COCHRANE— Cochrane teachers are finding innovative and engaging ways to work with students throughout the move to online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
St. Timothy High School teacher Travis Cummings said he has “inverted” his classroom during the current stint of online learning.
Cummings has pre-recorded his lectures and makes the video files available to the students. The youth are free to watch the lecture when they see fit, or while they are doing their assigned homework. Cummings added he plans on preserving those video recordings for future use.
During the scheduled class time, he fields questions from the students, hosts discussions about the lectures and clarifies any areas of uncertainty.
“I’m not actually doing a lot of direct instruction in my classes, all of my teaching is virtual, like in virtual video format, and then they can come to class if they have questions, but they’ve already done the work,” he said. “When they should be doing homework they’re learning the lesson, and then when they’re in class they’re working on homework or asking questions, essentially.”
Cummings said students have been receptive to the new structure of the lessons, because the method is effective for him. The key to finding an effective way to teach online is by finding something that works for the instructors.
“Different teachers have different methods,” he said. “This works for me. I think what needs to happen is every teacher needs to figure out what works for them. If they find something that will work for them, or works within their skill set or parameters, then they will find something that works for the students. The students are receptive to what we’re doing here because it’s what works for me, and it’s the best way I can teach them.”
Cummings noted there is a general concern among teachers about the level of rigour that is involved with the learning process while online— As the students could be missing out on the development of necessary skills like resiliency through dealing with things like test anxiety and skill assessments.
“Because it’s not the same environment, you can’t necessarily have the same level of rigour,” he said. “The worry is that they’re losing vital skill sets and that they’re getting a watered-down education which isn’t setting them up for success in the future."
Those concerns have led teachers to conduct more assessments on the formative process of learning, rather than the summative nature of exams and standardized testing.
“That’s the biggest shortcoming of online learning. [There’s] kind of a refocus on ‘how do we teach kids about the process of learning itself?’ And that’s what I’ve found that’s been good with online learning, we’ve been able to open up some different opportunities with different projects we do and what types of things we’re going to assess instead of just testing all the time.”
Another teacher at St. Timothy has found creative ways to keep students engaged with classwork.
Art teacher Rich Theroux has taken to teaching his students with assistance from handmade puppets in an effort to keep classes fun and creative.
Theroux said the reactions to the puppets have been mixed, but overall positive.
"The key isn’t about entertaining them with puppets," he said with a chuckle. "The key is keeping myself engaged when I’m talking to a box.”
Theroux said he feels like the perception is that teachers are trying to find ways to cater to the students’ interest to keep them engaged, but the real trick is finding ways for him to be engaged while teaching online.
“You go through a list on unbearables,” he said with a laugh. “You start out with ‘this is going to kill me, this will make it unlivable,’ and the next thing you know you’ve got a puppet in your hand and you’re talking to a TV.”
Theroux gives his students an option to turn their cameras off after the lesson, draw on their own, and return at the end of class to show their work.
Katherine Marshall teaches Grade 7 French immersion at schools across the Rocky View Schools system, in Airdrie, Cochrane, and Chestermere. She began teaching online in September at the onset of the school year.
Marshall took the position online for several reasons. She has immuno-compromised family members, but she was also attracted to the consistency an online classroom would offer this year.
Classes across the province this year have been regularly interrupted due to students and teachers having to isolate. In an online environment those interruptions aren’t as impactful, she said, because there’s no transitionary period if she or one of her students is exposed to COVID-19.
Marshall said she discussed class structures with the kids, who indicated to her that they wanted a fun learning environment, which is why she incorporated things like costumes and games into her digital classroom.
“I try to lead by example, and I try to encourage them that by thinking or being out of the box, people usually respond very positively to that. I’m hoping that will be their takeaway, and that might encourage them to do it in the future,” she said.
Marshall has also hosted a virtual owl pellet dissection, where students followed along at home, deconstructing their very own pellet, and sharing their findings with the class.
To facilitate the project Marshall mailed all 24 of her students pellets.
Students from all four schools that Marshall teaches at are able to attend the online classes simultaneously, which makes organizing projects like this quite complicated.
“It takes an incredible amount of organizing to distribute, first of all, materials, because there’s a cost. You have to go to each school and get approval for the cost per student. It’s taken a lot of background organizing to make this program as successful as it has been so far,” she said.
Having students learn from home has had some unexpected benefits, Marshall added, as many parents have formed deeper connections with their kids.
“Normally their children are gone for seven hours a day, and now many of these parents are seeing their children as students and learning a lot about them and working with their kids,” she said. “I think it’s bringing families closer together, for the most part. There are some that it is very difficult for, but overall, I’ve had really great feedback from parents.”
Springbank parent Joule Bergerson whos children are in Grades 5 and 7 said the experience of online learning has been largely positive— Although, the transition has not been without its challenges.
Bergerson’s oldest, Liam, has been attending classes at home since the restrictions were put in place.
Liam is a very social child, she said, who misses his classmates as the online spaces do not fulfil that social need the same way.
“Their whole world has sort of gotten very small, and the amount of interactions has reduced a lot,” she said.
When plans for the school year were being laid out by the province’s health and education officials, Bergerson and her family were discussing whether or not to put their kids back in the classroom.
She said Liam was fairly insistent on being back in school among his friends.
“He was absolutely adamant that he needed to be in the classroom. He was going to junior high for the first time, he was so excited to be going to school with the bigger kids and that sort of thing,” she said. “It was really important for him to be in school and he loves it.
She noted Liam is disappointed that he cannot attend school in person and is “counting down the seconds” until his normal life can resume.
Overall, Bergerson said she’s been impressed by what the school system has been able to do for students and families, given the challenging circumstances they face.
While she is concerned for the wellbeing of her children, Bergerson noted her thoughts have also been with teachers during the pandemic.
“I do really feel for the teachers though, in terms of their stress levels. They’re really trying hard to give the students as much of a regular experience as possible in the guidelines, and that takes a lot of work,” she said.
Students are scheduled to return to in-person learning across the province on Jan. 13.
