Topic: Remote Teaching

I would not say I am an expert by any means, but I find myself in the unusual circumstance of being able to empathize with many different people during these strange COVID-19 days.

With all of us inevitably turning over to online teaching, EntreCulturas offers an array of diverse activities. Now is the time to further explore the Learning Site and all of its capabilities.

Just a little over a week ago I was saying goodbye to my students without knowing when I would see them again. This was a rather strange, and above all, sad experience, as I described it in a blog post. By now I have already met a couple of times online with each one of my classes and to be honest, it has been one of the longest weeks of my life.

During this time of uncertainty and school closures, many teachers have had to jump into teaching remotely without a moment's notice. I have worked for several years as adjunct faculty at a local university, which has forced me to become familiar with teaching both synchronously online and asynchronously.

These are crazy days indeed. Teachers all over the country (and world!) are being asked to switch from in-person teaching to some variety of online teaching and learning in a matter of weeks. The question that is on many teachers’ mind is How do I effectively plan instruction during these unique circumstances?

In what seemed like a span of a few hours, teachers needed to frantically shift to virtual instruction. All schoolwide events and extracurricular activities were suddenly cancelled. Feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and disappointment slowly settled in and took charge.

As a former comprehensible input (CI) German teacher, I’ve been thinking lately about how to provide adequate comprehensible input in an online environment. After 18 years of more or less traditional teaching, I switched to CI teaching for my last five years in the classroom before pursuing world language administrative positions.

We just created a new library of activities related to Spanish songs for your mid- to intermediate-high Spanish learners. Activities for each song can be posted all at once for students to complete at their own pace, or posted daily for completion as a class exercise.

This has been a year full of unprecedented events for students, parents, and teachers. Teachers and students were asked to move their active learning from the traditional brick and mortar classroom to a virtual environment.

I am in awe at the work teachers do every day. I am especially amazed at all that teachers have done these past few months adjusting to remote learning. There has been so much newness and change that has happened during these unsettling times.

Although it has not been easy for anyone to endure the months under COVID-19, it’s been especially difficult for all those involved in education. Students, teachers, and administrators have found themselves facing an unknown, unexpected, and uncertain reality.

It’s time to let go of the school year and take some time to relax and practice self-care.

Last semester’s transition to virtual teaching was abrupt and left many of us feeling like we were catching up to learn new technologies instead of focusing on communicating content to students. Now, as we look forward to next year, which appears to be an amorphous hybrid of virtual and limited face-to-face instruction, our worries turn to what students missed this past semester and how we can catch them up.

As we all anxiously await our schools’ reopening plans, much remains unknown. A series of potential scenarios could take place with short notice. While our schools may adopt hybrid schedules that combine an in-person format with a virtual one, we should be ready to transition to full-time virtual teaching at any given moment.

We all know the challenges that we faced (and often overcame) with distance learning last spring. Our social media accounts are full of memes and articles about all of the problems and struggles that we had. But I have yet to read an article or blog celebrating some of the unexpected benefits that came along with distance learning!

Many teachers are beginning the year with some or all of their students participating in class virtually. What are some technology tools that can help teachers create virtual tasks for students that will provide them with the best experience possible this year?

It has been such a whirlwind of a year, especially as educators; we have been forced to revamp and rethink our methods in this unprecedented time. After scrambling to teach virtually last spring, many of us returned to our classrooms in a hybrid format this fall, while others are still teaching completely online. Our profession as we know it changed in what seemed like the span of a single day.

My district, like so many others, opted for a hybrid model this fall, combining in-person classes in the mornings with online classes in the afternoons. As you can imagine, I realized quickly that I had to rethink my methods, get creative, and be innovative.