This summer,
I taught Honors Biology B. I  taught a
five-week virtual summer school online
health class. I
taught the Pre-Calculus Summer Boost
Program, and it went really, really well.
Learning online it's really just like
being in the classroom.
I tried to just emulate what I do every
day in the classroom,
and just pretend that there's a
partition in front of me.
I think it's very important to establish
a positive environment from the
beginning and to you have to work
really really hard to establish those
personal connections
that are so important in the regular
classroom, the traditional classroom,
but virtually - -  it's it is probably the
most important thing.
I made sure that I was
in constant communication with my
students via emails;
not just as a group, but also as
individuals. I found that that helped
me build a relationship with my students,
as well as
encourage them to believe that they can
do it. I let my students know that
I love the,  I care about them and I'm there for them. That's why I'm
here.
Those follow-up personal emails and
you know you start to learn who kind of
needs that extra push a little bit.
That has been, I feel, the most successful.
Last school year, we were all kind of in
survival mode. We were just trying to get
our kids and do the best we could
and get through the school year. I feel
that this year is going to be completely
different.
The one-on-one interaction, the live
interaction
creates a completely different
atmosphere.
It's so much more positive. It involves
so much more community,
and the students themselves have said
they got
so much more out of it than they ever
did
simply watching videos. I use the chat
feature a lot
because that was a way that everybody
could be engaged. I had a lot of check-in
questions that were either how do you
feel about what you just saw or,  you know, talk about this just to
make sure that one that they were there - - 
that was a big one.  And two, to make
sure that you know that they were
getting what the concept was. When you
teach
live, what i did was i kept our
chat box open.
If they had a question, they would type
it into the
chat box - -  so I would get them as I was
going over
the exact same way it would be if a
student raised their hand in class.
So I also chose not to say
who asked the question, and I noticed in
my survey
that a lot of kids were happy about that.
The feedback that they gave me
was when lessons were interactive, when
there was something that they were doing
that that was really beneficial or if I decided to share a video with them
that it was something that was really
meaningful and that they could interact with
afterwards, they really enjoyed that kind
of stuff.
Make the students realize we're all part
of a team we're all in this together,
and we're going to get through all this
together.
