During my student teaching practicum experience, I taught five eighth grade mathematics classes for the Cougars cluster. With the ongoing pandemic preventing school to be conducted in the typical classroom environment, instead we operated in a remote, online learning environment through Google Classroom and Google Meets. The schedule consisted of synchronous periods 1 through 4 on Mondays and Wednesdays, synchronous periods 5 through 7 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and asynchronous Fridays for students.

Everything was adjusted and everyone was learning. Students and teachers needed to quickly adapt to this new world of remote schooling, including factors, such as learning in a home full of distractions and exploring the variety of online teaching tools.

Classroom Management

Meeting Diverse Needs

On September 23rd, the Blue class was the very first class that I taught, following the thirteen days of professional development (added to adjust to remote learning) and only after observing my Supervising Practitioner for two classes with them. My lesson would be used for all the classes, but I was running the first one with Blue. I quickly learned how we could reflect between classes on what worked and what needed to be adjusted, observing my Supervising Practitioner teach the following class and that lesson running smoother. The majority of the Blue class was also in our Homeroom, increasing the comfortability level between the students and me, in transitioning into the main teacher role. They were the first period of the day and week, so I only saw them on Mondays and Wednesdays. This class would become the "guinea pig" class, since they were the first to receive any lessons, and because the school schedule did not rotate classes to different times in the day. As the first class of early Monday mornings, we were facing sleepy students. After the break of the weekend, extended with the asynchronous Fridays, the challenge in the Blue class was that, especially in the beginning of the year, it could feel like students were forgetting all material from the previous week. Warm-ups sometimes seemed to take longer in this class than the next period or classes on the next day. As the year progressed and we got more into a routine; energy levels, participation in class. and practice on homework increased, which resulted in improvement demonstrated during the warm-ups of class. I also began adding extra examples that were very similar to the first warm-up for extra quick practice. This helped to increase student confidence and spurred student recall from previous lessons.

After starting to teach the Blue class for a week, I was scheduled to pickup another class, the week of October 5th. The plan was also to pickup one of the Tuesday/Thursday classes (Yellow, Purple, Green). The Purple class was the second class we saw on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, as teaching is a profession, in which you have to be able to adjust quickly during the class and roll with any obstacles, that plan soon changed. I ended up teaching Purple class on October 1st, because as my Supervising Practitioner started the lesson, a number of technical difficulties ensued. It started with the Pear Deck program, which we were using to provide direct feedback during class, having to be launched twice, since the window accidentally closed (and at that point, we did not know we could re-open it). Then, as I was providing feedback to students in the Google Meet chat, and jumping in to answer questions verbally, it felt like there was a delay in my Supervising Practitioner providing feedback on their work, and I realized that he was trying to speak to students, but none of us could hear him. What had happened was that both of his two-computer setup completely crashed; everything was frozen on his end, had to be restarted, and he was bumped out of the Google Meet. All of a sudden, I was fielding questions from students (without being able to see their work), while simultaneously trying to contact my Supervising Practitioner to figure out what was going on. I ended up re-launching a new Pear Deck with the students (this point being about 24 minutes into the class time and the students only thinking that we were facing some minor technical difficulties that morning). I was able to teach that class earlier than expected, and through all of the chaos of that morning, the Purple class and I were able to quickly and smoothly recover from that, as we were still able to complete the bulk of the lesson. Since I had taught the Blue class the day before, I was able to try the re-adjustments we had discussed with Purple class, which also showed me how important and beneficial reflective practice is for lessons. This story became one of my favorite (and funniest) ones to share, as it was the perfect example of everything that could possibly go wrong in the online classroom style and how we could adapt to it. Overall, the Purple class was a clear transition into teaching, as I started officially teaching them the following week. Their energy was different from the Blue class, as they were the second class of the day; they were more awake. While my Supervising Practitioner had taught most of our students in seventh grade as well, the majority of this class had been moved from a different seventh grade cluster, and were the newest to this eighth grade cluster. Maybe that helped to aid my transition into teaching them, since we were all new to the cluster, but in general, the Purple class became one of the classes with the highest levels of in-class participation and engagement.

