This week, after our small group check ins, I’m thinking about the challenges and possibilities for building community during the pandemic. Many of you expressed concern for your students: their well-being, both physical and emotional; their access to the technology they need to stay connected to peers and teachers; and the social, economic, and linguistic barriers that might isolate folks during this time.
With those conversations in mind, a few questions to consider (feel free to address one or more, or to write about whatever’s on your own mind this week!)
Question 1: What difficulties have you faced in terms of connecting with your students and their families during this time, and connecting your students to one another? What has been “lost” from the classroom in terms of building relationships? What do you miss most? What do your students miss most?
Question 2: Think about classes you’ve had, both as a teacher and as a student (K-12 or college) in which the class community was a strong and positive force. How was this accomplished? What specific things do you recall that teachers/students did to build community? What activities or interactions struck you as particularly meaningful?
Question 3: With all of this in mind, what have you done, or what would you like to try, in your own online class (or in our online class??) to build community? What strategies, activities, or assignments might continue to make students and teachers feel connected to one another? How can we show our students we care? How can we provide them opportunities to care for one another?
The thing I miss the most from my classroom includes social interactions with my students. I often found myself exhausted in the morning, wondering how I’ll be able to teach for the entire day. My energy always grew off of my students. While going about our daily lessons, our classroom was never short of laughter—stemming from student conversations, comments, and my facial reactions. My students often said I struggled to conceal emotions with my facial expressions, no matter how hard I tried. Even up to our last Friday, my students laughed at my inability to keep a straight face at a statement I (probably) shouldn’t have laughed at. My students and I both wish to have these moments again, however I believe this comes from our desire for normalcy and social interaction.
The concepts of photojournalism and media literacy are mentioned in “Photos as Witness: Teaching Visual Literacy for Research and Social Action,” where students take a photograph and “…investigate both the story behind the photo—the context, the subject, and the photographer—…” (Subhani 34). This is an activity I would consider, as I came across a photo in the Times of the 7 train platform, showing an empty station, and empty streets below. Ironically, three weeks prior to the photo, I had taken one at the same location during my morning commute. Analyzing what a difference three weeks can make, and how COVID19 has severely disrupted our lives, is important. Having students go through their camera roll and compare what their neighborhood once looked like, to now, could serve as a community based activity that confronts the changes of such a short period of time. This unites both students and teachers on coping with our uncomfortable reality, but recognizes a universal factor of our experiences.
When I was teaching, my classroom was homier than my own home– my handmade posters, Lorax desk buddy, and googley eyes on our classroom door made that space my own. Transitioning into an office is an experience that I was in the middle of when CUNY closed. I just started decorating my bookcase with some fake succulents in pots that I had painted. I had a little jar of chocolate that was more for myself than my visitors. However, not knowing that I wouldn’t return to work, I didn’t take many of my important resource materials with me. Without my bookcase full of handouts, I feel a bit helpless. Unlike teaching, when I made most of my own materials, I now rely heavily on information produced and provided to me by other departments and programs. I have information on any health career you’d want to pursue, on course equivalencies, on the different departments at Hunter. In short, you could say I’ve become really skilled at navigating the Hunter website and making friends with a lot of faculty members via email! Referring students to other offices in the same day, which is usually routine for me, extends a student’s issue to long email exchanges. Establishing community in my program is already hard; however, I was planning so many cool workshops for this semester! (I was actually also asked to host some writing workshops/tutoring for our students, which I was really excited for.) I’m trying to turn this into an opportunity for more planning time– we do have some students that help out in our office, and they’re working on some helpful guides for their peers. Now that everything’s online, I am much more accessible to students. My appointment hours are longer, I can spend more time with one student, and students can make multiple appointments in a shorter period of time. In some cases, students now aren’t limited by set class times, and can meet with me for help when they previously weren’t able to. Although developing a community in our program is hard, I’m always trying to establish a positive relationship with the students that I work with– and working online, with my cat leaping over my laptop and me struggling with sharing my screen and not drawing up a wall between us through my dressing “up” for work, has furthered that positive relationship in a way that I think is really beneficial to me in my first few months in a brand new job.
