After 5 weeks of digital learning, we are beginning preparations for bringing students back into the building for in-person school.
The feelings I have swirling around this decision can’t seem to settle on any one particular sentiment. Instead, I’m putting my energy towards taking my digital learning professional lessons with me back into the classroom.
Digital learning had its flaws and pitfalls, to be sure. And my district’s decision to return to in-person instruction before the projected 3-consecutive week decline in COVID cases that was initially planned is a reflection of this. The inequity of learning experiences was a gaping hole in the rickety rope bridge that was digital learning. Too many young friends could not leap across.
Digital learning as a whole did not work for too many in our area. But that doesn’t mean that lessons from digital teaching can’t come with us back to the brick and mortar classrooms.
Here are the big ideas that I will be rethinking:
• 🧩Free choice breaks
•⏲ Instructional minutes
•ðŸ˜Š Behavior expectations
🧩Free Choice Breaks
When the schedule for digital learning first came out, my kindergarten team and I issued a collective gasp. The online instructional day will begin at 8:30 and end at 2:00 for all elementary school students. We were aghast. How could they possibly expect this of our 5- and 6-year-olds?
We went to work crafting a schedule with short work sessions, concise lesson segments, and strategically timed free-choice breaks. Based on our digital schedule, our students had a 15-minute free time within every hour. During this time students got out their favorite toys, chatted with their friends and me, went outside, laid down, or had a snack.
Each student needed something different from the break: socializing, quiet time, space to move, food, etc.
Although we’d always taken breaks in the classroom, they did not have the range and choice that was available in digital learning. Most often what I called a “break” was a different type of structured expectation. We would do a silly dance video, sing a song, or play a group game.
While I’d seen these activities as breaks from instruction, and certainly they were that for my students, they weren’t actually breaks from being instructed. Everyone did the same activity. Everyone was expected to return to work after 3-4 minutes.
When we return to the building, I will offer more choice, more time, and less structure in our breaks.
⏲Instructional Time
To think about making breaks more effective and meaningful to students means to reflect on my use of instructional minutes. In the past, a break was squeezed in between instructional segments, allowing for no more than 5 minutes to transition from work to break and back again.
The speedy pace was a symptom of an overstuffed learning segment. Never enough time in the day to fit it all in. So we squeeze.
But what about digital learning?
In our digital learning classrooms, we were so aware of our students’ limits for screen time and attention span that we made decisions. We prioritized. We didn’t cram; we cut, combined, and condensed.
Our curriculums are always going to offer more than can be done. And we are always going to want to do it all. And as each next-big-thing comes along, we add it to the list, shave a little away from somewhere else.
But how much time is lost in the shuffle of trying to do it all? How can I take the limitations of digital learning and, more specifically, our response to those limitations, and make our classroom-based instructional time more effective?
What lessons are the most valuable for most students? What lessons offer more range and application? What routines will help maximize instructional time so that less time is lost? How can differentiated instruction be offered in a manner that saves ineffective whole group lessons?
Back in the classroom, I will critically reflect on how I use instructional minutes so that my students’ needs are prioritized over “fitting it all in”.
😊Behavior Expectations
What happened to behavior issues during digital learning? Other than a few rouge microphone users at the beginning, behavior problems all but disappeared.
Sort of.
What would have constituted a disruption or redirection in the classroom, often went unnoticed, if not overlooked, in the digital classroom. Students were free to turn off their cameras or walk away from the computer for short segments when they became overwhelmed, bored, or distracted.
Our understanding and anticipation of these issues led our Kindergarten teachers to forgive and ignore these little hiatuses.
In a classroom setting, this option didn’t exist. Walking away from the group is viewed as disrespectful, distracting, and detrimental to one’s learning. And so it is not ignored but quickly addressed.
As I transition my thinking from the digital classroom expectations to the physical classroom expectations, I want to rethink the actual consequences of short disengagements and, more importantly, I want to rethink my response to them.
The students who walked away for a moment during online instruction always came back, and usually, pretty quickly. Often they were more engaged when they returned, asked for clarification about what they missed, and participated in the classwork or lesson.
In the classroom setting, how can I facilitate routines and procedures for students to effectively self-regulate so that it enhances their overall learning experience, is viewed with understanding from the teaching team, and does not detract from other students’ attention?
I will make a strategic plan to support students’ self-regulation. I will rethink and reframe my response to students’ signals.
Ever since last Spring when it became clear that digital learning was going to be a semi-permanent situation, I started thinking about how it may offer the opportunity we in public education so desperately needed to step back and take one of those good, hard looks.
From this side of digital learning, I don’t think we’ve seen the mindset shift I was hoping for on the grand scale -and maybe there is still time- but I can start with the (wo)man in the mirror.
I can take these lessons, the wins and the losses, from digital learning and bring my students back into a classroom that has evolved.
