I wonder how it will look looking back on this period of time from the future. What will be different? What is to come? Will I still have a job by the end of all this? It is currently the end of the first week of lockdown in the UK following the global Covid-19 pandemic. For many, their whole world has been turned upside-down as most are forced to work from home; teachers included.
I’ve always treated online teaching with an air of trepidation; how can you replicate that face-to-face delivery and interaction that you would otherwise get with students? Well this week I had no choice in the matter and at the time of writing, I have finished five working days of online teaching and currently preparing for my sixth. It has very much been a case of being dropped in at the deep end but honestly I have gotten over my initial worries and grievances with the whole process and have learned to almost enjoy in. Now, that is not to say I prefer this; if my school were to open its doors tomorrow, I’d be in there like a shot, but I have had the opportunity to learn and develop new skills.
Interaction has been great. My students are of a high enough level where I have been able to train them in video conferencing etiquette with relative ease and they have responded well to the change-over, despite their initial concerns. The main issue I am currently wrestling with is planning, funnily enough. I’ve worked so hard to get my planning under control and undertaken a trial of dogme-style teaching and suddenly I don’t feel I can do this anymore. I’ve noticed that students are less talkative online; some are content with just sitting there and absorbing, others tend to dominate, even tentatively. But as to what I plan to do with the students and how to deliver it, sometimes I’m at a loss.
Textbooks are more or less out of the question; a handful of students have them and because not all do, copying becomes problematic with copyright issues and so on. And on top of that my lessons don’t feel exciting anymore. Not that lessons need to be all singing, all dancing, but I feel like some of my personality and rapport has been lost to the void between the screens. It’s still early days and I’m still learning. I’m sure there are plenty of resources about this, so I’m going to endeavour to find new inspiration over the next couple of weeks. This is particularly vital because if these online classes are not successful, I may not have a stable job moving forward, so there is this added external pressure to make my lessons the best they can be, which links back to the issue of planning. How can I make this exciting? What can I change? This post is far from over, keep an eye on the comments…
Hi Jack,
We’ve all felt at sea being thrown into online teaching so your difficulties are shared by most teachers, I’m sure.
I think it’s very interesting what you said about planning. I was surprised and impressed a while ago when you said that you don’t tend to plan but work with what arises, taking a dogme approach. I think that’s very brave. I do that to a certain extent within a lesson but always within the parameters of a plan, whether it’s following a book or my own material. I may digress but I have a plan.
I too have really struggled with the online environment. As you point out, many students don’t have the books and they are far less willing to talk. It is a lot harder to build rapport.
I’ve been teaching online now for two months and am still feeling my way into it, but certainly the idea of approaching it without a plan would really daunt me. Perhaps there is a middle way. Sketching out certain content or language topics to cover on a particular day, preparing some worksheets and seeing what arises, safe in the knowledge that you have a backup if dogme approach doesn’t yield much.
I think most importantly, give yourself a break here. We are all hard on ourselves and when we are used to being in full flow in the classroom, generating atmosphere and feeling like we nailed the class, it is a shock to the system to move online.