This Edutopia article written by Beth Pandolpho offers some useful tips to manage your teaching in these difficult times.
Teachers everywhere seem to be working twice as hard and feeling perpetually overwhelmed and dissatisfied. Students are also feeling stressed out and disconnected—we’re all carrying an intense emotional workload. Although there’s much about the current situation that we can’t solve, teachers can work to mitigate some of this stress by prioritizing what’s most important—predictability, care, community, and learning.
These are a few strategies that I think can make the demands of this school year more sustainable over the long haul.
ESTABLISH A WEEKLY ROUTINE
Within the constraints of our hybrid and virtual schedules, work to create norms so students know precisely what is expected of them. Asking yourself these questions can help you think about how to organize your virtual space:
- Would a short (less than five minutes) weekly video summarizing the activities and projected learning outcomes for the week help both you and your students?
- Can you pre-record your mini-lessons so the synchronous time you spend with students is predominantly interactive?