Tag: Teaching and Learning

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Teaching

Lotería: The Reimagining

Photo by J on Unsplash
Photo by J on Unsplash

By: James Campbell, South Carolina High School Spanish Teacher

Students were arriving to their first day of AP Spanish class, some timid and some visibly relieved to be in a familiar classroom. Many had taken a Spanish-for-heritage-learners’ course with me, most had experienced being in a Spanish class designed for students well below their proficiency level. We discussed their academic experiences a little to start the short semester. We all listened quietly while students took turns telling stories about how they were called “cheaters” for knowing Spanish already, how they had all been approached to “share” their work with other students, how other students were surprised that they could speak English, and how they were always tasked with the “Spanish part” of any collaborative project they were doing. After hearing them describe the antiquated academic requirements in a system not designed for them, I stared blankly over the silent classroom into the painting on the back wall. “We should go over the syllabus,” I thought. “We only have a few months before the exam and we have a lot to cover,” but I just couldn’t get myself to say it out loud. One student said, “Well, those students aren’t going to get college credit for knowing Spanish,” keenly aware of the irony. “When are we going to play Lotería?” we heard from a quiet student in the center of the room. The room exploded with excitement.

The Original Game

Lotería is a bingo-like game with images that represent different elements of traditional Mexican culture, though the game is not only played in Mexico. I am not Mexican or Hispanic but I love seeing the nostalgic mood rush over many of my Spanish-speaking students who almost hum hearing the short verses on the back of each card, who argue over how to play according to their family’s reglas, and who have memorized an entire tabla (a 4 x 4 grid on which the game is played). It is a great listening game with the entire room silent until someone calls out “¡Lotería!” with a full tabla. It is an authentic game that everyone can play. It does, however, have some problematic elements. 

Photo by Kamila Maciejewska on Unsplash

One day, after one of my Spanish 3 Honors students asked, “Are we going to play that racist bingo game again?” I thought more about the disclaimer I give about some of the images in the game. I never tried to explain them away but challenged them to research where they came from and how they ended up in the game. I discussed this some more with my AP students that next period, and it hit us almost simultaneously – we should update some of the images for our classes.

The New Game

So, we began our year-long journey to re-imagine a highly recognizable piece of Mexican culture. As with any project that begins as organically as this, their trajectory almost immediately began to shift from changing just a few of the images on the board to a weeks-long brainstorm on reimaging the entire gameboard to represent the diverse Hispanic experiences in the Upstate of South Carolina. The students drew from a seemingly endless mental library of personal and familial experiences to create a list of over 200 people, animals, places, foods, clothing items, and more. The students, from different parts of the Spanish-speaking world, began to see how similar some of their experiences were as Hispanic students and how unique they all were at the same time, not just the stereotypes others had for them or that they might have had of each other. After much discussion and debate, the students were able to reduce their ideas to the standard 54 images, which they divided amongst themselves. Each student produced a visual concept and a catchy phrase, poem, or quote for their peer-assigned tarjetas. 

Student sample.

They then presented them to the class, one-by-one, each fielding questions and feedback from their critical peers. The students took the feedback seriously, not personally. Our classroom artists decided on a cohesive theme for the boards. Our creative writers went to work rewording some of their classmates’ verses on the back of the cards. Other students spent time making sure not to repeat the reason they started this whole thing and took votes on replacing some that may unintentionally perpetuate unhealthy stereotypes of themselves. They spent the last 20-30 minutes of each 90-minute class in a buzz of “do this,” “don’t forget to mention that,” “should we add this?” and “who was in charge of these?” completely owning what would become a way to tell the story of their community. I, their teacher, had become a giddy observer, fully convinced that they could produce and distribute their version of this game to the community.

