Hey teachers, if you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Rachael, and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers who want actionable tips, simple strategies, and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go. Well, hey there. Welcome to another episode of The Classroom Commute Podcast. I am Rachael your host, and thanks for joining me today, wherever that may be.
Maybe you're on a walk or a run or maybe you are actually on your commute to your school to clean up your classroom for the end of the school year. Many teachers and schools are heading into their final week of school this week. So you may be wrapping things up. Wrapping up what was a very interesting and very different school year than what you're used to. But regardless, we are going to be heading into summer.
This is the last week before we get into the Memorial day weekend, the unofficial start to summer. So hopefully you're looking forward to getting into the summer months. And if you are like us here in Western New York, you still have at least another month of school yet. We don't get out til the end of June. But, I think you will still find value in this episode because as you watch all your other teacher friends around the country finish up this week or next week, you won't be far behind them.
So listen in any ways.
Last week on the podcast I talked about some activities and some tips for ending the school year virtually via zoom or your Google Meet meetings with your students. And I talked about some fun things that you can do with them to kind of keep that normal end of the year vibe. So if you miss that episode, head back to classroomnook . com/podcast/18 and hopefully you can use one or two of those ideas this week as you finish out your school year.
Or, again, if you're ending in June, you can tuck the ideas away to use in a couple of weeks
Today I want to help you wrap your mind around how you head into summer after have just finishing this crazy distance learning experience and help you to reflect and think about what you've learned from it, what you can take away from it, and how you can use what you've learned going forward. But before we dive into today's topic, I want to share another shout out to one of our listeners who left a really great review on the podcast. Taylor Stack says, "Great podcast.
I love listening to all of your ideas. Your podcasts are simple and concise and your ideas are so easy to implement. Thank you for being so generous with your ideas and resources that you share. You have been a lifesaver through these uncertain and challenging times." Well, thank you so much Taylor for that really nice review. And if you would like to leave a review on the podcast, you can do that right where you're listening to this episode.
If you are in the iTunes app, if you just scroll down a little bit, you'll see a spot to leave a review and I would so appreciate that. Thank you so much Taylor, and thank you to everyone else who has been leaving great reviews these last few weeks. I really, really appreciate it.
Well, I don't know how you're feeling as you end the school year, but if you're anything like me, you are certainly feeling like you have just come off the Teacups ride at Disney world and you're dizzy and not feeling good and your kids are just grabbing at your hand to go again for another round. It has been such a whirlwind these last two months and so I think it's important that as we wrap up this school year that we take some time to just breathe and take a break.
So, if you are ending this week or whenever you do end , make sure that you first and foremost just take some time to not do anything school-related. Wrap up your classroom, whatever you need to do to hand in those keys and be done for the school year, but then give yourself a week where you're not doing any schoolwork and you are just taking time for you and your family.
I know that I am definitely going to need a humongous break from schoolwork as I've been trying to work and do my daughter's schoolwork at the same time. I know that you are likely feeling the same way. We all need a break to just do nothing. For many of you, you're not used to working at home.
And I know from personal experience, from working at home - I work here in my home office, but typically I'm by myself without my family around - I know how hard it is to shut it off and leave your work in the office, or wherever you have been working these past few months, and then just be at home with your family like you would normally do after coming home from school each day. So you do need to make that hard break between working and then now going into summer.
But after you've given yourself some time to break and relax and you know, maybe enjoy being outside if the weather's getting nice around you (we just had snow last week so hopefully we are turning the corner for some warmer weather) but after you've had time to just relax, then you can start reflecting on the year - because there's a lot to reflect on.
The biggest change that most of you have likely had to have made as we have been doing this distance learning, is using technology way more than you ever have in the classroom.
Maybe you went completely from doing no technology to now here you were doing all things technology. Maybe you were doing a little half and half. You had students still doing traditional paper and pen activities and then integrating technology where you could, Or maybe you did do technology all the time in your classroom, but it was still using it differently because now you were doing it from a distance and your students had to adapt to that as well.
Even if they were very well versed in using technology, they probably hadn't been using things like Zoom or Google Meet or having to use those tools, technology resources at home. So first just reflect on what went well and what didn't go well. What did you like about using technology that maybe surprised you, and that you weren't expecting to like? And what are some things that you did not like and you never ever want to have to do again?
Regardless of how you felt about it, I'm sure that you have grown and have really developed some skills that you may not have had before, because you just had to. Make a list of those things that you really liked about using technology and make a list of things that you didn't like, and hopefully you can carry some of those things that you did like into the next school year when you get back into your classrooms.
From what I am hearing on the news, and what other people are saying, I think one of the biggest things that school districts and states are taking out of this whole thing is that technology needs to be a part of our students' everyday learning. And, I also think they realize how unprepared many districts and classrooms and teachers were to make that quick transition from doing no digital to completely digital. I think that schools are now going to be reevaluating their policy on technology.
Things like snow days. When we have snow days are they going to now require you to use technology and distance learning to continue learning on those snow days? Or if a student gets suspended from school or has a longterm illness, how can we use technology? I just think that schools, after having gone through this, are really going to reevaluate how technology can play a much bigger role in our everyday teaching whether or not we're in the classroom or not.
So I would caution you to not be thinking that once we get through this whole thing you'll be saying, "Oh my goodness, finally I don't have to do all that distance learning again. I can just get back to how things were." Because I don't think we're going to be returning to how things were.
