Write a letter to the principal about arranging online classes due to corona virus
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Answer:
Dear Teachers,
Last week, the two of us had a conversation about school leaders who would be leading and making decisions related to the spread of COVID-19. That conversation turned into a set of guidelines that we published first with Global Online Academy and later with EdSurge.
We have tried to be clear about our intent to share our thinking, since some schools have very different priorities than the ones we have been projecting. To be clear, some school leaders serve children who depend on their institutions for safety, food and other basic human needs. Those children and their needs should always be the priorities of the schools that serve them—not some online version of education.
We are continuing to share, therefore, because we are also observing schools preparing or acting upon school closure plans for one reason or another. And once those plans are in place, teachers are often being asked to perform their responsibilities in a new way. We’re thinking about those teachers (about you) who are beginning, or are mid-flight in, some new journey. We’re not debating the merits of that journey for now—just acknowledging and looking to support the people who will be teaching online if their schools decide to go that route.
Simply put, if you’re asked to teach online, we encourage you to find ways to be present for your students. Your presence is all that many of them have ever needed, and this does not change if you are teaching from your living room or local library.
When you teach online for the first time, the first thing you’ll miss is the chatter of your physical classroom. Or maybe the hushed breath, ever so subtle, when you enter the class and change the dynamics, the air pressure even. No, you’ll miss most the quicksilver comedy, the way words twist into grins and spill out as jokes. You probably wouldn’t think that you would miss the smell or the slouches or the occasional snuck-in naps...
But you will.
You’ll miss looking at all of your students at once, the sound of them laughing all at once, the way it feels when understanding cracks open and a yawn becomes an “ah” becomes an “aha.”
So when you’re asked to teach online—against your will, as many of us may soon be—we would first say: hold on to all of that subtle input, the stuff that helps you know a class is alive and thriving. Then, from the first time you send an email to the class or enter an online forum with a class, look for it. Listen for it. Acknowledge it. Enjoy it.
In the first online course we designed and taught together, one of us had never taught in a strictly online environment before, and the other had only designed asynchronous online learning experiences (i.e., self-paced experiences with very little instructor engagement).
As we started to plan our teaching, we fell into old habits. We organized and sequenced our materials. Then we created phases of learning that would build on top of each other and ultimately create what we hoped was a coherent experience, an experience that would raise the understanding and skill level of everybody involved, including the teachers.
Once we understood the what (the curriculum), we started to think about the how (the connection). This is where things got interesting, and quickly. We were not ever going to be in the same room with our students. We had not ever met most of them. They were relying on us.
And we were expected to deliver instruction. Whatever that means.
“To deliver instruction” is an awful phrase when you’re teaching face-to-face. It can be even more nefarious when you’re teaching online because the online world is built to hold and move information. You can share reams of text and bucket loads of data. You can record lectures. And more lectures. You can stack links on links on links, embedding hypertexts in between.
At first, when you’re beginning to teach online, please don’t do all of these things. Please resist the easy affordances of the online world. Instead, try to connect.
The job of an online teacher is the job of an offline teacher is the job of a teacher. Connect to people and help them to feel connected to you and to the dimension of the world you are leading them to experience. Connect your students to one another in a way that enables them not only to learn content from one another, but also to catch life experiences from one another—to shape one another in the way that only peers can. It’s that simple … and it’s that complex.
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