Distance Learning Tips

While you and your students may not be physically together, making relational connections is more important now than ever.  So the question is, how do we create and maintain those relationships with our students?

Last school year we got a sampling of what it was like to teach in a brand new way with distance learning. Teachers were absolute ROCK STARS as we navigated uncharted educational waters and successfully wrapped up a school year using distance learning. And now, whether we like it or not, it’s our job to figure out: how do we BEGIN the school year on this same platform of distance learning while still laying the foundation for an uncertain future of education? Quite a loaded question, right? 

While you and I may not have all the answers to this right now, we’re bound to figure it out together, because that’s how the teacher community works. We solve a problem, share that wisdom with other educators, and learn from each other along the way. Our learning may come from a brilliant idea that woke us up at 2 am or it may come from a well-intentioned lesson that went disastrous. But, what I love most about our teacher community is that we SHARE these lessons with one another.

While I may not have all the answers, I know that another teacher friend of mine may have found some successful strategies that worked for her, and now I have more tools in my distance learning toolbox that are going to help me become an even better teacher for my kiddos. So here I am, sharing some of my knowledge and experience in distance learning with you.  I hope this is helpful.

5 Tips for Distance Learning

1. Connections (student-to-student, teacher-to-student, parent-to-student, parent-to-teacher) - There is a reason “Connections” is my number one tip.  We all know that humans thrive on relationship and connection.  And learning needs connection to thrive.  Students connect their learning through conversation and interaction with others.  It should be a priority to help facilitate those connections in whatever way possible through virtual platforms.  

When we typically plan the first week of school, we spend most of our time in class building community and classroom culture, online learning should be no different.  Prioritize your video calls with students and find creative ways to allow students to work together and have fun together.  In addition, you need to build connections with families in that first week. 

Make time to do a video call with every family (maybe stretch it out over 2 weeks for time’s sake).  It’s incredibly important to build a strong foundation of relationship with your students and their families very early on.  That can still be done through distance learning. 

2. Simplify the online work and make it meaningful (Think quality over quantity) -  We know from doing distance learning once before that recording online lectures and setting up ways to assign and grade work virtually is incredibly time consuming.  Don’t work until all hours of the night!  Set healthy boundaries to guard your time while teaching from home, and if something is taking you too long, you need to rethink it.  You should be able to spend the hours of a normal workday completing what you need for the success of your students.  

One way I reduced that stress level and solved some of the time issues was by assigning less work.  This does not mean I lowered my standards, but instead I worked closely with my teacher partner and we brainstormed new assignments and projects that were cross-curricular that could include many standards in one place.  That way the work was meaningful, but less for us to prep and grade.  Let me state this here though: collaboration is KEY in this strategy because dividing up the work between 2 or 3 will save you so much more time than having to do everything yourself.  

3. Functionality - When doing distance learning, functional and simple is king.  We are not spending time planning elaborate organizational systems for our classroom, and we are not making everything perfectly cute and colorful (although a little cute never hurt anyone).  But the name of the game with distance learning is functionality. 

When we go all teacher-crafty crazy on our assignments and online organization, it can be overwhelming for the students and their parents.  We want to make everything as straight-forward as possible so they don’t need to spend 30 minutes just looking for the right video to match with the right assignment/ worksheet, etc.  We need to spend some time taking off the “teacher view” and look at things from a parent perspective a bit more. They are the ones helping facilitate distance learning from home, and we need to make everything clear and accessible for students and families.  

4. Feedback (to and from students and parents) - Feedback has always been important and now is no different.  However, we are used to being the primary ones giving feedback.  We write notes to our students on assignments and notes home to parents, and that should still be happening.  But during this unprecedented time, it is key to solicit feedback from your students and their parents.  Make efforts to formally and informally check in with families and students through online surveys, or just sending out a quick email. 

Do a quick poll in class with your students or use Google Forms to have more structured questions and responses.  This will help you pivot as needed throughout the duration of distance learning.  This is new for all of us and getting feedback from others is how we can grow and improve to better meet the needs of the students and their families.  To learn more about how to check in with your students’ emotional needs,  I have a great article you can find HERE.

5. Have fun! I think we can all admit that these past few months have not been very fun.  I can bet that most of our students are needing some more fun in their lives, and we should be part of providing that.  We need to work hard to make our online presence with our students fun and engaging.  This can be accomplished through the prerecorded lessons you post or in your video conferences with your students. 

As I mentioned above, provide time for students to have fun together with you and their peers.  We know that some of the most memorable things they learn come through fun life experiences.  So let’s make some good memories with our students.  Pandemic or not, distance learning or not, we will not lose the fun in our classrooms.