When I reflect on the past two weeks of digital learning, one of the biggest downsides is the fact that I can’t check up on my students and truly know how they are doing during this stressful time. While I do make student and parent outreach every single day, in order to have students keep up with their assignments and their high school application process, I still cannot recreate that connection that we had in the classroom. I had become attached to my homeroom class, who I also saw more periods within ELA, and I would be able to read their expressions from the moment they had walked into class. I was able to pull them out from other classes or keep them in my class a bit longer to talk about what was on their mind and what I can do to help them out. Most of my students had opened up to me within the school year and told me they were different people outside of the classroom, in terms of not letting their sensitive side appear or truly share what was on their minds because their parents or guardians always had bigger issues to deal with. From the very first day, I made it known that all my students were my number one priority and they had truly begun to believe that and be open with me. I miss having my students walk in every day and just have morning conversations with them; I miss being able to help them whenever they had an issue within ELA (or outside the classroom). It breaks my heart knowing that some of them aren’t doing well emotionally and there is not much any educator or guidance counselor can do from their standpoint besides making outreach phone calls.
I am able to connect to my students through Google Voice, which inevitably means that some of them text me at midnight to inform me of their relationship issues, which hasn’t made me lose complete connection with them. They constantly share with me that they miss being in school surrounded by their friends and teachers. Even though, they are eighth graders and tend to act a lot older than they are, most of them expressed to me that they missed being taken care of in school, because outside of school, they are caring for their parents, cousins, or younger siblings. Since this is a challenging time for everyone, my overall goal is to make sure that my students still remember they have a strong support system behind them within the realm of education and never feel alone throughout this unique process.
I miss having time in person with my students. Online learning is certainly better than nothing, I think it’s important that students maintain a connection to school and learning, especially those that rely on the school for supports other than academia. Knowing people who have lost their jobs, I think it is important for us all to engage in meaningful work each day: wake up knowing we have something to accomplish and we can mark as a job done at the end of the day.
I have shared office hours with two of my co-teachers at 9:30 each day. We are there to support our students but it is often just the three of us. It is nice to have that as a signal of the start of the day. As teachers, our days our governed by routine. What other profession has a bell schedule?
I really miss my students. It has been good to hear from some of them via video chat or on the phone when I call to ask why they are not participating in online learning. They are good people and I’m sure this is really tough on them, especially my seniors who are going to miss out on so much this year. Students really drive my instruction. What worked in 1st period and what should I change for 3rd? If the reaction wasn’t what I anticipated do I go with that? Or try to lead them to where I wanted them to go?
I also miss giving meaningful feedback. I find that I can quickly assign grades on google classroom but it can be incredibly time-consuming to give meaningful, positive and actionable feedback.
I miss seeing the kids and knowing they are safe, that they are getting at least two meals that day. I miss joking with them and challenging them. And I am so, so very concerned about their physical, mental and emotional health in this tumultuous time.
What I miss the most about not being in the classroom is not seeing my students and being able to have daily interactions with them. It is hard to really know how they’re doing not just in academics but in general. I am concerned about how they’re dealing with the situation or if all this work is too much for them. I try to keep in contact with parents and reach out to students. It’s great when they respond to my check-ins or interact with each other. Nonetheless, it is not the same as being in the classroom. I am trying to take this situation and be as positive as I can be. I let my students know that I am always available and that although this is a transition for many of us, we will all learn and get through it together.
I think that a way to build a good classroom community is to involve the students. From time to time, I do polls/ask questions about how they’re doing, what they may need help with, etc. I also think that Google meets or Hangouts can be a good way to connect with the students and give them time to interact as a class.
Unfortunately, the everyday banter and interaction is what I miss the most in school…I have found in my career that giving students a moment to talk about something totally unrelated to the classroom activity will help them refocus when I direct them to. I’ve always felt that was my strongest attribute as a teacher was being able to talk to the students with casual conversation to build rapport. Building rapport is kind of lost behind our screens now. Sure students reach out, but it feels very business like. “Mr. I need help with this,” or “Mr. I don’t understand” ….Before remote learning, I asked students to write down songs they love or want me to listen to….I might continue asking students that because I have had students reach out to me wondering if I still want to hear their favorite songs.
I’m thinking about implementing a “Free Talk Friday” on my google classroom stream where students have the opportunity to talk about whatever they want with the class. I feel this could encourage students to start sharing their thoughts and feelings in a respectful manner. Many are upset because as reality is sinking in that they won’t have a prom, or a senior trip, or get to run around the hallways in June getting yearbooks signed. I still have hope, but with the regents being cancelled it’s looking grim to return this year. One teacher has used a trivia question of the day to help students encourage to visit their page….I think I may do the same. Games always help build rapport!
