How to Harry Wong Hybrid Learning Part Two: Establishing Relationships & Community

Usually, at this point in the summer, I’ve already been planning for weeks to get ready to go back to school, but this year it’s hard to picture what “going back” even looks like. We’re all stuck in this weird stasis. Plans are last minute and constantly changing. Even when a decision is made, it still lacks clarity. Even if you try to plan ahead, you know that you’ll probably have to trash those plans in a week.

To cope with this intense anxiety, I’ve been revisiting The First Days of School by Harry Wong in a desperate attempt to find some normalcy in the chaos. The 2020-2021 school year is all about reimagining what school looks like. So, in 2020, how do we meet each student at the door while social distancing? Better yet, where's the door on the Zoom? Ultimately, how do we rely on our training, knowledge, and good ol’ Harry Wong to help us through the most unpredictable school year ever?

Well, we can focus on the basics. Despite Wong’s obvious focus on the in-person classroom, we can still take his key tenets and rework them for the Covid-19 classroom. Last week, we talked about how to establish procedures in a hybrid classroom; this week we'll focus on building relationships and community with our students in the hybrid or remote setting.

Why Relationships Are So Important - Especially During a Pandemic

Building relationships with our students is definitely going to be a challenge but that just makes it all the more important this year. Kids are guarded as hell on a normal first day of school. They retreat into their shells until they can feel you out. Are you the strict teacher? The laid-back one? The one who’s like a mom? Wong says that your students need to know that you love them, but they can't always see that right away. They need a minute to figure out if they can trust you or not.

Now add to that guardedness the literal masks they’ll be wearing if they are in school with you. Forget silent, non-verbal facial cues through all those layers of PPE.

Then there are the kids at home learning remotely. If you’ve ever dabbled in the hell that is online dating, you already know it’s really difficult to get to know someone through a screen. It’s so easy to hide yourself (and all the red flags) behind a computer or phone. Most students won't even turn on their webcams, which I don't blame them, but this makes it even harder to see your kids. Instead of live video, you will probably be staring at some weird Spongebob meme or a selfie with so many filters the person is unrecognizable. Both of those were real student profile pictures during my summer program class.

So how do we get around this very real, very wide divide between teachers and students this year? How are we supposed to get to know our kids through masks, face shields, and the heavy anxiety hanging like a cloud over our classrooms?

Here are a couple of ways to try to bridge that ever-growing gap.

Community through Real and Digital Bulletin Boards

One way I build community in my physical classroom is through bulletin boards. Despite the chaos of a hybrid schedule, I still intend to set up my bulletin boards and create digital versions of them to share on Google Classroom.

I use two types of bulletin boards to build community: Student Spotlight and Hoorays.

Student Spotlight

Student Spotlight is really just a student of the month bulletin board. Each month, I pick one kid from every class period that I think deserves recognition. Usually, for the first month, I pick a student who really follows classroom procedures and is the typical “good” student, but that’s just to highlight the expected behavior in the classroom. After that, I try to focus on the kids who get overlooked, or I try to highlight more elusive, positive behavior - like kindness, personal growth, or grit.

On the first of every month, I post the student names on the bulletin board covered up with paper, and I start building up the hype. We do a class drum roll — yes, I make high school students do this, and if they aren't enthusiastic enough, I make them do it again. I announce the student's name, the class applauds, and then I explain why this student was chosen. We give that student a second round of applause, and I usually give him/her some sort of prize - like candy or a coupon for a Wendy's Frosty. That night, I email or call home to let his/her parent know what a great kid they have.

Over the years, I’ve had some kids make it their mission to get Student Spotlight. It ultimately is an empty award, equivalent to a gold star, but some kids really strive for it. Nothing makes me happier than when a kid tells me they've been working all year to get Student Spotlight.

Additionally, Spotlight also functions as a nice reminder of positive expectations for students — especially those who need prompting for behavior modification. I’ll gently suggest, “Are we still trying to get Student Spotlight?” or “Is this Spotlight behavior?” It’s actually funny how quickly the kid adapts their behavior.

This is honestly so much harder to do in a remote setting, but it's still worth doing. Since I won't really see the kids interact on the same level as I would in class, I plan to really focus on breakout room behavior and personal growth. Because we are so isolated by remote learning, Spotlight is essential to remind students that we are still a small community, even when we are apart. Lastly, it gives them a reason to celebrate and compete with each other, and both are healthy elements of any classroom community.

Hoorays

I love my Hoorays board. It's completely unrelated to the curriculum and totally about celebrating the little things. I got the idea for Hoorays from the podcast My Favorite Murder, who I think actually got it from a self-help book. On the podcast, they end every episode with a positive thing in their lives - whether it’s a new show they’re watching, a great day they had, a small self-improvement, or a new, gorgeous pair of shoes they just bought.

In my classroom, there’s a spot on our front board for Hoorays. In the past, I’ve left post-its on the board, so students could add something to the board at the beginning or end of class. Ultimately, I ended up with a lot more art than hoorays, but it still put positive vibes in my classroom.

This year, I plan to schedule Hoorays on Fridays at the end of class. Students can volunteer to share their Hooray for the week, and we'll add it to the board. This is so important right now because positivity is in short supply; it’s hard to find that shine or silver lining. So Hoorays are going to beam a little light through the darkness of 2020.

