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Essential Questions
Essential Questions
• How can we continuously build and sustain relationships with students & families?
• How can we continuously build and sustain relationships with students & families?
• How might we design learning with a focus on the experience of the learner?
• How might we design learning with a focus on the experience of the learner?
Key Ideas
Key Ideas
• Relationships and community need to be built intentionally over time
• Relationships and community need to be built intentionally over time
“It is really tempting to push out a curriculum strategy without attending to culture in any school setting, but including your cultural strategy in your virtual curriculum plan is the key to creating a true learning community.” - Leah Henry (Fostering a Strong Community in a Virtual Classroom)
“It is really tempting to push out a curriculum strategy without attending to culture in any school setting, but including your cultural strategy in your virtual curriculum plan is the key to creating a true learning community.” - Leah Henry (Fostering a Strong Community in a Virtual Classroom)
Activate Your Thinking
Activate Your Thinking
Developing relationships with your students, helping them form bonds with one another, and creating a community of learners has always been the backbone of high functioning classrooms. As we move to hybrid learning environments where face-to-face opportunities are not always available, developing these bonds is more important than ever. As you watch the following video, consider how you might 'Be a Mr. Jensen' and look for opportunities to form connections with ALL of your learners. What have you done is the past to form relationships and foster community? What might you do differently in a hybrid model?
Reflecting on Past Experience...
Reflecting on Past Experience...
Think back to your previous experience in the classroom...
"REFLECT and identify strategies you’ve previously used to form relationships with and among your students"
"FLIP over to virtual, how might you accomplish this same strategy in a online/virtual setting?"
Share your thinking in this collaborative Google Slide Deck and be sure to take some time to read and comment on what others have shared.
*If helpful, check out this video on how to add comments in Slides*
“In a traditional classroom, there are some pretty standard practices that most teachers use to build the desired culture. In shifting to online learning, these strategies rarely transfer perfectly. In my years of teaching virtually, I found that culture CAN be built in the online setting, but it requires different strategies based on trust, respect, and responsibility.”- Leah Henry via Edutopia
“In a traditional classroom, there are some pretty standard practices that most teachers use to build the desired culture. In shifting to online learning, these strategies rarely transfer perfectly. In my years of teaching virtually, I found that culture CAN be built in the online setting, but it requires different strategies based on trust, respect, and responsibility.”- Leah Henry via Edutopia
Acquire Some Ideas
Acquire Some Ideas
The culture of a classroom can be felt immediately once you crack open a classroom door. Students helping one another on a class project, students asking questions or one another and their teacher, and even the constant hum of students thinking, communicating, and enjoying learning together all help suggest a positive learning environment. Many of us have done this for years in our face-to-face classroom but how can we set ourselves in the right direction in our hybrid classroom?
George Couros, author of “The Innovator’s Mindset” and “Innovate Inside the Box”, recently wrote a blog post after someone reached out with a commonly asked question, “How do we build relationships through remote learning spaces, especially with a new class of students to start the year?” One of the strategies Couros discusses touches on 5 powerful questions to reveal your student's strength and interests. We especially liked the question, "What are the qualities you look for in a teacher?"
"Read 4 Ideas for Building Relationships During Remote Learning" HERE and watch the following video with 5 powerful questions to ask your students and how you might implement them in a hybrid environment.
Considerations
Considerations
In addition to many of the suggestions Scott mentioned, we've compiled a list of considerations for building community from our Spring 2020 SD23 empathy interviews and most recently, from the book "The Distance Learning Playbook".
Reflect - Look back to go forward. What have you done in the past to build relationships and community? How will those strategies transfer to a hybrid environment?
Plan - like other planning you will do around curriculum consider adding in how you will Intentionally foster relationships / build community with students over the course of the first week, month and beyond.
Get to know your students - Consider collecting information on the whole child from your students and their families. HERE is a Google Form examples. For older students consider a silent interview: Students interview one another in pairs by writing questions on a collaborative document. The pairs then answer their partner’s questions. After about ten minutes, the students introduce their partner to the rest of the class.
Let your students know you! - Participate in the same "get to know you" activities your students are doing to help create connections and belonging.
Start your day off right - If relationships and community are important to you then build them into your day. Make it one of the first things you attend to by starting with a classroom meeting and share successes, gratitude, wonders and gauge how everyone is feeling.
Routines and Predictability - Creating a sense of stability in an unstable time has a potentially important impact for children in that it could increase their sense of safety. Sending out a predictable schedule each week where learners follow a teacher created schedule or create their own based on choice will allow learners and families the opportunity to plan their time accordingly.
Check-ins - Think about how you can check in with the children and their families about their health and well being on a regular basis. This could include specific check-ins like scheduled virtual meetings, scheduled “office hours," phone calls and emails. Continuous feedback loops help inform planning. See some ideas that can help you connect with students and families HERE.
Apply Your Learning
Apply Your Learning
One of the main considerations that George Couros touched on is the importance of planning when it comes to creating a positive hybrid learning environment. What are some strategies you can share that will help your colleagues build relationships and foster community in their f2f and digital classrooms? Share your strategies via this Padlet.
*Be sure to take some time to read what others have shared and use the "add a comment" feature to make connections, ask questions, and/or provide some further suggestions.
Key Ideas Recap
Key Ideas Recap
• Relationships and community need to be built intentionally over time
• Relationships and community need to be built intentionally over time
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