After the Blue and the Purple class, I began taking over another class each week. On October 13, I started teaching the Green class. We saw the Green class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and they were our only afternoon class (after the extended lunch and independent work block). Towards the beginning of the year, the Green class had the most students, who were having trouble staying engaged and focused on in-class activities in this online learning environment. Students were returning from the extended lunch and independent work period, which meant students were more likely to come right as class started or late. Since no cameras were on, it was difficult to tell what a student was doing on their side of the computer screen too, especially when students were getting up and leaving their computers. However, as we transitioned into a steadier routine and talked about class expectations as a group and with individual students, the Green class became stronger, and once students were focused, we flew through a lot of the material and practice examples. As the last class that each lesson would be delivered to, most of the adjustments had been tried in previous classes, which allowed this one to have the most efficient and effective delivery. Sometimes, the Green class was able to try extra examples, which were added to all class slides for additional practice. As the following lesson always built on the previous, in Green class, we could try some of the additional problems that would build more into the next lesson. They questions would extend the current lesson's topic, but increase in complexity as they started to introduce the next topic. The Green class was the quietest class orally, but they became one of the most engaged classes, and students were more active in the Google Meet chat for their participation and questions.

I began teaching the Yellow class on October 20th, which had the smallest class size. We saw the Yellow class in the first block of Tuesdays and Thursdays, which meant at this time I began teaching classes back-to-back (Purple and Green were on the same day, but had the lunch block in between). The Yellow class was one of the Inclusion classes, where about half of my students were Special Education (SpEd) and the majority of my English Language Learners (ELLs) were level 3s. We had additional support from our cluster Inclusion Specialist and an Instructional Assistant (IA). This class had the most students, who would turn their cameras on and/or were comfortable enough with asking questions through their microphones. For this class especially, it was pointed out early on that my calm voice/tone and patience would really help all students succeed and aid those students with math anxiety. I could also prepare additional examples of problems for if we needed extra practice in this class. Those additional examples made the class more equitable for all students, especially as we built on those base concepts, and as the extra practice could boost their confidence in solving problems. As most lessons had an instructional video, in which I would walk through an example, students were asked to watch the video individually for some time, and then, we would re-group to try some practice examples. It was always clear in every class who had watched the videos, while trying the examples after, which modeled the one from the video. I was able to send students back to the video as well, if they needed a slightly longer clarification. The Yellow class had highest percentage of students, who would watch the videos and then, demonstrate their skills and understanding of the video. So, as a whole, they were one of the strongest in picking up new content during class. Students were able to re-watch the videos, which always helped them approach the current example and even recover quickly if re-watching the video led to a slower start on the problem. The Yellow class helped me to reinforce the idea that math can be taught in different ways while still achieving the same goal. Sometimes, explaining a concept slightly different than the first method that came to mind, would make all the difference in the students learning.

The Red class was the fifth and final class I would take over in teaching. I started with them on October 26th, seeing this class in the second block of Mondays and Wednesdays. They were the other Inclusion class, with about half of my students in this class being ELLs, mostly levels 1 and 2 and a couple level 5s. Occasionally, we would have an IA for additional support in this class. In the Red class, more of the negative effects of remote learning were evident, especially as it was difficult to get information to our ELLs. Due to everything being online and with new standards, small group work, which has especially high positive effects for ELLs learning content and language, was extremely limited. To help adjust, we created videos and instructions for students to turn on captions in their first language for the instructional videos, as well as incorporated sentence frames for example problems, where students could just fill-in-the-blanks. These methods helped to adjust the online learning environment for our students. At times, it was difficult to get certain instructions or answer a question for our ELLs to understand, so translating in the Google Meet chat would aid this process, but the most effective method, was when another student who spoke the same first language, but had a better understanding, would jump in to help translate for a classmate out loud. Even though the adjustment period into remote learning was slightly longer for this class, the majority of students in this class showed the most improvement in their overall math skills and general participation. At times, the Red class had the lowest percentage of in-class participation, due to the challenges of the online classroom, but overall, the Red class had the most enthusiasm and energy when starting class. Students would come in, unmute their microphones, and start off the class beating the teachers to say "Hello!" or "Good morning!" This made it easier to match their energy level, and often, we would be able to try more examples than the first class that morning, because more students attempted every problem and especially benefited from modeling the worked out examples.