To say this year (2020) has been a roller coaster is an absolute understatement. Every moment, it seems like something has changed, something has been altered, something has been thrown at us some type of curveball that we had no idea was even coming in the first place.
It's been really hard to be a human right now, let alone to be a teacher. I feel like we've gone through such a roller coaster of respect and disrespect in the field. We've been trying so hard to find ways to strike balance to do our jobs and to teach our kids all the things that we normally do. But now we're wearing masks, or maybe now we're doing it through a screen. In March when the school shutdowns first started, we created our Facebook group, and we were trying to help one another in there and just figure out how to manage this. While we've found a lot of ways to manage it, we're still trying to figure things out at the same time. One of the issues that have come to the surface and it happened in the spring, it's happening in the fall, even as some schools are going back to school full time, it's still an issue is the idea of classroom engagement.
When you're all digital, the concern is are the kids even there? Are they logging in? Are they doing the assignments? What's going on with them at home? When they're in school? Maybe it's hybrid, so they're only there for a short period of time you want to get the best bang for your buck...but maybe they're not interested or when they are home and they're doing online work? Are they really doing it the way that you envision it? If they're in the classroom? Are they distracted because they have to wear masks or they have some type of shield between them and their friend and they can't be within three or six feet of one another and they can't walk down the hall or use the water fountains?
There's just so much going on right now.
I really felt that in this first episode, I should hone in on the stuff that I have been saying about classroom engagement. There are ways to certainly focus on this. If you know me at this point, you know that I say everything to be successful just takes a mindset shift, and then putting it into practice. This first podcast is the audio from our Hacking Student Engagement webinar. The teachers who have listened to this advice are finding themselves much less stressed and their students much more engaged. I hope you find the same.
Episode transcript: For the full transcript of this episode, please visit https://www.studentcenteredworld.com/student-engagement-workshop/
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