The last few years have really been an education for educators. Wherever our tech skills were in 2020, we faced challenges that drove us to do more- learn more, create more, improvise more. The good news is that we learned a lot and now have that giant toolbox of tech tools. So, let’s take a moment to share and broaden our knowledge even more.

We asked our bloggers the following questions: What is your favorite technological upgrade in your teaching practice? Is there anything that you discovered during remote learning that you integrated into face-to-face instruction? What gadgets, apps, or programs can you recommend?

Emma-Kate Schaake

I will say, adapting to Google Classroom has been incredibly convenient. I love the idea of helping students navigate their own time management with the clarity of when assignments are due and how to access materials. I also don’t  miss the piles of papers and trying to assess what a student might have missed when they’ve been absent. 

While all online, I adapted our grammar instruction to NoRedInk and students have found it to be the most painless way to practice grammar. Plus, I love it because it adapts to their mistakes, making learning more authentic than the static worksheets we’ve used in the past. 

In the library, I have been working on upgrading our catalog to a more student friendly view in Destiny Discover, and students seem really eager to be able to search for their books with that platform. I can create curated collections and students can search for books related to titles they like or on topics of interest. 

Jan Kragen

We made the shift from all Microsoft to all Google this year. I love using Google Classroom! I add assignments and the instructions stay up until all the assignments are turned in. I grade written work with multiple individual comments. I can send a message to all my kids or an email to all my parents. Parents can see everything all the time, and they can see their kid’s grades as they happen.

Jamboard is lots of fun for kids to add their comments to a discussion. Like anything else, you have to teach some tech etiquette first, but once you get going, it gives everyone a chance to all “talk” at once.

Gretchen Cruden

This year we began using Promethean Boards in our classroom. We did not have time for professional development on how to use them as they were installed over a break upon a bit of a surprise arrival date. When we got into class and saw our new boards, I was at first worried about how it would work…so I turned a few of my students loose on it to figure it out and within a few minutes they had everyone interacting and using the board. The experience reminded me of the India Hole in the Wall experiment. Overall, and would say it is easy technology and is much like a iPad-love it!

Lynne Olmos

Like Jan and Emma-Kate, I have adapted to using Google Classroom, and I really appreciate the versatility of it. I especially like it now that I am often reusing and adapting assignments I created last year or the year before! 

Beyond that, I also depended on Padlet during our remote learning times to collect and display student work. Now that we are back in person, I still find it to be very handy for collecting projects to publish and share. I even created ways to use it for test prep and fun interactive activities. 

This year I received a new ViewBoard. It’s one of those smart TVs that behaves like a giant tablet. I can project my screen onto it, use it as an interactive whiteboard, or just go straight onto the internet to show videos or access resources with students. It is a fun new toy that has been useful, replacing my broken projector, my old TV, and sometimes my whiteboard.

Now it’s your turn. Tell us what you are using that makes teaching more engaging and effective. What resources did you discover during the recent changes in education?

A recent Professional Development training had to do with Multi-Disciplinary Support Services (MTSS). The goal was to adjust and strengthen our current MTSS systems to create equitable opportunity and access to instruction/supports for all students. It made me think of the most common group of twice-exceptional students that I teach: students identified as Highly Capable who are also identified as ADHD.

Obviously, I work with all my students on behavioral skills and organizational skills. But there are certain things I do that are specifically geared toward helping my ADHD students.

FIRST

Because ADHD is so common with my Highly Capable (HC) clientele, I set up my classroom each year specifically to address their needs. I learned 40 years ago that the bulletin boards are the most distracting things for that population in the classroom. The least distracting is the view out the window. Therefore, as much as possible, I put the bulletin boards directly behind the desks so the students have to turn around to look at them. The walls on the sides are as clean and clutter-free as I can make them.

Then I orient all the student desks to face the windows.

One of my principals came into my room in August the first year I was in his building.  He saw the way I had set things up and asked, “Why are all your desks facing the window?”

I said, “If you were sitting in these chairs for hours every day, what would you rather be looking at—the window or the whiteboard?”

He agreed the window was more appealing. “But how do they see the board?” he asked, gesturing to the right.

“They turn to look at it.”

He was still confused. “But where is the front of the room?”

I walked around the room a bit, his head swiveling to look at me, and replied, “Wherever I am!”

