School reopening plans are slowly coming into shape for this fall. Whether you are meeting with students on an online platform or in a blended format, creating a safe civic space for online learning takes intention and reimagining of typical back to school routines.
This past spring, we had the advantage of already knowing our students when school buildings were closed and classes were shifted to distance learning. This semester, all stakeholders will have to create room to put “Maslow before Bloom” and create a foundation for relationships to be built in virtual and/or blended spaces.
All teachers are civics teachers. We send messages to students about power, equity, justice, and representation by our classroom routines, relationships, and curricular choices. While the following resources have explicit connections to the civic learning practices in both the middle and high school civics course requirements, they are also best practice for ALL teachers.
You can access a one hour webinar that provides and overview of the resources shared below.
Create Clear Lines of Communication
This new way of schooling can be stressful for all educators, students, and families. One way to alleviate some of the stress is to have clear and transparent lines of communication between all stakeholders. Families have to keep track of their child’s progress in multiple classes. Multiply that if there is more than one child in the household and you have a recipe for frustration if there are no clear lines of communication and venues to access information. Be proactive in addressing these challenges. Consider incorporating some of the following practices.
- Communicate to families, students, and resource staff when you will be checking your email and voicemail and the reasonable response time in which people can expect an answer from you.
- If you respond more quickly to email than voice mail, say so.
- Put this information in multiple locations. Your syllabus is not enough. Students and families are juggling multiple syllabi. Consider putting this information on the automatic/vacation reply on your email, articulating this on your voice mail message, and on your course webpage if you have one.
- You can put a hyperlink or QR code to this information on your first several assignments so students can readily access the information if needed.
- Create "office hours" where you are available by phone or via a virtual meeting platform for people to reach out to you in realtime.
- Consider varying your time slots for students and families who may have unconventional schedules due to work and childcare concerns.
- Post this information in numerous locations.
- Consider creating a Week at a Glance calendar to provide a "big picture" of the week that allows students and parents to design their day and week with this anchor document. Where applicable, you can embed links to videos, assignments, and other documents.
- Use a platform like Talk Points to communicate with families in their home language.
- Consider creating a survey for students and families to complete in which the can share how they can best be reached and any extenuating circumstances that might help you better serve the student.
Be reasonable in setting up these lines of communication. You should not be available 24/7. Specify expectations for students and families, but be empathetic and flexible to the circumstances.
Reflect on the Past to Inform the Present
Your students will come to you with lived experiences on remote learning from the spring that can inform and enhance your classroom practice in the fall. Take time to have them reflect on their experiences from the spring, have a voice in recalibrating classroom practices to create routines for success and engage in a collective renewal of goals for the 2020-21 school year.
- The following activities can be used to help students reflect on their experiences with remote learning. Choose one to start with and use the others to check in throughout the year to recalibrate classroom practices.
- Have students individually complete the following sentence, "When I think about online learning, I feel_____________ because________________."
- Use some of the Visible Thinking Routines from Project Zero:
Compass Point Reflection has students identify something that is worrisome, exciting, a need to know, and a suggestion for moving forward.
Color, Symbol, Image students share and discuss color, a symbol and an image they think represents online learning.
3-2-1 Bridge can be used to have students identify 3 ideas they have about online learning, 2 questions they have, and 1 idea they have for improvement.
Claim, Support, Question can be used to have students make a claim about online learning, support it with evidence from their past
- Collect the responses and display them in a chart or word cloud. Discuss the responses. Engage in a proactive conversation about what can be done to address past issues and create new routines.
Engage Students Voice in Creating Online Norms
One of the essential questions addressed in any classroom is "How Should We Live Together?" Address this prompt at the start of school in the context of the classroom, whether in person or online. Students must feel safe and secure in the learning environment. Student voices should be included in establishing and maintaining expectations. Here are some tools to help.
- Ask students to imagine an online space that was educational, productive, and comfortable for learning. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it sound like? Capture these ideas in a collective online document and then discuss the norms that both teachers and students can operate under to make that vision a reality.
- Class Contracting from Facing History and Ourselves can be used to help students discuss expectations and norms of how class members will treat each other.
- Have students jot down their needs for a successful online learning experience with a common google doc or with a tool like Padlet. Have students in breakout groups organize the ideas into categories and share with the larger group to reach consensus.
Intentionally Build an Online Community
Many of your students belong to one or more online communities. Why? They feel a connection, they are curious, the community adds value to their life. Successful online communities are built with intention. You will have to build your online community with intention too. Here are some resources to start with.
Consider engaging in these activities in smaller groups of students in blocks of 10-15 minutes. These brief but intimate interactions can help you really "see" your students and help them build rapport with one another in a way that is not possible in a larger group. Those not engaged can be working on independent work before all are brought back together for debriefing.
Leverage Technology to Build Rapport and Collaboration
Twenty-first-century workplaces require skills like communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. This is NOT the time to try out all of the new tech tools you have been curious about. This will only add extra stress on you AND your students as you try to navigate the nuances and glitches of new technologies. Start with what you know and then slowly add new tools to your toolbox.
Don’t forget families and students! Here is a Comprehensive Student/Parent Tutorial Guide to help these educational partners navigate online spaces.
Facilitating Student Discussions Online
Facilitating student to student discussions in remote or hybrid learning environments takes a reimagination of traditional strategies used in the classroom. We have created remote learning guides for some of the more popular structures to facilitate student to student civil conversations.
- Philosophical Chairs: a strategy to help students practice methods of persuasion, active listening, and open-mindedness.
- Socratic Seminar: a protocol designed to help students dive deep into a common text to promote understanding, of multiple perspectives. questioning and an understanding of the lived experiences of others.
- Structured Academic Controversy: a technique to help students analyze multiple perspectives and reach consensus on complex issues, past or present.
Tools for Formative Assessment and Reflection
How do we know students are learning? How can we use assessment not merely as an "autopsy" of learning, but as a tool for reflection that enhances the learning process? Here are some tools and prompts that you can incorporate into your practice.