communication – The Captain of Class

Communication During Online Learning

Anyone finding it tricky to communicate effectively with students and families during this 100% online learning experience?

A friend of mine uses Seesaw to share information with parents and students. This teacher is able to send blasts to her class with realtime, to-the-second info about things like Google meeting times and links, as well as clarification on Google classroom assignments. These same kiddos and parents have direct access to their teacher to ask questions and request explanations at any time of the day. This could be overwhelming at both ends of the communique, which leads me to wonder…

What is the ideal style of communication between Teacher and Class during Online Learning?

Seesaw isn’t the only app that fosters direct communication between parents and teachers. The Bloomz app is another powerful tool for connecting educators with homes. These social-media-style apps require logins, so they are safe for sharing personal information. This allows teachers to feel safe posting pictures of students, including names, and providing school information that would otherwise be too revealing on an open social media platform like Facebook or Twitter. Can the app be too social, though?

When group messages are posted, and parents “Thanks” and “Thumbs up” the message, each response goes to everyone. If you have “notifications turned on” on your phone or device, it dings over and over… Then families end up turning off the notifications and end up missing valuable information.

Classdojo is an app that I have used in the classroom. This one allows teachers to not only share information with homes, but educators can provide instant feedback concerning classroom behavior. With the proper settings and notifications, parents can be notified as to how their kid is doing throughout the day in a realtime way. Pictures, videos, and messages can also be communicated. Personally, I found that I was tied to the app, constantly looking for student icons to add information to, rather than actually addressing my students.

Additionally, when I used Classdojo, but this could be applied to any of these and other apps, families became accustomed to and dependent on the reporting. Teachers can become captives to communication!

Screen Shot 2020-04-16 at 8.16.25 AM — I’ve embedded a “Learning Plan” full of activities for the week into my classroom website. I try to “Link” as many items as possible to lessen the amount of “Searching.”

And, what about those families who are seemingly unreachable? Teachers collect all kinds of information at the beginning of the year; email addresses, phone numbers, best way(s) to communicate, etc. I’ve emailed, made phone calls, and texted. I want to respect people’s privacy, and not force my teaching onto their family life, but also make the educational experience reachable. I view my attempts at contact as throwing a pedagogical rope. If a family wants or needs some time to itself, they need not grab the string. It is there for them, though.

Screen Shot 2020-04-16 at 8.16.51 AM — I supplied videos and Google slideshows through the classroom website, as well.

Screen Shot 2020-04-14 at 8.37.04 AM — I love that this family got this assignment the way they knew how!

I have chosen to use a Google classroom to provide my online teaching. Because my school district uses Google and all of my students have Google accounts and are versed in Google apps, it was a no brainer. There are other platforms, but I imagine they behave similarly: Educators can post assignments, leave feedback, make announcements, and share links through an app that looks and behaves much like a social media platform. There is a “stream” of activity that teacher and students can scroll through to find things. Items are listed chronologically. Like the other apps, Google classroom provides the opportunity for families to be “notified” when there is app activity; when teachers post things to the classroom.

We return to my original question: What is the best communication between educators and families?

Too much could turn off families, causing them to literally “turn off” notifications. Not enough, and families will not be trained to depend on or look to the platform for updated information/assignments.

Composing this blog from an educator’s perspective, I am finding it difficult to locate my students’ work. In the physical classroom, I’d model and explain instructions to my whole-group of Polite Pirates (students) before posting a Google slideshow to the online classroom for them to engage with. Everyone heard the same message, and I was even available in person to aid students who needed guidance. Now that we are completely online, I am finding myself making movies to reiterate expectations. Luckily, I was able to train my class in the usage of the Google classroom before we were locked out of the school building!

Screen Shot 2020-04-16 at 6.52.24 AM — The flag next to the slide indicates there is a comment attached to it. The yellow box shows what the comment is attached to.

Here is a frustrating situation: I post an “Optional” assignment in the Google classroom. It is a Google slideshow that students can interact with; A copy was produced for each student. Because it is optional, students don’t have to do it. Do I have to check them all? I ought to honor the work of anyone willing to put in this extra effort! I have devised a system that could help me, and empower student work to be found for feedback. Simply tell me that you did the optional work in a comment with in the Google classroom. Additionally, in a slideshow made up of many slides, leave a comment on the slide that you worked on. In this way, students will be “flagging” their work. These comments are hands in the air saying, “Look over here; I did some work I want you to look at.”