Make the Virtual More Personal

The virtual world definitely lacks the warmth and intimacy you find in the classroom. It's ironic that technology is capable of bringing us all together, but somehow it makes us feel more isolated. That being said, here's a couple of ways to try to tear down the digital wall between teachers and students to create meaningful rapport and relationships.

Gmail Profile Picture

Real talk: I refuse to stare at memes while teaching my remote students. It’s going to be hard enough to put faces with names this year, so one of my stations the first week is to have my students change their profile pictures on Google.

I’m going to give my kids a couple of options for their pictures. Their options are:

• A really great picture of them.

• A picture of them doing something they love.

• A picture that shows their personality.

• Their Bitmoji doing something they love or showing their personality

This way, I can recognize the kids I’m talking to on the computer when I see them in school, and hopefully, I learn something about them based on the image they picked.

So, why don't I tell them to turn on their webcams? I know some teachers want to insist that students keep their cameras on the whole class. I’m not doing that. Let’s be honest, we get tired being on camera all day. Sometimes we only clean the space directly behind our webcam, so the kids don’t see what’s going on in the rest of our homes. We get "zoom fatigue." The kids are dealing with all of these issues too, and they're just kids. I’d rather my kids feel comfortable while attending my remote lessons than be able to see everything little thing they’re doing.

Meet Them at the Zoom "Door"

If your district went full remote, it's even harder to truly meet your students — let only greet them at the door. However, if you are using Zoom, there is a way for you to create a more personal welcome for your students and utilize some one-on-one or small group time to get to know them.

Zoom has a "waiting room" feature that holds students outside of the Zoom session until you admit them into your class. You should ALWAYS use this feature to control who's coming into your lesson, but it also provides you an opportunity. During your first week, try to let in students slowly at the very start of class. Start with just one kid, and try to spend a minute getting to know them. Then let in a couple more students, and draw them into whatever you were talking about with the first student. Each day, cycle through your roster of students. If you spend some time with five kids a day, you can cycle through 25 kids in the first week of school.

Obviously, you can't leave the rest of your kids out to dry for too long at the start of class, or you might have some bail on you. I'm really only talking about a two or three-minute conversation while your other students complete a Do Now on Google Classroom. When a student is one of twenty-five (or thirty in some classes), it's easy to never really interact with the teacher in a Zoom call. This gives them nowhere to hide and lets you slowly build those relationships.

Getting-to-Know-You Activities

Given how last year ended and this year is beginning, I'm spending significantly more time getting to know my students than I have in previous years. Usually, I set up routines, and then dive right into the content. I can't do that this year. It would be really unfair to my students, especially since many have increased anxiety and trauma due to Covid-19 and quarantine. Taking all of that into consideration, the first week will mostly be getting-to-know-you activities, so I've included some of my favorites that could be helpful in planning your first week.

Bitmoji Lockers

Along with the Bitmoji classroom, the Bitmoji locker has been trending on social media for the last couple of weeks. For this activity, you provide students the locker template and allow them to decorate their lockers with their Bitmoji and things they like. You can provide a list of options for them to include in their locker to help guide their ideas on how to decorate it. We Are Teachers has a ton of examples and suggestions for this activity. I honestly really love this idea; not only does it give me a lot of information about my students, but it's also an engaging activity for them. Additionally, it's nice that my students can decorate a virtual locker because they won't actually have access to their physical lockers during hybrid learning.

Six-Word Memoirs

Six-word memoirs have been around forever, but they are still a great way to get some insight into your students and challenge them to be deep and concise at the same time. I like to tell my students to think of their memoir as their own personal mantra for the school year. You can also step up your six-word memoir game by having your students design a poster for it. Let them pick interesting fonts, colors, shapes, Bitmojis, and other accents. This creates great posters that you can post digitally or hang around your classroom for inspiration and positive vibes, and again, it tells you more about your students.

Google Meet Guess Who? Variation

I've been wanting to try this game since we went remote in March, and I'm finally using it as a beginning of the year activity. If you're familiar with the game Guess Who?, the goal of the game is to guess which character your opponent has by asking questions about him/her. Whoever figures out their opponent's character first wins the game.

In this variation, have your students share three interesting facts about themselves with you. In a Google Meet or Zoom session, have everyone click the "raise hand" feature to start the game. Read an interesting fact about a student to the class, and allow them to guess which classmate shared that fact. You can have them do this in the chat or verbally. I plan to call on random students to share verbally while others can guess in the chat feature. If the class gets it right, that student lowers their hand; if the class gets it wrong, skip to the next student. After you've cycled through all the students, go back to the clues they missed, and read a second clue.

Depending on your class size, this may take a while, so it might be more ideal to split up this activity across a few days. You can use it as a brain break, warm-up, or just a fun way to end the day's lesson. Additionally, you could also use Google Meet or Zoom to do a more traditional Guess Who? game by having students pair off and try to figure out which character their partner has from a class novel.

That's It For Part Two! Check out Part Three Next Week

Despite the screens and masks between us all, it's more important than ever to really reach out to students and build relationships this year. Many children have been stuck at home for months without their friends, without a social life, and sometimes, in a really rough home environment. Our students always need love, but they really need to feel it this year.

How are you planning to foster relationships with your students this year? What strategies, lessons, and activities are you using to create community and connect while socially distancing? How are you meeting your students at the door this year? Share your ideas in the comments!

Next week, we'll continue converting Harry Wong's ideas for the hybrid classroom. We'll go even deeper with community and relationships by talking about how to include parents in the learning process.