The worldwide situation of being threatened by the COVID-19 infection has changed teachers’ work a lot. At one moment teachers were leading their classes in real school-life conditions and all at once they had become online teachers, teaching from their homes and creating a virtual, learning environment.
A significant number of teachers have, during the last few years, due to the changes in educational approaches and demands of 21st century teaching, been trained to use and implement digital technology in their teaching. That way they have already been prepared, without having the slightest notion, to some of the challenges that online schooling itself carries.
Talking about teachers’ preparation for this completely new and unknown situation, except for teachers in Australia or the USA where the Schools of the Air have been functional for years because of the remote places and the impossibility for students to commute to their schools, it is inevitably important to point out the meaning of that preparation. It means that teachers have learned the importance of digital technology and its advantages in the classroom, and they have learned to use mobile phones and tablets for educational purposes, which apps, tools, sites to use to prepare their lessons, make games, interactive tasks and formatively assess their students’ knowledge.
They have gotten used to a new system of being trained via webinars and online courses, and step by step, got into the world of virtually connected teachers and teachers’ communities. Social networks have also contributed to teachers’ training giving the possibility of making the burden of upcoming changes easier to embrace and removing the feeling of being left insecure in implementing sudden modern teaching methods and approaches. A great number of teachers have participated in Erasmus+ and eTwinning projects which started teachers’ awareness of the importance of learning, what and how to use different online and digital educational tools. It could be said, that it is a nice basis for an ongoing situation, and it certainly is.
The fast switch to teaching in virtual classrooms is a new dimension that teachers are dealing with, day by day, very successfully. The skills and knowledge they gained, before this globally dangerous threat, helped them to adjust themselves faster and easier to something they have never been educated or trained to do. A crucial factor, that cannot be omitted at any point, is the psychological impact of being socially isolated. The influence of being deprived and limited of everyday activities and social face-to-face contact, leaves a burden that teachers need to ease in working with their students along with other teaching outcomes they need to accomplish. They need to help their students cope with the problem of missing their school friends, teachers, outside games and everything that growing up in normal conditions means.
Starting from that point, teaching under these conditions is a massive and stressful, surreal job that teachers need to deal with. Teachers carry the augmented role of real school and life mentors and they are putting themselves at their students’ disposal without any possible doubts, selflessly, forgetting that they are also psychological victims of abnormal life conditions and an uncertain future.
Virtual classrooms have not been implemented as an option of 21st century teaching and learning environments until now. Despite all the challenges and problems such as unstable internet connections, being overcrowded by users, slow document and photo uploading, teachers being unable to physically monitor students’ learning progress, overburdening teachers’ role of being a constant, around the clock motivational mentor, teachers have provided psychological support and high-quality teaching. Teachers handle planning virtual lessons very well, knowing the right amount of content their students need to practice or study. So there are some good points that should be emphasized.
Students can show their creativity using digital tools and have the opportunity to do work that can be done only in digital form such as a blog, poster, web page, video clip, digital comic, story/book, music pieces, art show, etc. They need to browse the internet more in order to find the needed information and they need to implement the knowledge they have gained from the “classic” school about internet safety and using reliable web sites. Writing e-mails and correspondence with teachers develops their digital literacy.
That way their digital competence is being improved and developed faster than in the “real” school. Digital formative assessment tools enable easier and more frequent checking of students’ comprehension and their learning process. All mentioned lead students to be more independent, self-sufficient and self-confident at acquiring the learning outcomes, of course, if it is fulfilled under one condition: the self-learning process must be without the students’ family members’ assistance.
My lessons are usually recorded and adjusted to my students, where I pay attention to the way I refer to them in this specific situation. I keep it simple and not too long (about 10-15 minutes), with positivity and liveliness in my voice. Once, at the end of a lesson about the USA, I was even singing the American anthem! I prepare the tasks and formative assessment using digital platforms and tools, but keeping in mind that the quantity and quality of digital activities are balanced. I want my students to write in their notebooks, read texts and answer the questions as well as if they were in “normal” school. I use different digital tools, but again I do not want to confuse my students additionally by using different tools too frequently.
So, I usually use H5P to make different interactive tasks with the option of formative assessment feedback, allowing for the possibility for every student to see the results of their finished work, be it fill in the gaps, drag and drop, a multiple choice quiz, find the words, true/false, or memory cards via Classtools. net- a set of various tools to make games. I would also recommend a creative task “Breaking News!” where my students needed to make positive breaking news reports. They did it so successfully that it was beyond my expectations.
Every day I post a task in the virtual classroom for my students, always before 8:00 in the morning and they need to send in their work by 20:00 the same day. I keep the same routine because they have already gotten used to it and they know the rules. I am “on duty”, ready to help them and check their work all day and they know it. So, every student who sends in her/his work gets my feedback within an hour.
In a 3-week-virtual classroom period I have learned some things about myself, professionally and privately, and about my students as well. What amazed me most is the unbelievable stamina that teachers can have. Ten to twelve-hour-working days of non-stop involvement in a virtual classroom, moderating students’ work, students’ lack of self-confidence, insecurity, bad mood, missing lessons, getting them to do their work, repetitively giving the same instructions and at the same time encouraging them to continue with good work, checking their work, word by word, and giving them, each of them, precise feedback about their work is an exhausting job and beyond every possible parameter of normal working conditions.
As a regular teacher, a human being with my own fears, insecurities and worries for my family and for myself I have seen myself as a firm person who still stands fast no matter how much work is piling up or multiplying rapidly. My students (age 11,12 and 13) have mostly shown a great deal of responsibility and work discipline. They have been following my instructions and they have been punctual, collaborative and more or less successful at gaining the learning outcomes.
Despite all the problems and hard times, teachers have carried the day. We must not ever forget our importance in our students’ lives. The awareness of being a significant factor in someone’s life gives us, teachers, a strength to keep continuing our good work because its fruits give us hope for a better future and a quick return to our normal lives.
Author:
Ivana Bokavšek
English teacher, teacher adviser
May 2020
