Edutopia’s Thomas Arnett has published an article titled ‘3 Ideas to Help Teachers Thrive This Year’.
As a former middle school math teacher and now father of three young children, I know this has probably been the most challenging school year in history. The world is still far from getting back to normal.
In the second half of the pandemic school year, how should teachers move forward? Last fall, a national survey project collected data from K–12 teachers as well as school and district administrators to gauge what instruction looks like this year. Here are three tips drawn from survey-data insights that can help teachers to not just survive but hopefully thrive through the rest of this school year.
PUSHING PAST CONVENTIONAL APPROACHES
The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of educational technologies. But experience and know-how about using those technologies to their greatest advantage has not been so easy to transplant. Survey results revealed that 42 percent of teachers started the school year with a version of remote learning that resembled a conventional school day’s worth of synchronous instruction (i.e., teaching live from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. over Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams). Replicating a regular school day online, however, is not the best approach to online learning.