I like the idea of “Less is More,” shared by iTeach:iMother on March 24th, 2020.

I am going to share this idea with my parents and pirates today. We’ll see how it works. What are some tips and tricks that you have used to streamline communication during this online learning experience? How can the connection between educator and pupil homes be made tight, clear, unhindered, unobtrusive, and most helpful? I’d love to hear from parents, teachers, administrators, app developers, and more! Comment below, and let’s make this out-of-school schooling as productive and beneficial as possible!

Differentiating Homes

Screen Shot 2019-09-07 at 9.47.56 AM — Nicole’s Blog & Melissa’s Blog

The following blog was written for a Parent EDU project that Nicole Biscotti (@BiscottiNicole) & Melissa Sidebotham (@MelSideB) are putting together.

Good educators understand the need to personalize lessons, assignments, and assessments to meet the needs of a diverse population in their classrooms. The educational term for this is differentiation. How many times do educators treat every home as though it were the same as all of the rest? How is it that we see every student as a unique individual, but try to pigeon-hole the homelives into an assumed formula?

Several years ago I began using more technology in the classroom. My district was employing an online teaching component that included lessons and quizzes. With limited classroom time on shaky tech tools, I thought I’d assign some work to be done at home. The day after the very first assignment, I received an email from a single mom who traveled very far for work. My initial thought was defensive. Luckily, although new to teaching, I knew enough not to type what I was feeling. The practice of assigning online HW discontinued, and all was well.

Last year, I tried sending “Reading Logs” home. I had done this in the past with moderate success. Some parents told me that they liked having their children write a sentence or two about what they had read each day! Of course there was never 100% participation, and as you can imagine, the quality varied greatly. I was floored, however, when I witnessed the vast gap in equity last year. There were some students whose writing was the best I had ever seen. Third graders were composing beautifully written paragraphs every night, after reading impressive texts. Others, however, weren’t even touching a text or scratching out one line on the log. What was I to do?

Right around this time I was becoming more active on Twitter. Luckily for everyone, I came across many tweets suggesting negative effects of these kinds of blanket assignments. As I reflected on what I was seeing return to school, I realized that these reading logs were really assessing students’ home life more than their ability to read and write. Also, within only a few short weeks, I could see that this continued practice would simply widen the gap between the homes that provided a lot of support and environments that didn’t. What to do? Should I punish the “No-Log-Students”? Instead, I ditched the reading log. I am thankful to my Personal Learning Network (PLN) from Twitter for helping process all of these ideas.

One thought has continued to burn on my brain, though: How different all of these homes are. During parent-teacher conference season I have some parents who visit my room as couples, arriving early, entering with notes, prepared questions, and goal-setting agendas. There are also parents who never sign up or contact me. We might speak on the phone, but I’m not surprised to learn that there are homes that feel like learning should be done strictly at school.

Earlier in my teaching career I idealized some home situations and thought that everyone should strive to be like them. Then my daughter Scarlet was born. Scarlet is entering second grade this year. With each new teacher there are new communication styles, formats, and platforms being used. There have been times when I wished my daughter’s teachers communicated the way I did on the same social media platforms that I used. As an educator, though, I know that they have a bunch of students’ families to communicate with, and they should use the vehicle that works best for them. How could a teacher differentiate communication to parents while using the same platform for all? Content; Quantity; and even Quality could be ways to meet parents’ needs.

Do you type up a newsletter for all families, and then wipe your hands of home communication responsibilities? What if the parents of a youth can’t read, can’t read English, or never receives the letter? Here’s an idea: Find out what families want to know. At the beginning of the year, learn what content would be helpful to each home. The newsletter could still be posted on your website, but you could tailor your communication with the homes of your students to meet the specific needs of each one. It could be a short note, a text, a quick email with a screenshot of scores, etc. You have data on your students. Collect some for your families.

How often do your families want to hear from you? Do you know? How much do they want to read? A parent told me last year that they liked bullet-point-emails. That opened my eyes. I knew my emails were too long. From then on, I had a list at the beginning of what was in each email.

