I’m going to share with you some key takeaways from my experience this past school year. Finally, I made it to the top of the “Rocky” stairs in the school year. 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 concierge-type of instruction. You could do the traditional in-person schooling, or if your families are jet-setters, they will keep their lifestyle of traveling, and students would learn wherever they were. I feel like we have to get comfortable with this new model of education and education as a whole.
So my whole purpose of this blog is to share my love and passion for Multicultural education and cultural competency.
We’ve been through teaching virtually like, trying to fly a plane with train parts, right? And this stuff was very, very hard. I like to reflect, and I remember thinking to myself, we need universities to start teaching Plague classroom management courses in their education departments. Of course, we had no idea what was happening to the world. So we were all in crisis mode. When we shut down in Minnesota, I felt 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? Traditionally in August, I’m searching Pinterest; for fun ideas for revamping my classroom. That’s when I read my favorite classroom management book, The First Six Weeks by Harry Wong. I have it tabbed and highlighted.
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 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 within the fall. But when we finally got to that, I spent a lot of my time trying to map out a schedule.
Then I thought about what my three mentors & Oprah would do in this situation. My three mentors were Mr. Martin, my high school business teacher. Mr. Rob Tronson, the news director at our local tv station where I interned my senior year of high school, and Mr. Goodspeed, the news director and my boss at an ABC news affiliate where I went to college.
These three mentors really believed in me, and I know Oprah will too when we meet, LOL.
When this pandemic hit, I decided, you know what, I’m going to use my first loves, broadcasting & producing. This was my first career before I became a teacher. It felt like riding a bike again. Producing a broadcast is very similar to teaching online. You have to keep things in perfect, consistent time. At the beginning of the school year, I noticed that my SEL (Social Emotional Learning)strategies were the primary production to start my students’ day when I’d have my morning meetings.
I took it upon myself, and when I was teaching my live synchronous lessons, I noticed that the kids had the power to log off. I can’t control what the students will be listening to or learning or had to leave for the reason that is out of my knowledge. So what I decided to do with my love of broadcasting was that I chose to double-time with my love of filming. 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 criteria.
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. If my students there at my synchronous live class forgot something, they could always replay it back. And that’s something I found very valuable.
Another thing that I love to do is read aloud. Since we only have a limited amount of time To read aloud, I decided to do it like a podcast. I’m going to whip up my GarageBand. And I’m going to record myself reading a chapter. And my students loved it. They give me great feedback when they were on the learning system.
Those are my tips and reflective practices of keeping communication open for your families. Put on your inner Oprah, believe in yourself, and have fun 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. Thank you again for reading my blog.
