How can you promote wellbeing while meeting students through a screen?
In order to practice 'closeness' learning, we need to start by asking ourselves the right questions, and the first question would be: who and what's behind the screen?
Online school has had to face a dramatically quick and widespread development due to the current pandemic, and it's a learning curve.
Teachers have been afraid to give too little work, the connection is not always there, it's not easy to reach all students as you would do in the classroom. On a different level, distance learning does not treat everyone equally: some do not have the necessary amount of computers at home, or even a computer, some students do not have a quiet place to learn since everyone's at home, many students lack the support their teachers can offer at school, and parents at home have to work and to be co-teachers sometimes, through the insisting demands or refusal of their children who struggle to identify the healthy boundaries required for this particulatr cohexistence of home and school.
There is an understandable growing request of materials to occupy children’s time. We know what cultural and psychological aspects can shape this request. Let’s give children and families a message of quality of presence and emotional closeness.
Ask less, in a very clearly structured way and simply communicated; inform about the expected outcome and time of the students’ response; focus on the quality of your feedback. These are some of the possible ways techers can foster a successful approach to distance learning, making it context-based and taking care of everyone's needs as much as they can.
What matters most, is the intention behind each of your actions.
And this is not new, indeed. What intention can guide your actions and how can you better prioritize? Here is some feedback from a primary school meeting, which includes aspects that are also relevant to secondary school.
From a meeting with a PYP parent we identified the following focus areas to begin with:
SPACES: How to create clear spaces for learning at home, even when a same space needs to be used for different functions (e.g. the kitchen)
BOUNDARIES: How to help parents clarify their role in this situation, and build healthy boundaries helping children understand and involving them in maintaining the boundaries
TEAMS: Helping parents who might frequently be in charge more than they can manage, by suggesting all family members to team up and divide roles
How to transform a challenge into an opportunity
The media noise is a barrier to accessing necessary information: families struggle to follow all materials that are shared to support them, so there is the risk we fail to reach them as much as we need to. Teachers are in the position to guide families to select and use the wellbeing materials within 'schoolwork' and invitations to learn they share with students.
USE YOUR LIVE LESSONS TO CREATE AN EMPOWERING BRIEFING Your contact with students happens on a daily basis and there is a need to use this contact to convey messages about healthy management of the situation at home. You can use part of the live lesson to reflect and give guidance to students about the following:
HELP STUDENTS HAVE SMALL RITUALS TO START AND FINISH A SESSION OF ONLINE SCHOOL: create a sign to put on and off, use a timer to start and finish the school time, you can suggest students to be creative in doing so.
PROMPT STUDENTS IN HAVING A “SYSTEM”: in what ways can we help students to organize their materials? (both virtually and with physical materials)
LEGITIMIZING PARENTS AND CREATING BOUNDARIES: teachers can legitimize parents as co-teachers in this unique situation, this way students who are showing resistance will more likely listen and accept their help. Clarify to parents HOW their are expected to intervene, with details. Help children understand the needs of adults: teach children to ask parents if and when they can help, you can assign a homework on this - using for example the space station metaphore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQBGhMZFpdo&t=2s
ALWAYS HAVE A CLEAR GOAL IN MIND AND EXPRESS IT: “With this activity I want you to work on …” referring to skills as well as communicating the expected outcome, plus offering individual moments with students (mostly the ones with specific difficulties, who are at higher risk to fall behind and encounter barriers)
HOW ARE YOU GIVING FEEDBACK TO STUDENTS? Refer to your knowledge about effective feedback and focus on using it to establish a warm and supportive connection with every student. Here again, it's a learning curve for everyone: how can your feedback be more effective next tomorrow?
A CONSIDERATION ON HOW WE USE EVALUATIONS: WHILE RESPECTING THE SCHOOL NEEDS, THE WAY YOU WILL USE FEEDBACK CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THIS AREA AS WELL: as far as every situation will be different, the particular conditions we are experiencing deserve careful consideration at time of the evaluation of the work. Nowadays, what students need is to feel recognized and effective in what they do. Evaluations should be considered motivational acts and opportunities for encouragement for pupils, as well as a tool for mapping the effectiveness of your work.
A powerful guide is the UNVERSAL DESIGN FOR LEARNING:
video in English http://www.cast.org/our-work/about-udl.html
video in Italian: http://www.raiscuola.rai.it/articoli-programma-puntate/dario-ianes-universal-design-for-learning/39201/default.aspx
Buon lavoro!
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