On The Other Side

Two weeks ago, we had a positive case on campus. And, I was exposed.

Good news—The student and her family are doing well. Everyone who was exposed, including me, tested negative and did not show any symptoms.

But, the students in that class, their teacher, a few enrichment teachers, and myself went fully remote for two weeks.

While I transitioned to supporting the class that had to go remote in the ways we were accustomed to from the spring, I was still responsible for serving five other classrooms while they were still on campus and I was stuck at home.

And being on the other side is tough. We tried a lot of different things. I joined those classrooms remotely—while they were still on campus. The teacher projected me on the big screen and set up a camera where I attempted to teach hybrid classes where there were some kids on campus and some online.

Imagine it like this. You teach a multi-age class with some students face-to-face and some online. You are currently juggling all the tech and pedagogical pieces that need to be managed for that. Then the math specialist (me) who teaches math in your classroom twice a week now needs to join virtually. It’s simply just one more thing to manage.

We’ve gotten pretty good at teaching in a hybrid space when the teacher is in the classroom. But now, I’m on the other side. And it was a mess. It was really difficult to read the room. There was no option to see student work or student thinking and decide who could share their work. There was no option to read their body language with one camera on the whole class running on google meet (which has terrible video as it is). Quite frankly it didn’t work.

But, one of our middle school students had an idea. Everyone logs into the google meet room with headphones on whether they are in the classroom or at home. Then, we run the class as if it were fully online.

And it worked beautifully! The biggest issue was that for the face-to-face students, they had to make sure they only unmuted one microphone at a time to avoid the dreaded feedback loop. But, it was way easier to read the room and have students share their thinking.

Here’s are the lessons for me:

• If you’re not physically in the room, it’s my experience that a fully online class is better than being a floating head on a screen. And you can accomplish that pretty simply even with some online and some face-to-face.

• If you want to know what’s working with your remote or hybrid classroom, ask a user. If you want ideas for how to troubleshoot issues or make things better, ask a user. And, trust them. Trust kids.