Lessons in Remote Learning: The Three R’s

I've learned a lot about myself as a teacher since distance learning began in March, but a key lesson is that I can change how I teach to fit a virtual world without giving up the teacher-student relationship. I have always operated on the understanding that building relationships with students is the key to meeting their needs, but distance learning has drastically changed how I am able to interact with them. Initially, distance learning seemed like a roadblock to continuing the relationships that I had built with my students in the previous months. I certainly don't have all the answers, but I am determined to make it work by meeting with students individually and making those meetings meaningful.Jennifer Houston, LS 5th-grade teacher

I have learned the importance of the student-teacher relationship. I am beyond thankful that I have had the pleasure of creating meaningful connections and rapport with my students for 6 months prior to remote learning. It has allowed me, as an educator, to fully trust my students in this new process and them to trust me. I have been able to alter my routine and activities that we have built upon in the 6 months prior to remote learning and my students have followed without missing a beat because they trust that I want them to be successful and to learn.Emily Simpson, MS math teacher

I have learned/reconfirmed the fact that being an educator is more than just teaching content and classroom management. It’s the daily connections we make with kids that we cherish. Most of my students/advisees have a better appreciation for school and how making connections with teachers and their peers is a valuable life skill. I have learned that staying connected via Google Meet with my advisees is VERY important. These meetings serve as an outlet of concerns/frustrations and a sense of "normalcy" for both parties.Robert Horsey, US social studies teacher

I also learned that it is okay to reach out beyond my small circle of support at Bullis to a wider community of theatre educators. We all are experiencing the same things and with the outpouring of ideas, best practices, examples and successes we all started to find our stride. Remote Learning gave me the ability to do things I normally wouldn't do in the classroom - like studying accents with my 7th Graders, producing a Radio Play with my 6th Graders and connecting my 8th Graders with theatre & film professionals to conduct interviews. I started to look for the opportunities that Remote Learning was giving me and my students rather than the opportunities it was taking away.Chelsie King, MS theatre teacher

I made sure to remind students often that we were in this unique learning endeavour as a team, that it was new to all of us, and that we would succeed together. Our daily sessions weren't always focused solely on the science content and that felt necessary and acceptable. We shared about our feelings, we met one another's pets and siblings, discussed challenges and highlights of being at home, played games like 20 questions, shared riddles, jokes, stories, and laughs, and did our best to remain positive each day!Chelsea Fajen, MS science teacher

I have learned that my strength as a teacher lies in my connection to the students. And I feel that I am disconnected from them with remote learning. I was discussing with some others that I am grateful that this remote learning happened at the end of the school year when I have already established rapport with my kids. So we have a strong foundational relationship to work from. Betsey Waugh, US social studies teacher

Bring it. Bring the energy you need from your students to class each day. Just like in the classroom, your enthusiasm must be transmitted through the screen as well. There will be times when a few students might be under the covers, laying in bed. Days like that might have to be adjusted! Give them a few minutes at the start of class to wake up, sit up, and brush their teeth. During remote learning, some students have shared with me that they're not sleeping well, they're having difficulty motivating themselves, or they stayed up late to finish a project for another class. Remember to ask, be supportive and empathetic. We are each facing different situations and may not know everything that is happening at home.Alice Shih-Kahn, US art teacher

Remember, “you are what’s best for your students.” I credit this mantra to Justin Slocum Bailey, a renowned world language educator and educational consultant. He asserts that no one knows and cares about our students better than we do, and this fact is what enabled us to transition to remote learning so quickly. What do our students need? Beyond a stable internet connection, ultimately, they need patient and empathetic educators, who are willing to take the time to connect and care. When it comes down to it, we don’t teach subjects; we teach students. Wesley Wood, MS world language teacher

One thing I have learned is that our students are resilient. I just had a zoom class with 1st grade today where we were dancing, singing, and sharing new music creating activities. Real learning, joy, and music is happening in our class meetings and it is the highlight of my day. Classes have started to feel "normal" despite only seeing students through the computer. Michelle Kelly, LS music teacher

I have learned that while I desperately long for the days when I can be in my classroom at Bullis with my students again, we can still be a vibrant class learning online. I've learned that I can face my fears and tackle new frontiers I've never thought I'd enter with names like Screencastify, e-NABLE, Tinkercad and Thingiverse (all programs that my students became exposed to with the collaboration of our BitLab hero, Mr. Zigler, while coming up with concept designs to help children with 3-D printed prosthetic hands) and that we can still collaborate (I've entered mini Google Meets with small groups of students) and do projects online like our Genetic Great Debates. Karen McPhaul, MS science teacher

I have learned that I'm very adaptable and creative. Let's consider Honors Molecular Biology. One of the first challenges, "How could I continue running a lab course without having students in class?" I approached this challenge with the idea that I would continue our cloning project experiments in my classroom and film everything I was doing. The students were required to keep up with their lab and methods notebooks as I added material for them to copy, analyzing results and writing conclusions based on what they observed. As a temporary measure this worked quite well. We usually tour a biotech company in the spring (Precision for Medicine, PfM) and sometimes a biology lab at UMD. This year, we couldn't tour PfM in person, so I arranged with my contact person to do a zoom, virtual tour. They took a camera through their facility (it's the size of three football fields) to show the students all of their high-tech equipment and research projects. They highlighted their ongoing collaborations with pharmaceutical companies with their Covid-19 research. This was a great success. Dan Terbush, US science teacher

I have learned that explaining mathematics is one of the more challenging things for students to do, and I have not done a very good job of teaching the importance of language and explaining correctly all of the ideas. I have been assessing some ideas with Flipgrid and having the students solve problems and explain their answers. It is incredible how many students can arrive at the correct answer, but are not able to explain it. I will definitely make that a focus in the future and see how I can improve that.Rebecca Turett, US Math Teacher

This experience has caused me to reflect on whether I have always been as attuned as I should be to different students' needs and the effect the classroom space is having on them. These are, of course, questions I tell myself I am always considering, but I also know there is that part of me that thinks, "This activity has been useful and successful in the classroom before, so it should work for these new students, too." The space and expectations of any classroom has the same degree of influence on students' learning experience whether it is face-to-face or remote, but my own familiarity and comfort with face-to-face classrooms surely keeps me from analyzing and questioning what can be improved to the same degree that I have during this remote teaching experience. I hope to be just as adaptable to students' needs when we return to campus as I have tried to be throughout this experience.Britton Andrews, US English teacher

One size fits all never works, even for remote learning. We still need to design lessons that include visual, kinesthetic, tactile, etc learners. I think every teacher should ask themselves, how many "types" of assignments do I assign in a week? Is there a design element? Any experimentation included? Incorporate friendly competitions?Duruhan Badraslioglu, US Science teacher

What is my curriculum? This experience has ushered in a reexamination of my curriculum and has demonstrated that not all topics translate well to the remote landscape. So that led to the following questions: What do I really want my students to learn? What are the enduring skills I want them to leave with from this course? And if they are truly important or essential how can I make them happen in this new forum? Is there a new way of doing this? Doing it differently does not mean doing it ineffectively.Bryan Whitford, US world languages teacher

The process has taught me to release responsibility and realize how the digital platform is indicative of the way the real-world workplace is shifting, to a more remote access of information, reflective of global working relationships. Staying student-centered and using break-out rooms has been beneficial to the class as a whole. I can hear from students who generally wait to be called-on in class and I can document their participation as I listen. The idea that all students have a voice is of course imperative to any format of a school.Jennifer Tinker, US English teacher