Looking toward the future, I feel a lot of my frustrations this year is centered around monotonous assignments I’ve created and that seems to be multiplied by a million since I am limited to only google in remote learning. It feels like every day we were doing the same thing—I want to start creating more mini projects within units, to help break up how boring school felt at times for both the students and me.
There is no time like the present to work towards building community. Social isolation takes its toll in varied severity for our students and ourselves. This week I made it a point to contact family and friends and let them know I care. I love seeing the news about people offering to assist the elderly with getting their groceries, the over six thousand volunteer mental health care professionals who answered the governor’s call, the massive increase in people donating blood, and much more.
Since I did so much distance learning while I was in high school, I definitely felt a lack of community. My work was my home and community, living in dorms and interacting with the same thirty people every day. I wish I had participated more in the activities around school, but for better or worse I did find my community elsewhere.
Merrick Avenue Middle School created a community the likes of which I had never seen before. The school motto is “one community, one voice.” They lived up to it very well. They had weekly community building school activities in which they would bring the entire grade to the cafeteria and have them do group challenges, art, games and more with the school faculty and teachers. You could feel the energy in the room, the students were truly engaged. In addition, they try to get every student in at least one club or activity, particularly the new students. The assistant principal told me, “We don’t want any student to be without friends in the school.” That safety and comfortability no doubt contributed to the amazing performance reported by the school both scholastically and behavioral.
The most significant difficulty connecting with students has been dealing with the variety of issues and home circumstances all at once. I have one student who has done no work. I have been able to contact the student but still no work. Eventually, when I got a hold of his father, he explained that he is out driving a truck every day doing deliveries. While he is still working, no one is home watching Dailan. He said when he gets home, he needs to sleep and simply can’t help his son with his work. It was tough for me to have a parent say, “I can’t help my child.” Essentially saying that no one would help this child. But at the same time, it’s not his fault that he has to work, or that we are in this situation. He did not sign up to be a driver and teacher 24 hours of the day.
I have another student who comes to office hours at 10 A.M, and I can never hear what he is saying. He is always whispering during office hours. He explained to me that he shares an apartment with many other people, including his older cousins and brothers. His cousins and brothers have encouraged him not to do his work and take this time off. He says that if he wakes them up doing his work, they’ll beat him up, so he has to whisper until they are awake. He also said once they are awake, his house becomes very loud, and it is hard to concentrate. I’ve tried speaking to the parents, but they are rarely available, and often rude and short on the phone when you get a hold of them.
It has been hard in general, dealing with all of the needs of my students all at once. In the classroom, there are already many obstacles in the way of learning, but outside of the classroom, the list grows even longer.
Option 1- The aspect many of my students miss is actually school. I initially thought many of them woukd be happy or at least somewhat content with school being out, but the opposite. Many of them want to school to start. I believe they appreciated the classroom environment in ways they didn’t before. I also realized that school was an escape from their home lives. Many don’t have much to look forward to at home, and school was their only escape. I believe that many of them will now have a better appreciation for their classes since they are against the current online system. They feel overwhelmed by all the work, and they wish they could have the structure of the school system. Also, teaching has been very tough. Asking questions and getting responses donesn’t feel the same as a class. For one, there is a smaller group. While this is good and more focused, many of these kids get distracted by their homes or the background noise on someone elses video. There is an awkwardness that I can’t descrbe with video conferences. When students are working and it’s quiet, it feels erie. I guess that come from the fact that I can’t see what they are working on. Giving feedback is tough because I have to have students show work one ata time, which is time consuming. This is a very weird situation that won’t get comfortable anytime soon.
While living in Japan, I taught at a commercial high school with an emphasis on learning business skills. After graduating, most students would advance into customer service based fields such as becoming part of a ground staff at airports or working for the hotel industry, both of which were quite prominent in the city they lived. Many students voluntarily took English communication classes in order to enhance their language skills to better communicate in their future occupations. One such class I taught was a “creative” English class, wherein students worked on a chosen research project that involved field work. At the end of the semester, they had to make a presentation that encompassed the entire project and its results.