Some parents like getting lots of detail, while others are more interested in simply knowing their kid is doing okay. Which style of parenting is better? Not only is there no good answer to that question, but it is a horrible question to begin with! They are simply different. One thing that has helped me communicate with parents in a tailored way is through providing specific feedback for each student’s writing in Google Classroom. The families that want to know a lot get a lot of text to read. The families that would rather a short blurb get just that.

The sky smiled on parents leaving Willow Lane Meet The Teacher Night

Right now I am beginning a new school year. Last night was “Meet the Teacher Night.” Not every student’s parents visited my room, but of the ones that did, one thing that they all had in common was their uniqueness! Everyone was so different! Not just the way they looked; The attitudes shown in facial expressions, the ways they sat or stood to listen to me, their interest in speaking with me before and after my short presentation; These and many more characteristics spoke to me a very valuable lesson: Not only do I need to differentiate instruction in my classroom when teaching my class, but I should be differentiating communication with families.

Is it my job to get parents who are okay being completely hands-off to change and become more involved? No, but I’m not going to ignore any families, either. My aim is to work at respecting the expectations of homes. Differentiating Homes means the same thing as differentiating instruction: Meeting parents where they are philosophically, psychologically, and physically. If a family thinks education should be confined to school, then I better make it happen in school, while I have their kid! If parents wish weekly reports, I will make sure there is information available about weekly progress. If parents need to feel involved in their child’s education, I will provide opportunities for them to be plugged into classroom activities. If parents don’t have time to read lengthy reports and emails, I will make short videos that can be listened to. My goal for this year is to work at breaking old habits of one-size-fits-all approach to parent-teacher communication. How will you differentiate communication between school and home this year?

Complaining Is NOT Classy; Communicating Is

I’m excited to share some of the classy mini lessons that I have been giving my daughter on the way to school. Sometimes the lessons are prompted by behaviors. This one was not. In fact it seemed like it was better received, because I was not telling Scarlet that she did anything wrong. I was simply stating a fact: Complaining is NOT classy. There was no need for getting defensive. We had a lovely conversation about it.

If you have an issue or complaint that’s fine as long as you also have a practical solution(s). It is crucial to be part of the solution instead of becoming or exasperating the problem.

— Eric Sheninger (@E_Sheninger) January 19, 2019

An hour later, third graders began filing into my classroom. Some students didn’t like something that they read on the morning board. When I heard their groans, I got everyone’s attention. I told them about the lesson that I had just shared with Scarlet: It isn’t classy to complain. Rather than whining about having to take a quiz, you should communicate. Tell the teacher (me) that you understand that assessments are necessary, but you would rather experience dynamic lessons than complete a boring quiz. This will make the teacher (me) feel good about your appreciating his (my) hard work, and maybe he (I) will reconsider administering a quiz today. Whining just makes you sound lame.

When teaching Scarlet the lesson, I used her teacher, Mrs. Brans, and a writing lesson as a hypothetical situation. I told Scarlet that if Mrs. Brans had you writing all morning, and then announces after lunch that the class was going to do more writing, it would not be classy to complain, even if you are extremely unhappy about this prospect. It would behove you to communicate to Mrs. Brans that, although you really like writing, you practiced it all morning and are tired. Ask Mrs. Brans if there is any way you and the class could take a little break, before continuing with more writing.

I asked Scarlet if this sounded reasonable. Her face was bright all over. She seemed to get it. Complaining just adds to problems. Communication paves the way to problem-solving.

After lunch I was thrilled to have some of my students try this trick out on me. When I told them we were going to do centers, a girl raised her hand and began, “Mr. Weimann, we have done centers the past couple of days, and while we like them just fine, we are a little tired of them. Could we do something else instead?”

Students might be more likely to complain when they think that their communication wouldn’t be taken seriously. We need to make sure they feel like we are listening.

“No! Keep your comments to yourself and do what you’re told!” I like kidding with my students, and this was my way of saying, “Nice job remembering my little lesson from earlier.” I was really proud of her for doing exactly what I had taught. To reward this classy kid, I made a checklist on the board of things I wanted the students to complete in order of priority; No centers. This afforded me the opportunity to walk around and help students. Also, we began a new improved football pinata for our Reading Super Bowl celebration, next Friday. It was a fun-filled, project-finishing, complain-free afternoon… all because feelings were classily communicated.