This past year was my third year as a teacher. Incidentally, it was also the first year that I thought I had nailed. And then the pandemic happened…! I found that I made so many mistakes during remote learning that I had stopped making in my F2F classes.
During the summer, I had set myself up for success by meticulously planning units and ensuring that my classroom routines and procedures were crystal clear to students.
I had also prepared a series of activities for Back to School to ensure a successful start to the year. I had even put in place the perfect classroom management strategy!
Truly, it could not have been a better school year in comparison to my first two (nightmare) years.
And then Covid-19 happened.
Covid-19 threw us all for a loop undoubtedly. However, I think that language teachers were particularly panicked because…how do you learn a language on the Internet??
Google Translate is our WORST enemy. So many of us have structured our courses so that there is very little temptation to use Google Translate.
Essentially, my remote teaching self decided that absolutely nothing that works during in-class lessons would work online.
Given that we will most likely be continuing remote learning in the fall, I’ve reflected on all of the mistakes. I most definitely will not be repeating these remote learning mistakes in September!
Remote learning mistake 1 : planning week to week
What was I even thinking planning week to week? This was probably the worst remote learning mistake I made!
As an FSL teacher, I normally plan my units ahead of time. I know exactly what my objectives will be and what the unit assessment will be.
During the pandemic, I was so overwhelmed that I stopped doing this. In the beginning, I was spending Sunday planning activities for the week.
I soon realized that this was NOT sustainable. Then, I started planning an entire week’s worth of activities on Monday morning. In addition, I was completely reinventing the wheel like the exhausted fool of a new teacher I am!
Let me tell you — I burnt out faster than you can say “snacks in the staffroom”.
At school, I never go more than two weeks without planning activities spanning multiple classes. These types of assignments are always creative, engaging and rich. Students never get bored because we are constantly learning in different ways. And, I don’t spend all of my time planning!
Towards the end of the school year, I finally thought to plan an activity that would span two weeks! It was SO liberating to not have to worry about planning and creating brand new activities week after week.
Overall, I put far too much pressure and stress on myself by completely reinventing the wheel and by not planning activities spanning more than one week.
Remote learning mistake : doing the same types of activities week after week
I have always prided myself on the fact that my lessons, activities and projects are all so unique and engaging.
During remote learning, I felt that I was extremely limited. Since student participation was not mandatory and students’ grades could not decrease, student engagement was significantly impacted. For that reason, I decided to not do big projects.
Week after week, I had my students do writing activities. Some of the writing activities were in fact creative.
Students would describe their daily routines and activities and attach photos of what they were up to. While these were super fun at first, it was SO boring to mark the same type of activity week after week.
My students also told me that they were bored of writing activities. Well, if not writing, what else could they do?
As soon as I allowed myself to think outside of the box, I had SO many ideas. I had them film Tik Toks, make francophone recipes, describe their dinner, listen to podcasts, watch Netflix movies, film group discussions, etc.
In conclusion, planning a variety of activities is something that works inside a traditional brick and mortar school, but it can also definitely work for remote learning too!
Remote learning mistake 3 : not doing partner & group work
At the start of the pandemic, I had ruled out partner and group work completely.
How in the world were my teen students going to be able to collaborate and communicate with one another when their realities at home could differ vastly. In addition, they may not even have the tools to complete work with their friends.
In the last few weeks of school, I decided to try out group work to see what would happen. The results were really surprising!
Students who had not participated in any activities were all of sudden working with a group and completing work!
It made me realize that working with peers is really important for their growth, despite the remote learning obstacles. For 2.5 months, they were not able to collaborate with their peers.
The experience of not being able to collaborate and communicate with their peers for weeks or months must have been so isolating for our students!
Group work certainly was not perfect. There are many kinks I am going to have to work out for the fall. That being said, I am completely convinced that the end result is worth all of the troubleshooting.
Remote learning mistake 4 : only doing digital work
My district uses Microsoft OneDrive and because I love learning about technology, I immediately jumped into all of the different applications.
I quickly taught myself all about OneNote, Teams, Sharepoint, ec.. Week after week, I was having my students do all sorts of digital activities like writing reflections in OneNote, posting photos, completing PDF or Powerpoint activities, etc.
Upon my return to school in June, I learned that so many of my colleagues had their students do rich, engaging activities that involved them minimally using their computer. It made me realize how computer-centred my own lessons were.
Students and teachers alike communicated that the most engaging activities were experiential ones. For example, I had my students recreate francophone activities that they had to film. Others asked their students to complete artwork by hand and take photos. One colleague had her students interview a family member in Spanish!
There has been a massive shift towards Boom Cards and PowerPoint slides in education lately. While these are great to have here and there, students need to continue to be exposed to non-digital activities.
Students SHOULD NOT be doing Boom Card activities and moveable Google Slides work weekly. I would much rather my students do fewer but incredibly rich and thoughtful activities that students will never forget instead of time fillers.
Remote learning mistake 5 : collecting too much summative assessment
My last remote learning mistake is one that was entirely responsible for my teacher burnout!
Microsoft Teams has a really handy Assignment feature that allows me to collect assignments from my classes. It also allows me to see who has viewed and handed in assignments and when they have done so. Sounds super cool, right?
Starting the second week, I started assigning weekly assignments for all of my classes. My students requested I do this because they receive a notification when the assignment is posted and it shows up in their calendar. I was only too happy to make things as easy as possible for my students.
So each week I assigned an assignment to each of my 7 classes. This meant that each week I had up to 150+ assignments to grade. Some weeks I had 300+ to grade because I was assigning weekly reflections and assignments.
On top of that, I was meeting with my classes weekly, answering their questions at all hours of my waking hours, answering hundreds of emails that were coming in from all directions, checking in with students individually who were not engaging and reinventing the wheel for assignments.
No wonder I burnt out so quickly!
If we continue remote learning in September, and I think we will, I will definitely not be collecting assignments every week! This is not something I do at school and this shouldn’t be something I do during remote learning. It does not work for the students nor myself because what they were handing in was not super engaging.
Quality over quantity is still incredibly important — whether we are in class or on a computer!
Basically — my remote teaching practices should not differ all that much from my in-person teaching practices.
Now that I think about it, everything that I did for remote learning was a complete 360 from what I do in person. It totally makes sense that a lot of my “new” practices did not work.
The big lesson I learnt is that my teaching practices and routines that worked really well in the classroom will continue to work remotely. I do not have to, and I shouldn’t be, reinventing whole new systems.
At a time when there is so much uncertainty, there is a lot of stability in my classroom practices and routines that are grounded in my students’ and my own well-being and success.
Basically — tweak, don’t recreate! What remote learning mistakes have you made?
