6 weeks into remote instruction and I feel like I have hit a bit of a wall. This week saw the steepest drop off in students participation yet and my students seem to have hit their limit. I’m sure they feel a bit like me, the days have all run together and even though there’s supposed to be extra time in the day now since we can’t go out, I go to sleep at night thinking “Where did the day go?”. On top of that, I work in a low-income school, so there are so many other factors influencing my students’ lives that make it difficult to concentrate on online learning.
All of this being said, there have been some aspects of remote instruction that I have appreciated. Primarily, I was forced to finally step out of my comfort zone and experiment with some resources I’d just never gotten around to using before, namely Edpuzzle. I have gotten fantastic feedback from students telling me that watching weekly episodes of the show Extr@ is the best part of remote learning and that Spanish is the first thing they do each Monday. Comments like that not only warm my heart, but also make me miss the face-to-face interactions I’m used to having with my students. The most positive emails in the world don’t make up for real human connection and missing those lightbulb moments.
When remote instruction began, I had aspirations of using a variety of sites to engage my students. However after about a week I realized too many options just overwhelms my kids, even just adding one new site sent them into a tailspin. Once I realized that, I really focused my weekly assignments on three sites: Quizlet to study vocabulary, Edpuzzle to watch videos and my coworker’s website spanishspanish.com for grammar practice. My students had experience with each of these sites, so I wasn’t constantly being asked for login assistance or help with site navigation. I found it lowered all of our stress levels by just sticking to what they knew and not trying to do anything too new that was difficult for them to access for the first time on their own.
I’m hoping in the final weeks of remote instruction I can find ways to continue to interact with my students remotely. Each week I try to work in a Question on Google Classroom or an open ended question in an Edpuzzle video that allows me to check in with my students. It isn’t the same as connecting in person, but at least it let’s them know that I am still here, listening to what they have to say.
