- Teacher: Okay, so does anyone have any thoughts on this?
- Voiceover: Silence.
A new sound in education.
Virtual education has created a new reality
for both teachers and students.
- Anyone?
- If educators are having a hard time connecting
when it comes to distance learning,
it's not only because they just can't see
or hear their students.
- We can sit here all day.
- This new reality has changed so much
about the way teachers teach and the way students learn.
From student apathy to technology issues,
to inequity in digital access, teachers have had to,
and are still learning to, drastically change the way
they do their job.
So how can we move
from surviving virtual learning environments
to thriving in them?
[clicking]
- Jessica Fleishmann: With young people,
you battle the two different philosophies,
one, you know, that routine and consistency
relieve anxiety and kids know what to expect, right?
And so you know, your first five minutes
should have a basic routine,
whether it's attendance taking, an intro video,
a question of the day, like whatever,
it should be pretty consistent on how you start out.
Then in virtual school, you kind of get to a place
where you want to still have creativity.
You still want to have suspense.
And you still want to have, you know,
these elements that are surprising and fun
and engaging to kind of like re-engage kids.
So you kind of go between this like level of keeping things
the same and routine and safe,
but then you also want opportunities
that bring some learning in a different way,
that's also fun.
- Madison, Wisconsin middle school teacher Jessica Fleishmann
pinpoints her success in distance learning
by striking a balance between consistency and fun.
- One thing I've noticed is unlike in-person school,
virtual learning is really academic-focused.
When you're in in-person school, there's, you know,
intra-kid social relationships that are happening.
There's social relationships between you and the students.
- As a teacher, you can try to interact with your students
to build those teacher-student relationships,
but how do you foster student-to-student connections?
5th Grade teacher Iris Patterson has an interesting model
to develop those connections.
- There's this show called Kid Nation .
It was a TV show where they put 40 kids in an abandoned city
for 40 days to see if they could create a better society
than adults without having them interfere.
- Announcer: Previously on Kid Nation :
40 young pioneers set out to build a world of their own
in an old ghost town called Bonanza City.
- As bizarre as this early reality show might seem,
Iris has seen aspects of the show,
particularly community building,
that have proven to be useful for her
when it comes to student engagement.
- So within the show, they create districts.
So four: red, green, yellow, and blue,
and at the end of every week, they have a showdown.
So the kids work and then they have a showdown.
And we modeled our classroom after that.
And I've been doing this,
this is about my fourth or fifth time doing this.
This is my first time doing it virtually.
But then each district forms a little family.
And I know I'm talking a lot about this
because it's so important
because I myself don't have the resources
to reach every student through Zoom
the way that I can even in school.
What is happening is they're forming little families.
So when I give an assignment, and at the beginning of the year
before the districts, I'd have 20 some kids,
here's your assignment.
Now I give it, and they select the district leaders
and each family works on the assignment together.
- In this Kid Nation model,
students hold each other accountable
for the work and learning being done.
- So they're checking on each other
and that's really important.
If they're not there, they're emailing,
“Hey, where are you Connor?
“We're missing you today, we really need your help.”
Hey, you know, so they're building that community
and that's more important than the academics right now.
It's them feeling like they're still connected.
They're still important.
You know, people care.
The way that they're helping each other,
and all those things you could dream of as a teacher,
it's like having four teachers in my classroom,
the district leaders that are helping to get the other kids
all up to the same levels.
I mean, they are making these like,
spreadsheets that have like,
which of their district members have this turned in
and that turned in,
and, oh, you still need 30 minutes for your reading log.
It is literally like,
I don't think I could hire four teachers,
adult teachers, to do what I'm seeing
that their own peers are doing for each other.
I mean, it's a kid nation, it really is. [laughing]
- Giving students some agency over their education
can help open a line of communication
between you and them,
and more communication can lead to growth for the both of you.
- Give yourself grace, ask students what they need.
The most important thing is to make sure
the kids know that you care and that you do care
with genuine hearts and sincerity, which teachers do.
And so when the kids know that and feel that,
kids will do anything that they need to do.
- What are some tools or teaching strategies you're using
to create more student engagement in your classroom?
[gentle music]