In what I can only describe as a completely serendipitous moment, I ran across a painting done by an artist in South Carolina that told the story of an immigrant girl in the format of a Lotería tabla. It was a moving piece with an even more incredible story behind it. I talked to the artist and set up a visit for later that month. In the meantime, I showed my students the painting, at which time they immediately wanted to drop everything and make their own. “Working together is just too exhausting,” one said. After a couple apologies and recommitments, everyone was back on board. A week later was our last day of the semester together due to COVID-19 (I just checked, and the Google Doc we were working on was last edited on March 13, 2020). The biggest and most exciting project that my students had ever come up with was over. Or so I thought.

After a few weeks of figuring out eLearning and doing what we could to prepare for who-knows-what the AP test would look like, we had our first virtual class meeting. After getting updates from everyone and going over their virtual assignments they all wanted to know what would become of their Lotería project. Not wanting to stress students out any more than I needed, I sadly told them I had no plans to continue it collaboratively but they were welcome to continue it on their own. “It’s just too hard to facilitate such a big project together right now,” I said. Then, without hesitation, a student suggested they all make their own board, “You know. Like that artist did”. 

The Final Product

Photo by Christy Ash on Unsplash

Over the last two months of the semester, as the students prepared for an abridged AP Spanish exam, they drew, took pictures, wrote reflections, and all designed a tabla that told the story of their own journey of how they got to where they are now. During this time, we hosted virtual visits with Hispanic community members, writers, artists, and teachers from across the Carolinas. The students’ voices grew more confident with each new guest and, since I got to hear them repeat their stories multiple times, I noticed them embracing images that told stories of deep, personal sorrow and joy. Their classmates noticed this too. One of my younger students, in tears, shared at the end of the course how glad he was to be a part of listening to his classmates’ stories even when he wasn’t as comfortable sharing his at first because he thought it wasn’t as cool as the others’. “No, no, no,” an older classmate chimed in, “we couldn’t have done it without you.”

I think about this project almost every day. Even though they all designed and presented individual products, there was a sense that this was a complete group effort, even in its final iteration. It makes me wonder how I could ever again do a project in my class where a student says (or even thinks!), “we couldn’t have done it without you” at the end of it to another student. But, I know that something like this will never happen again if I can’t learn to listen to and trust students. It won’t happen again if I don’t find space in my curriculum for students to find their voice. And, students will never have as big an impact on each other’s learning and emotional well-being as they did with their Lotería boards if they don’t feel safe enough to share their voice. They did this and proved this together and I couldn’t have done it without them.

About the Author

James is in his 14th year as a Spanish teacher and is the 2020-21 Teacher of the Year at Carolina High School.

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Teaching

Seeing Themselves in the Text: Exploring How Critical Literacy Aids in Student’s Examining Their Position in the Spaces They Occupy

By: Steven Jernigan, South Carolina English Language Arts Teacher

Photo by Nicholas Beel on Unsplash

In her 2021 inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb,” poet Amanda Gorman says, “We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black / girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can / dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.” The quote establishes Gorman’s position in the pageantry as the public figure representing art and youth and diversity, while also fully cementing that position in the context of the arduous journey it took to get there – her personal history and the country’s alike. There’s more in that poem – and moment – that is worth dissecting and poring over, but it is that line specifically – high visibility and positioning oneself within the narrative – that there lies a connection between culturally sustaining pedagogy and student’s emotional wellbeing. Author Jennifer Buehler (2019) writes, “We are always making sense of our own and others’ lives in terms of storylines that tell us what to expect in social situations” (pg. 12). Here, Gorman is providing the narrative and the storyline wherein Black children – Black girls specifically – can be seen and heard and admired. One must ask however, what happens if that narrative is not the dominating one in the classroom? It should lead to educators asking questions of their practice such as: What storylines and narratives are we presenting to our students? Furthermore, what are these stories conveying about a student’s own position in the classroom and the world around them? 