So I think it would be wise to embrace the things that you've learned about technology and reflect on those things that maybe didn't go so well so that you can improve your skills and be better prepared should we need to continue using these distance learning skills that we've learned over the last couple of months. I've always said that teachers are so great on the fly.
We've kind of been trained to do that, you know, unexpected interruptions happen in our classrooms on a daily basis and we always have to kind of pivot our teaching on the fly without much notice. And so I think teachers have done remarkably well making this transition. Whether or not you feel like you have done very well, the things that y ou h ave been asked to do on such short notice, I think are amazing.
So give yourself the credit for the things that you've learned and take note, and then take action on the things that you want to improve on so that you are really prepared for using technology in and out of the classroom. I've kind of always had the educational philosophy, as we have seen the trend to go digital, that we need to embrace technology because our students are living in a technology world and that isn't going to be slowing down anytime soon.
But I also do still see value in some of the traditional activities that we've always done in the classroom. I don't think students should be on their screens all day long. I don't think you should have a 100% paperless classroom, because I think that the skills that students learn by doing some of those traditional activities and lessons are still valuable in our world today. But I do think that you need a mix of technology and traditional activities in your classroom.
You now have the opportunity to look back on some of those digital activities that you had your students doing at home, and now you can think about how you could bring those same digital activities into the classroom. You may be adding on different support that you can provide in the classroom that you couldn't provide at home, but you could still have your students doing those same activities that they did at home, but just now in the classroom under your guidance and your support.
All I'm asking is that you take some time to reflect and review the things that went well and the things that you maybe want to work on or grow in moving forward. You put in all that time and effort to create those resources. Don't just wash your hands of them now. How can you put them to use in future lessons in your classroom? Another concern that I've seen from teachers as they finish out the school year is that they're so worried about the things that they didn't get to with their students.
We ended so abruptly from being in the classroom and had to quickly transition into distance learning. Of course there will have been some learning loss because we were scrambling to find out what to do those first few weeks that students were at home learning. So I think that there is that worry that you haven't prepared your students for the next grade level up. But, before you worry about that, I want you to remember and take comfort in the fact that everybody is in that same position.
So you aren't the only one that may be feeling like you haven't prepared your students for the next grade level. You didn't get to X, Y, and Z - but don't worry about that because everybody's in that boat. What you CAN do is be proactive and reach out to your students' next year teachers and say, "Hey, this is where we left off. These are the things that I did not get to, and these are the concerns that I have about this particular group of students."
And that way, the new teachers that are getting your students for the next grade level have a jumping off point. They can say, "okay, normally students come into my classroom knowing this and have been taught X, Y, and Z. But this year, they don't. So that's where I need to begin instead."
It just gives those teachers a little time to think about how they are going to begin the next school year, how they're going to hopefully make up for some of that learning loss that came from the previous year, and how they can modify and tweak their lessons to bring those students up to speed.
And on the flip side, you can reach out to the teachers in the grade level before you and do the same thing. Find out where those teachers left off. What concerns do they have? What did they get to and what did they not get to. That way you are better prepared for this next group of students coming into your classroom.
And who knows, it may still be in a distance learning format, but now you're better prepared and if you have that knowledge about what they've gotten to and what's worked well for those students in a distance learning format, you're going to be better prepared to reach those students and meet their needs.
I think one thing for sure that we have learned from this whole thing is that we have to rely on the people that we work with to make it through. So help out your fellow teachers, whether they're in the grade level above you or the grade level below you so that you can all work together and everybody can be on the same page.
And finally, the last thing that I want to say is that I think we can all agree how crazy it felt during those first few weeks when we were just coming out of the classroom and having to switch all of our teaching over to a distance learning format. And so I think that we can learn from that and hopefully be better prepared in the future. So I would encourage you to have some plans - kind of like you would sub plans - have some distance learning plans.
Your district may even now require that you have that now that we've gone through this whole experience together. Have a week or two planned ahead of time that you can draw upon if your students need to abruptly go back to distance learning after having returned to the classroom. That will at least give you some time to prepare for the future weeks, should we find ourselves in this position again.
For example, when this whole thing first started, I put together a week's worth of virtual reader's workshop. And it was all done in Google Slides and had a video mini lesson, a virtual read aloud for them to listen to, an activity that they can do right there in the slides, and then a closing video that they would watch to wrap up the lesson. And there were five days that walked them through some reading skills. That resource is still up for free in our Member's Resource Library.
If you haven't grabbed that yet, you still can, and maybe you wa nt t o u se this year or you can tuck it away for future uses, should we have to go through this whole thing again. (Knock on wood, we don't, but we always want to be prepared) I think if we learned anything, and if there's one thing that we can take away from all this is that we need to be prepared. So, you can still grab that free virtual reader's workshop over in our Member's Resource Library.
If you're not a member, you can sign up for free and have access to over a hundred other teacher and student resources and video tutorials. Just head to the website classroomnook.co m yo u'll see up at the top there is a Member's Resource Library link. If you click on that, you can get right in and grab that resource.
There's a section in our library rig ht at the top for all of my distance learning resources, and of course make sure you check out all the other resources that are in there as well. All right guys, that's all I have for you today. I hope that you are doing well, staying well, and ready for summer. You can check out all the show notes and links and resources that I've mentioned in this episode at classroomnook.com/podcast/19 and it'll all be there waiting for you.
Have a great rest of your week and we'll talk again soon. Bye for now.