This class was always very small (5-7 students), so it was fairly easy to engage students. Smaller groups entailed more intimate communication between students and teachers. Each student was able to choose what they were especially interested in, which I think led to active participation. We ultimately chose to conduct interviews with expats living in Japan, with the goal to understand what they enjoyed about Japan and what problems they faced. Since students played an active role, they were able to develop their own questions, surveys, and roles. When ready to conduct field work, we went to a popular shopping district in the city after school. After much practice, they took initiative to conduct interviews with native English speakers as the teachers stood back in case they needed support.
While I think much of this class was successful due to the low volume of students, I also believe that students were able to create their own agency once they took the reigns. They were able to ask questions that they were curious about, and took on roles they felt most comfortable with. This resulted not only in a strong presentation at the end of the semester, but also the formation of close student bonds. After guidance and creative freedom, students could build a strong classroom community that allowed them to develop better communication and language skills.
I think what I miss most about being in the classroom is the liminal space and time between, before, and after classes. That was the time that I really got to connect with kids on a personal level and got to know who they were and what they feared. That’s my wheelhouse. Now, I do get a little bit of this from my office hours via Google Meet, but my students are very inconsistently logging on to Google Classroom, let alone getting on in time for my office hours. I’ve been trying to reach out to my kids as much as possible, but texting or even video chat leaves much to be desired in terms of true communication. My heart breaks even more painfully for the students I have with mental health challenges, unsupportive families, or unstable housing. There’s only so much an ear without a separate space can really do, but I do my very best.
I struggle with the idea of creating a strong classroom community in an online course. I have taken several online courses throughout my education (at both the high school and college level) and NONE of them ever had a classroom community to speak of. I barely knew my professors and didn’t know my classmates at all, so I struggle to even conceptualize what building that community might be like. My school is trying spirit week during what would have been our spring break (hashtagged on Instagram as HSCLSpringOn) in which students and teachers interact in a less structured way to capture some of that great community we’re lacking. There were forty of us on an Instagram Live today watching our school social worker making a sandwich. (It was favorite sandwich day and I can’t open Instagram without getting hungry now). It’s a start, but I’m afraid that it won’t be enough. I can’t wait to get back to school.
(Sorry I forgot to do this because I had to move this week and it’s been a mess).
I have faced a lot of difficulties with reaching my students who have social-emotional issues. It’s hard to have the same impacts on them the way I did in-person and see how they are truly feeling. A lot of my kids and I have a light-hearted, joking sense of humor when we see each other and it gets lost in translation when we’re on Google Classroom. Video chats and video meetings have made it a bit easier, but not all of my students attend those. They are not mandatory, as I don’t want to penalize kids who cannot attend, have family members who need them, or who do not have access to all of the technology they need. I miss seeing my kids every day and even the little things, like blaming kids for losing my bathroom passes or talking to them about memes and pop culture. My kids tell me they miss my class the most because we had a lot of good conversations about the real world and that I always found a way to bring in things they are interested in, like rap music and GIFs and Tik-Tok.
I think that my graduate program at QC has been the strongest “community” in terms of building bonds. We have all been together for two years and gone through the same professors, courses, work, and projects. We also all went through similar struggles at the same time, such as student teaching and taking the edTPA. I think that this builds a strong bond/community. I think that Zaino (YES YOU!) does a really great job of establishing a classroom community in which we all are safe and secure to be ourselves and talk about things, big and small, in the classroom. I appreciate that in a professor/teacher because they even make themselves vulnerable and open up to showcase that it’s okay to do the same.
I have implemented the “5×5” project that was in Zaino’s video check-in for two weeks so far and it’s been such a hit with my class. It does take me a while to curate each list because I change them week-to-week and honestly, I have to be careful with what I choose since my kids are only 13. But, so far, I’ve found a lot of great Netflix shows/movies, articles, and podcasts they’ve seemed to really like. I turned the “5×5” into a project in which they have to journal and respond to each other’s journals, so that really does seem to be building a community of shared experiences, even if they are in their own homes.
– Abruptly transitioning to online learning has brought difficulties, not just in terms of curriculum and instruction but connectivity and that student teacher relationship that had been built from the beginning of the year. My students have lost that face to face interaction with one another, the classroom environment and learning as a group. And there were activities, group discussions and so much more that doesn’t translate online. English is a subject based on discussions and disagreement and exploration and I feel that this gets lost in translation in that transition to online. With this transition into online remote learning, what I have found most difficult about making connections is keeping those relationships that I have built with students that depend on school as an escape environment from their own homes. There were relationships that i had developed with students who would spend every one of their free periods and my free periods and after school time to talk, vent, and find distractions in my room and in my company and I worry about those students not that we don’t meet in person and. I can’t ask them in person what they need from me and I worry about them. What Im gleaming from my kids is that they also miss being in school, in the classroom, but probably most of all being close to their peers and friends.