Narratives in the ELA Classroom

Photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash

During my time as an English teacher, these questions have served as the basis for most of the teaching decisions. The texts we choose to read in class, if not directly offering students the ability to see themselves in the classroom, are often centered around discourse and writing where students examine and analyze their position both in the classroom and broader society as a whole. Authors Baker-Bell, Butler, and Johnson (2017), in their article “The Pain and the Wounds: A Call for Critical Race English Education in the Wake of Racial Violence,” highlight how English teachers “invoke racial violence when we don’t cultivate critical media literacies that Black and Brown youth can use to critique, rewrite, and dismantle the damaging narratives that mainstream media has written about them” (pg. 124). While the call here is to provide students with the tools and knowledge for how to identify and rectify the power structures they are subjected to and perhaps even uphold, the consequence of not doing so should not go unnoticed – the continued upholding of a system that enacts violence on the bodies of Black and Brown youth. And while that consequence provides enough justification for critical examination in the classroom, it is worth noting that research (Andolina & Gonklin, 2019; Scriuba, 2014) suggests engaging students in such practices promotes the building of empathy, importance of community, and need for equity within our students. 

Creating a Culturally Sustaining ELA Environment

In specifically addressing these questions and concerns in my classroom this year, I and the other English 2 teachers have centered our world literature curriculum around the pairing of whole class text with student choice, YA novels. As a whole, our school has actively engaged in students doing some version of self selected, independent reading. At its best, this practice was used to dedicate one day a week to sustained reading with perhaps a whole class discussion follow up. At its worst however, it was used to fill time after quizzes and tests. While there is nothing inherently wrong with using time after assessment as an opportunity to get students to read, we felt that this year there was something more we could do. So, we went about finding YA books that fit with the more traditional texts that had been a part of the curriculum for years. In our reading of Shakespeare’s Othello for example, we are having students choose from a selection of works that sit systemic racism as a central conflict in their narratives. We are then setting aside one day a week to the readings of these choice texts. During these readings, we will also be breaking students up into groups where they will participate in conversations around text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world comparisons. In addition, the students will be maintaining blogs as a space to talk about their conversations and overall impressions from their study of the two works of literature. A project similar to this – students created text sets that related to central ideas of their two novels – was done with the reading of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart; those projects allowed for some excellent conversation around the ways in which societies – both our own and others – struggle with progress and tradition. 

Photo by Seven Shooter on Unsplash

Aside from fully revamping a course’s entire curriculum however, there are other ways to get storylines and narratives into the classroom that have students examine, critique, and see themselves in the world they occupy. In my English 3 American Literature course, this has been done by examining poetry like Amanda Gorman’s. In looking at poetry as both a form of argumentation and as emotional expression, students are reading Gorman’s and Angelou’s inaugural poems to see how poets – Black poets specifically – were using their craft to discuss and critique American society. The students are to not only examine the argument present in both these works, but to identify challenges and obstacles that are present in their own lives and communities that could be addressed with poetry too. While the dream would be to have a room full poet laureates that all have my class to thank as their genesis, the overall goal is for these students to see themselves as agents of change in their own world – to position themselves in places they are heard, seen, and appreciated. 

The specific practices offered here sit not as quick fixes to systemic, holistic problems, but rather as a push to get educators to acknowledge the narratives and stories elevated in their classroom. As noted in Kristina Montero’s book review of Paris and Alim’s Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World (2017), creating a more equitable world for our students means rooting out the white supremacist and colonial practices that have and continue to pervade our field. Doing so, requires self-examination and identification of our own role in the maintenance of a system that oppresses and silences. In other words, the work is inward as much as it is outward. As noted by Gorman however, “For there is always light / If only we are brave enough to see it / If only we are brave enough to be it.”

References: 

Andolina, M. W., & Conklin, H. G. (2020). Fostering Democratic and Social-Emotional Learning in Action Civics Programming: Factors That Shape Students’ Learning From Project Soapbox. American Educational Research Journal, 57(3), 1203–1240. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831219869599

Baker-Bell, A., Butler, T., Johnson, L. (2017). The Pain and the Wounds: A Call for Critical Race English Education in the Wake of Racial Violence. English Education, volume 49 (2), 115-129. Retrieved From https://library.ncte.org/journals/ee/issues/v49-2/28917. 

