Feet Up Friday: First Week Reflections

Guys, the first week of school was hard. So hard. I had mentally prepared for it, but there was no way to know how difficult synchronous remote learning would be. So, I apologize for the blog blackout. It was necessary to maintain my tiny bit of sanity.

I'd say about 90% of the stress I've felt this week has been from a complete lack of control. I can't control if Google Drive drops or Go Guardian crashes (both did); I can't control if a student decides to act out on a Google Meet (which two students FROM A DIFFERENT SCHOOL managed to do this week). I can't control the fact that I can't see the students I'm teaching.

I can't control 95% of what I normally can control in a regular classroom. And I'm tech-savvy. And I have really supportive co-teachers. And I know 80% of my students this year. So how are the rest of you surviving this?!

I know most people are in it by now, so none of this is a newsflash for anyone. But I thought if I reflected on the week, what worked and what didn't, it would be helpful for anyone feeling like they're failing or helpless. You're not. You are wonderful, and you are doing everything you can. We all are building the airplane while we are flying it.

So Here's What Worked

Pear Deck

Oh, my God, Pear Deck. Pear Deck please pay me to sing your praises because I love you so much. My future ex-husband is Pear Deck. I'm scribbling Pear Deck's initials all over my teacher planner.

If you are not using Pear Deck, it's similar to Nearpod, but I honestly just love how simple and user-friendly Pear Deck is. The free version has a lot of great features. You can do teacher-paced instruction, and you have a lot of different types of questions you can ask the kids. You are able to display results to the students (anonymously), and you can lock or unlock questions to prevent students from changing answers.

If you get a premium account (my school bought it for us this year), you can do draggable questions and drawing questions (great for highlighting text). You can do teacher-paced or student-paced, and you can save all their responses. Also, so far at least, the kids actually like it. It keeps them focused and accountable throughout the lesson, so they don't just check out when you start teaching.

Teachers Pay Teachers

I'm usually a psycho that has to make all of my assignments from scratch, but going into this school year, I finally cut myself a little break and relied on the brilliance of others on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Shout out to Write On With Miss G. She has some fabulous beginning of the year products that saved my life this week.

I bought a couple of her activities -- specifically, her Personality Test and her Investigate the Teacher activities. Mwahh! They were beautiful, creative, and engaging. I obviously put some of my own spin on things because I'm crazy, but it was such a relief to not have to figure out the creative aspects of the lessons. I love using my creativity in my lesson planning, but holy cow, that's what burns you out quicker than anything else. The only thing I changed about her products was how I presented them. I made her Personality Test activity into a Pear Deck, and I incorporated my interactive Bitmoji classroom into her Investigate the Teacher slides — which was a hit and I highly recommend it!

Now more than ever, you need to structure breaks for yourself. That might mean supporting some talented teachers on TpT and taking something off your constantly overflowing plate.

Sharing is Caring

This almost sounds silly, but I think it's such an important strategy to make your students feel connected to you during remote learning. I have been sharing so much about myself with my students. It's hard to communicate with them one-on-one like I normally do in the classroom, so I'm actively choosing to be vulnerable and open with all of them because it will encourage them to do the same. I know I've said in previous posts that I know most of my students from last year, but I'm already seeing my new students open up and share things with me. It makes me so happy.

Providing Out-of-Class Opportunities To Share

Every period, I tell my students they can hang behind if they just want to talk to me about anything, and a couple of students have taken advantage of that just to talk about regular stuff - a show they watched this summer, a concert they couldn't go to because of COVID, the results of their personality tests, etc. They want to talk — just not in front of the entire class.

Also, I reinstated a digital-version of my Hooray Board on Friday, which lets kids share the good news about their lives with me. I was surprised by how many students opted into it immediately and wanted to share with their classmates. So many of them are starved for social interaction but too anxious to really talk to each other; this is such a low-risk way for them to share and build community.

You can get this Hooray Board template and Google Form for free on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

What Really Didn't Work

Too Much Task-Switching

I know switching activities is an excellent strategy for keeping students engaged in a lesson, but in remote learning, task-switching becomes chaos in two seconds. Even if I use different programs, I post a slideshow for their lesson with all of their links and activities. The couple times I tried to have students switch to a different doc, activity, or website on their own, I immediately lost half of them. You can still change up what you're doing, but keep it all in the same place so you don't lose them.

Google Meet's "Protective" Features

I'm not going to go deep with this, but a student (in a class of 26 where I know 20 of them very well) decided it'd be hilarious to share out my Google Meet code with his friends from another high school in our district. Because they have a district email address, they could get it in without approval. Also, despite the fact that Google Meet says when you remove someone they can't come back in, they were able to. So Google Meet users beware! It was not a fun time.

Our school district is specifically using Google Meet because it's supposed to be "safer" than Zoom, but on Zoom, they would've never even been able to join the class between the waiting room and mute all button. *Facepalm.* Keep your fingers crossed that I'm hoping Google Meet releases some sort of waiting room soon.

Livestreaming

I understand why people like Livestreaming vs. regular Google Meets. In the class with the random kids jumping in, I'm going to be live streaming for the time being because it's the only way I know they can't get into the Google Meet. Live streaming gives you complete control over your Google Meet because there is no way for your students to interact with each other or you. They are just viewing your lesson in realtime. It's great for classroom management, and absolutely awful for interactive, engaged learning.

What Now?

I started really slow this week, so I could ease my students into the new year, new routines, and new remote learning structure. I wanted to focus on the basics and take it one step at a time.

Next week, I'm taking things a step further and my big challenge is to try breakout rooms and group activities. Pray for me.

Good luck this week! Remember to take care of yourself and recognize there are limits to what you can do.