeting, you know, I have done that a few times. And still going with my common denominators, you know, I'm still teaching, you know, you don't miss a beat.

 And the thing is, you kind of have to have your poker face on when you are teaching live. Because if you give any attention to Oh, my gosh, is that a knife,or get your dog out of there, everybody's gonna be looking at that screen. So what I have done with my poker face, I'm smiling, I'm doing everything. And then in my right hand, I am exiting them out of the classroom. And so those are the things you can't miss a beat. But that's the best way of being right there. At your classroom management virtually, you know, you still have to keep your expectations clear. And clearly, that student is not in that mindset to be learning at that moment. 

So to keep you moving, and to keep your instruction moving, you got to do what you got to do, and let them go. So those are the kinds of things that you have to keep on point. And that is it's so very important. So those are my tips and reflective practices of keeping communication open for your family's being creative. And you know, put on your inner Oprah, self and have fun with it. And of course, like I said, set the tone, set your parameters and stick with it. You are your best advocate educators, you know what is best for your learners. No matter if you are in person, or teaching virtually. You know how you want your classroom run, and you run it well. So this is me. Jebeh Edmunds. Thank you again for visiting. I will talk to you guys later. Don't forget to subscribe, and tell your friends please get my subscription numbers up y'all. I need this. Alright, Big hugs. love y'all Talk to you later. Bye.