Buehler, Jennifer (2019). Positioning Theory: Exploring power, Social Location, and Moral Choices of the American Dream in American Street. In R. Ginsberg and W. J. Glenn (Eds.), Engaging with Multicultural YA Literacy in the Secondary Classroom (pp. 11-21). Taylor and Francis Group. 

Montero, M. (2019). Creating Cultural Sustenance in the Classroom: A Review of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(6), 698–701. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.956Sciurba, Katie (2014).

Texts as Mirrors, Texts as Windows: Black Adolescent Boys and the Complexities of Textual Relevance. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 58( 4), 308– 316. doi: 10.1002/jaal.358.

About the Author

Steven Jernigan has three years of teaching experience and is currently an English Language Arts teacher in Greenville, South Carolina and a Graduate Student in the Literacy Masters Program at Clemson University.

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Collaboration

Student Collaboration in the Virtual Classroom

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

By: Victoria Young, a South Carolina Teacher

When I began teaching virtually this school year, I was excited to utilize all of the technological resources and techniques I learned in university that I hadn’t had the chance to try out. However, as most teachers know, it is almost impossible to effectively teach content in a meaningful way to kids when they are unable to connect with the content and one another. In the virtual classroom, students are unable to simply turn to their neighbor and discuss a problem or quickly whisper questions and comments to one another in class. Sure, no teacher will deny the fact that the mute button is a game changer for classroom management, but they will agree that it does damage the classroom community. The social barrier created by virtual learning seemed to put the important skill of collaboration on hold for this generation of students. So how do we as teachers reignite this connectivity in the virtual classroom?

Tip #1: Build confidence with anonymity

Photo by Philippe Bourhis on Unsplash
Photo by Philippe Bourhis on Unsplash

For me, it was a long process filled with patience. The first day of school is always awkward; but with technical difficulties and lack of participation, the first day shyness lasted the first two weeks. The way I approached a lack of classroom engagement was by treating virtual classes like a shy kid. You know the one – shoulders hunched, little eye contact, and always chooses to do the group assignment alone without asking. With tools such as Nearpod, Polleverywhere, and Google Forms, I did activities in and out of class that allowed students to express themselves and their thoughts and opinions with anonymity. As a class, we would see how we all think alike or learn new perspectives. I would ask for opinions on silly things like what I should eat for lunch for kids who are more outgoing to speak up without pressure of being ‘wrong’. When the more outgoing kids started to lead the way with the easy interactions, I saw that even the quieter students begin to speak up in the chat or even unmute! Eventually, through these distant interactions, I noticed more and more students interacting in class in day to day conversations and in content related discussions. They began to gain confidence once they saw that they are safe to share their ideas.

Tip #2: Use mainstream tools to your advantage

Photo of social media phone apps.
Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Once we broke the 10 layers of ice, I began to do more collaboration boards and Flipgrids without anonymity in order to encourage more discussion in class. In my very social classes, I have even gone on to do partner projects through remote learning. Middle and high school students are on every type of social media; so many of my students chatted via Snapchat, Instagram, and even Discord. Other students with less access to social media simply communicated via email. All that to say, students are collaborating all the time, we just have to use their methods to our advantage! (If you can’t beat them, join them!) I was never given any issues with participation despite how different this form of collaboration is and how it appears more arduous than simply sitting next to a partner in class. It is as if the ability to collaborate without a teacher facilitating every step was freeing; therefore, I began to see their personalities shine through their work.