SECOND

I give my students something to do with their hands. Fidget spinners were wildly popular for a while, but I found them intensely distracting. I went to a conference and got a different idea. Before Covid-19, the bottom of each desk in my room had a square of soft, furry cloth taped to it. I didn’t announce that fact. The kids discovered it and told each other. I never noticed them using it. In fact, I thought the strategy was a dud, that no one was using it. Then one day I asked, “Does anyone ever use the cloth on the bottom of the desk to help calm down?”

Every single hand went up.

Post-Covid, I had to remove the cloths from the desks. My next idea was to wind really furry pipe cleaners around a desk strut—something personal that kids could remove and take home with them when we moved desks.

This fall, all of our students had the opportunity to take perception surveys in their homeroom through a program called Panorama. The results gave us invaluable data that our leadership teams have been digging into for months.

The biggest take away has been, perhaps unsurprisingly, that we need more student voice in our equity and leadership work. As I wrote last year, students joining our staff equity team was a powerful experience and we’ve seen student leadership continue to grow from that first meeting.

This fall, we hosted a Student Equity Summit with speaker, author, educator, and consultant Erin Jones at the A.S.H.H.O cultural center in Tumwater. Eating food together, being in community, and learning from each other outside of school in a nonwhite space was eye opening for students and adults.

The last thing we wanted to do was lose the momentum of that day, so we hosted a second summit in February where we gave students a chance to dig into the Panorama data and have conversations about their experiences at school. 

We asked students from the Social Equity Club, which I advise, to plan the event and they chose the data they thought were the most interesting and gave input on our student edition of Speak up at School training. They were just as excited as we were to launch and to hear from their fellow students.

The morning of, donuts at the ready, we gave students the results and asked them: What do you notice about this data? Why do you think this is occurring on campus? Does this match your experience? 

Right away, their answers were insightful. 

The first question “How fairly do students at your school treat people from different races, ethnicities, or cultures?” had results that were 66% favorable and students were quick to dissect those numbers. Many wanted to disaggregate the results because as students of color, they definitely felt they didn’t fall into the 66%.

Next, we looked at the question “How often do students at your school have important conversations about race, even when they might be uncomfortable?” which was only 42% favorable. The overwhelming consensus was that students and educators alike are afraid to have these tough conversations. All teachers across the district have been trained with Speak up at School, but these students told us they haven’t seen a change. 

“People think their comfort is more important than someone’s safety,” one student wrote. “If you never talk about it or be in that uncomfortable place, you’re never going to grow or get out of your bubble.” 

Our third question had abysmally low results; only 23% favorable. “How connected do you feel to the adults at your school?” Students were clear that it’s obvious when a teacher really cares, (“when they have your heart” as one student put it) but many feel they don’t think teachers understand their experience outside the classroom, especially around issues of race or their cultural experience. 

We left the summit with piles of sticky notes, key insights, and a whole new set of questions like puzzles to solve. 

Before the summit, we adults had parsed through the data, but the morning clearly showed us that without student input, we’re probably missing the forest for the trees. Using the last question as an example, we’re now asking ourselves: What does it actually mean for students to feel connected to the adults in the building? How would they define connectedness? And, perhaps most importantly, is that even what they want? 

No one knows the student experience better than our students and while we want to solve problems for them, it’s key that we remember, they are our best problem solvers. 

On the heels of this event, the Social Equity Club is planning what they want to do next (board meetings and summit 3.0 here we come!) and they’ve been clear about the nonnegotiable changes they want to help enact. If we adults continue to ask students to show up, be vulnerable, share their experiences, and contribute their ideas, we’d better be prepared to listen, learn, and make real change.

In December, I taught my students about the Great Depression. Factories and stores couldn’t sell their goods, so they paid their workers less. The workers then bought fewer things, so the factories and stores sold less, leading them to pay their workers even less.

Banks failed. People lost their savings.

Clothes wore out and were patched.  There was no money to buy new.  People moved to cheaper houses and then to cheaper dwellings that didn’t qualify as houses.  They bought cheaper food and then less food.  Finally, they weren’t able to buy enough food to keep up their strength.

At that point in the lesson, one of my students Aleesha raised her hand. She said, “Mrs. Kragen, I would rather live through five years of a pandemic than live through the Great Depression.”

Teaching history provides perspective.