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| Sunrise on Eagle Ave. |
Yesterday's training was all about using online platforms to reach students who are not on site, or who attend part-time in hybrid learning plans.
When school starts in 20 days, most of my students will be face-to-face with me in my classroom. But I must also make our learning accessible to those quarantined at home.
The full brunt of this hit me hard about 30 minutes into yesterday's four-hour class and weighed on me throughout the day and into the night. Let me give you a peek:
My broadcasting class produces a weekly news show for the school. We work in teams to make ads; cover academics, sports, and fine arts; and produce entertainment videos to build a sense of community in our school. Broadcasting is a beehive of activity: kids grabbing cameras and mics, running teleprompters for each other, tracking down students and teachers to interview, buzzing through the school to get B-roll, nestling head-to-head to edit clips.
Now imagine all of that with socially-distanced protocols. That's what I was trying to do as I stared at the ceiling in the middle of the night.
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I am not just rethinking Broadcasting. Yesterday's training encouraged us to chunk our teaching into short videos that students can watch asynchronously to learn content.
Pre-recording video negates my interactive teaching style. I teach not by talking TO students, but by talking WITH them. Even when explaining content I've taught for years, I read my students' faces, postures, questions, and responses in order to adjust: to add another example, clarify a point of confusion, ease tension, or refocus learners who are beginning to fidget.
In fact, if I have a teaching strength, I think it is my fluidity in reading kids: yes, they're getting it; no they're not.
Recording videos to be watched independently strips me of this strength. It also makes a huge assumption that kids will actually watch the videos.
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I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm fairly tech-savvy and have about 100 years of teaching under my belt. But like I read on a twitter quip: This year, we will all be first-year teachers.
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I might have to abandon my efforts to help my dad with his computer. Yesterday I called hoping to play a little online Bridge with him, but instead we talked about the tech support from Friendship Haven that had come in to help him get his desktop computer working again.
I asked him if they'd been able to log into his gmail account (I'd spent about 15 minutes the day before helping him get his address and password straight). He didn't know. What he did (seem to) know was that he'd seen his email, and had seen lots of letters in the in-box, and then "lost" them all.
I suspect he was talking about his old spam-littered Hotmail account, which I replaced with his family-only gmail account during his stay with me. As I tried to determine which account he was using, he grew more confused, his voice more tense.
I tried to change the subject and ask how he and my mom were adjusting to their third day of quarantine.
"I'm having trouble with the computer," he said. "I saw emails, and then they were gone."
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When I worked with my dad during the past two weeks to get him acclimated to using ZOOM on his laptop, we were face-to-face. I could read his facial expressions, and sense when to push, when to back off.
Without his ZOOM camera working, I can't see him as he repeats himself, stammers, and tries again. So I'm reading him through the sound of his voice.
He is not one to give up, so I must be the one to suggest we take a break, try again later, or if need be, throw in the towel.
Maybe I'll make a Screencast teaching him to log onto Google. He can watch it asynchronously, like my students.
Enough.
Be well.
Write.
Allison
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| Wolf is looking at the world. |
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