Tip #3: Find common ground

Of course, not every class can achieve the same level of collaboration in the virtual world. That doesn’t mean, however, that it can’t be achieved! One of my classes’ favorite activities is to play Among Us as review before an assessment. While talking about our weekend plans, I told my students I was going to play video games with some friends. This built a quick connection between me and my classes. Eureka! We finally had something in common besides being stuck in quarantine. On Gimkit.com, there is an activity that allows students to review material while playing in a similar format of the popular game Among Us. Students get very competitive and have to interrogate one another in order to win. There are also several other games that allow collaboration; but I always start with a solo game to help students get used to the mechanics. Nothing says virtual like video games and they are a great way to build community and collaborate in order to learn! 

No matter the grade level or content you teach, collaboration is achievable in your classroom whether you are in person or online (or both!) this school year. Remember that at the end of the day, the goal of collaboration is to build relationships and problem solving skills. If you notice that your student collaboration is lacking in the qualitative results you want in your content, try to treat it more as a social skill. If you nurture your classroom’s environment first with collaboration, the learning will come along with it. Find a common interest, talk to a child or teen about what they like to do in their free time, and use those things to your advantage! Take away the fear of failure and show that you are all just as human as each other and soon your students will see that learning can be found all around us, not just in a school or textbook. And isn’t that the most powerful lesson that we can teach?

About the Author

Victoria Young, B.A. Secondary Education/Social Studies, is a geography and world history teacher at Greenville Technical Charter High School in South Carolina.

Categories
Teaching

Truth Finding in Young Adult Literature

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

By: Kim Ferrari, South Carolina English Teacher

If you were to look through my high school yearbooks, you would quickly notice one thing. Almost everyone was white. I grew up in a very white community in one of the whitest states in America and could probably count on my fingers the number of Black people I knew. As far as I knew, racism didn’t exist any more. The Civil Rights Movement and desegregation brought an end to it and everyone was treated equally now.

I moved to South Carolina in 2014 and learned very quickly that everything I thought I knew about racism and civil rights was wrong. 

Photo by Arthur Edelman on Unsplash

I watched the news in shock, horror, and disgust as the truth became apparent: racism is very much alive today. This new reality became something that I had to grapple with. I realized that I needed to relearn my nation’s history. For the first time, I began to realize that what is written in our history books is not the absolute truth. There are many untold stories in our history, stories which paint a different picture. As an educator working at a school with predominantly students of color, I knew that I needed to do better and educate myself.

To better understand the new reality and the new culture that I was now surrounded by, I turned to books (as any English teacher would). One of the very first books I read on my journey of truth was The Port Chicago 50 by Steve Sheinkin. I found myself on the verge of tears throughout the book, unable to believe that humans could be so cruel to one another. But then I turned on the news and saw the same types of things happening 60 years later. 

Searching Inward

I continued reading books to help me process and understand what was happening around me, focusing on those books written by Black authors about Black youth. The first book that really made a difference was All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. One of the main characters, Rashad, a Black teen falsely accused of stealing a bag of chips from a convenience store, could have been one of my students. This was the first time that I saw not just a character in a book, but a student in my classroom. It caused me to question my personal biases. Did I treat my Black students differently? Was I unfair in my discipline? Did my students all feel valued and seen in my classroom? These were difficult questions to ask myself and I didn’t always like the answers I came up with, but I owed it to my students to ask myself them.

The more books I read by Black authors and about Black teens, the more I learned about the injustices they face. Each book with characters like my students helped me to realize that when one of them calls out “Yo, Miss,” before asking a question, they’re not being smart with me. When a student is more interested in the latest music release or shoe drop than my Shakespeare lesson, it doesn’t mean I’m a bad teacher. These are just some of the things that they grew up with as part of their culture. A culture that I never experienced, but a culture that I can learn about through books. 

Making Connections

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As police violence on Black people continues to happen, young adult novels like  The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Dear Martin by Nic Stone, Ghost by Jason Reynolds, Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes, and How it Went Down by Kikla Magoon have helped me to see perspectives that I hadn’t before. I saw these events through the eyes of my Black students and while I will never truly understand what it is like to be Black in America, these books offer me a window into their world. 