– Thinking more recently to this class and the other class that I am currently taking and the past few years of classes I have been in and student taught, there was strong class community, relatability and this strong force that made me feel welcome and happy to go to class every time. And that first and foremost to do with the teacher/ professor that establishes that within the class. Smaller groups/ classes are usually easier to make a connection to because it gives you that opportunity to really establish that relationship. However the class that I felt I had the strongest sense of community was within the all girls seventh grade class I student taught in. Those girls felt that they could relate to me because I was female and POC just like a majority of them. Its also seeing a teacher or figure of authority as human, hearing stories of their struggles and tribulations and being able to relate to their struggles and see them as flawed humans. And the classes that I had seen that had toe closest ‘bonds’ or relationships were classes that had traveled through school together who had gone through similar struggles, like my sister who had been in the same school, with the same graduating class of about less than 100 kids, from sixth grade. It’s like that ‘idea’ of living in a small town where everybody knows everybody.
What I would like to try in my online class is more independent activities, maybe even teach a novel for ninth grade. One of my co teachers mentioned that this would a great time to try and implement a book that may offer more continuity to the students and they could access on pdfs and stream the movie together. While my admin asks us to steer clear of that, this may be a great opportunity because it gives me a chance to see how they would work reading novels as opposed to short stories and essays. And I want to implement more opportunities for the students to work one on one with each other or in larger groups but its still proving difficult because of the lack of technology.
The biggest difficulty I’ve faced in connecting with my students is multifaceted within the contexts of academic, emotional, and mental needs. I feel that I’ve spoken to more family members than I have students since we transitioned into remote learning, mostly due to outreach in regards to a majority of my students not accessing my classes on Google Classroom and completing my assignments but with the overarching need to make sure that my students are safe and holding up well. The few students that I speak to on a regular basis let me know that they hate being stuck inside, that they’d rather be back in school, and how they are handling difficult (sometimes horrible) living circumstances with family members that they have little to no positive relationship with. For many of my students, and I have to admit even myself, school is more than just a learning environment; it’s an escape from reality and from really difficult situations.
I know that I’m going to be jumping around with this post, but I’m just writing directly from my mind. The one thing I miss about being in school is speaking with the students and watching them interact with each other and letting me know how they are feeling, what went good in their day, and what didn’t go well in their day. My students also agree with this as well. Many of them just want to see their friends, engage with each other, and just be teens. These interactions are key to their growth and development, and by not being able to interact with their peers, their growth is at risk of being delayed. Thus, I try to get as many kids into video conferences, I try to setup fun activities for students to become involved in, and just check-in with them on a daily basis to make sure they are good. From what I’ve been told, I’m one of the only teachers to do this which saddens me. It also gives me a sense of responsibility that I’m proud to take on because of how important it is for my students to know that I care.
The biggest difficulty I’ve faced in connecting with my students is multifaceted within the contexts of academic, emotional, and mental needs. I feel that I’ve spoken to more family members than I have students since we transitioned into remote learning, mostly due to outreach in regards to a majority of my students not accessing my classes on Google Classroom and completing my assignments but with the overarching need to make sure that my students are safe and holding up well. The few students that I speak to on a regular basis let me know that they hate being stuck inside, that they’d rather be back in school, and how they are handling difficult (sometimes horrible) living circumstances with family members that they have little to no positive relationship with. For many of my students, and I have to admit even myself, school is more than just a learning environment; it’s an escape from reality and from really difficult situations.
I know that I’m going to be jumping around with this post, but I’m just writing directly from my mind. The one thing I miss about being in school is speaking with the students and watching them interact with each other and letting me know how they are feeling, what went good in their day, and what didn’t go well in their day. My students also agree with this as well. Many of them just want to see their friends, engage with each other, and just be teens. These interactions are key to their growth and development, and by not being able to interact with their peers, their growth is at risk of being delayed. Thus, I try to get as many kids into video conferences, I try to setup fun activities for students to become involved in, and just check-in with them on a daily basis to make sure they are good. From what I’ve been told, I’m one of the only teachers to do this which saddens me. It also gives me a sense of responsibility that I’m proud to take on because of how important it is for my students to know that I care.