Well first of all I've learned that weekly blogging is probably unreasonable for me right now. So maybe monthly? That seems to be how it's shaking out anyway so let's call it that. One thing that I'm realizing about teaching virtually is that things that are working well here seem to be things that are just good teaching generally. I think I knew this going in, but it's a whole other thing to be experiencing it.
Here's some good stuff that's working well for us! 👇
Getting regular feedback from students about the class. They've helped me figure out better strategies to keep the class interesting, such as taking breaks where we play quick games like skribbl.io (it's Pictionary). This seemed counterintuitive to me; I was thinking the whole point of a break was to get away from the zoom call. But the kids are telling me that what they want is a break from the work but one in which they still get to connect in some way. So we'll be working on some even better ways to make this happen. The "Pictionary" breaks went ok last week, but I think we can do better. I mean they weren't really chatting much or anything, it almost felt like they were still just going through the motions to me.
Talking to other teachers who teach similar classes. I've been struggling a bit with my senior engineering class because it's kind of a non-traditional class by design. So my usual Teacher Twitter cohort is not always as helpful. But I met with a teacher at my school who teaches AP Research and we found a lot of similarities in our virtual class experience so far. A takeaway from the initial meeting for both of us was the idea of using a "standup meeting" to wrap up class. We both agreed that the focus on identifying problems or barriers was good. From the wikipedia page: "the structure of the meeting is meant to promote follow-up conversation, as well as to identify issues before they become too problematic". I realized after trying this a few times that a) it works! (we identified very clearly a problem in understanding expectations among most of the class) and b) It's just a "live" version of the "Gots and Needs" structure that we'd already been using. I have also been doing a Jamboard to start class where they answer the same Qs that we use for the standup meeting, which are:
1. What did you work on last time?
2. What are you going to work on today?
3. What obstacles are standing in your way?
And so far it's been great! The kids are even giving me helpful feedback on the feedback structures we're trying, it's getting real meta in there. 😜
Meeting with our "focus group" from the summer. Not a huge surprise to me that meeting with a smallish group of teachers and students that are already familiar with each other led to some good ideas and was just generally nice. A big takeaway for me was that several students mentioned that they liked more structure. So this led me to the changes that I mentioned earlier. And just to repeat, it definitely was not intuitive to me that they would want *more* time staying in the zoom class. I hear from so many people decrying the amount of screen time kids are dealing with. But what they're saying is that they can deal with the screen time, but the lack of structure once the zoom class is done is daunting. Note that these are all juniors and seniors in high school, so this is why it seemed weird to me.
What do I need to work on? 🛠🎨📐
Time capping meetings with my teams of engineers. I have been having some great meetings with teams of 3-6 kids where we discuss their projects, chat about random stuff, brainstorm new ideas, etc. But what has happened the last few times is that I take too long working with one or two groups and run out of time for others. The nice thing is that since I get to see them 4 days a week, "there's always next time." But I think I'd rather time cap the meetings so that I get to hear from everyone (or at least each team) every day. Setting a timer may help us to keep focused and not get too distracted, although sometimes distractions are good and can lead to new ideas! 🤓
Suggesting specific tasks for each member of a team. I have in the past seen this as one of the things that I purposefully leave to the kids. The idea is that if I start to do too much of this, I take away the opportunity for one of the them to take on the role of Project Manager. However, in the virtual world communication looks so different that I think they need a little more assistance than usual. So my plan is to make a template that each member of a team will be expected to fill out for each portfolio element. So the difference from the standup meeting (in which they've already explained their planned contribution for the day) is that this task is more content based than time based. Whereas the standup meeting asks "what are you working on today?", the Teamwork Planning Template will ask "What will be your contribution to Portfolio Element E: STEM Principles?" Then I'm thinking also that I'll have space for them to describe the contributions of each team member. This should force them to explain to each other what they plan to do for each portfolio entry. And the portfolio entries are essentially the steps of the design process, so
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