Most importantly, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi taught me everything I never learned in school about slavery, racism, and segregation. What I thought I knew was challenged and I grappled with these new truths. Months later, I’m still questioning much of what I thought I knew about our nation’s history. This new (to me) information has helped me look at current events in a different light and to see how everything that happens today is connected to an event or decision in history. 

While there have been many books published in the last few years that center on the injustices faced by Black people and while it is important for everyone to read these stories, there is also importance in reading and amplifying stories of Black joy. Instead of focusing on how Black people have suffered, stories of Black joy celebrate being Black, being human, and living life. Books like The Crossover, As Brave as You, My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, and Children of Blood and Bone are just a few of the amazing stories of Black joy published in the last few years. With each book that I’ve read, I’ve learned about the importance of music, how different hair styles represent a person’s identity, and how stories are passed down from generation to generation to continue the culture. 

Moving Forward

All of these books have helped me to become a better person, educator, friend, and ally. My journey has been difficult at times but it is far from over; I recognize that I still have so much more to learn. Young adult literature will continue to be a powerful resource for me, allowing me to connect with my Black students and to see just some of the ways in which racism still exists in our country. 

If you have never read a book that serves as a window into the life of a Black person in America, then I encourage you to read one. If you are White and have never read a book by a Black author, I challenge you to read one now.

About the Author

Kim Ferrari is an English Teacher at Manning High School in Manning, SC. She received her Bachelor of Science in Secondary English Education from the University of Maine at Farmington and is working on her Master’s in Literacy from Clemson University.

Categories
Collaboration

Who Needs a “Media Specialist” When Google’s Got It All?

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By: Betty (BT) Bouton, South Carolina Teacher-librarian

Right off the rip, I prefer the title teacher-librarian (TL). That’s what we are, and “media specialist” sounds inflatedly special. And as for whether TLs have anything to offer teachers in the world of unlimited access to almost everything, “Dang right, we do!”

Given the ongoing COVID-19 changes in instruction, I’ve divided my comments into two parts, like the vinyl 45 records that were THE medium in my youth.  

Side A (also known as the “Big Hit”): Dream Dream Dream

Side A is the big hit — what your teacher-librarian is itching to do to help embed literacy skills in your classes in the “normal” school environment. (Warning: focus on SS, science, ELA, arts, and exceptional children. Math, I need help.) TLs truly “dream” of ways we can help our colleagues plan, gather resources, teach, and evaluate, using our standards along with state curriculum standards.

Resources

Teachers need resources to deliver personalized and differentiated instruction, and Google supplies LOTS of results. Your TL is popping to be your teammate in selecting the BEST sites and sources. 

Photo by fabio on Unsplash

We will curate the open-source material; but even better, we can guide teachers and students to powerful information resources and student-friendly tools (leveled articles, translations, audio, built-in dictionaries, and citation creators) available in databases, which are not the natural go-to sources for students and many teachers. For example, Charleston County School District provides access to SC Discus and additional databases through MackinVia, and our Destiny library system allows for TLs to create resource collections (on any topic/standard) that include books, websites, and database articles — all available to teachers and students. Ask, and we will collaborate!

Collaboration

But even Side A has its challenges: teachers create and assign great projects, but then are disappointed with students’ underwhelming results. Again, TLs are classroom teachers’ backup when it comes to down-and-dirty teaching: collaborating in direct instruction to guide students as they form research questions, evaluate sources, process information, and synthesize their results. TLs can also help with innovative methods for students to “publish” their work. 

Photo by Nicolas Lobos on Unsplash

Some of my most productive teaching experiences recently have been in science classrooms, collaborating on DBQs. As a co-teacher in an eighth-grade science unit about travel to Mars, the classroom teacher was the “science,” and I was the “search, source, cite.” Together, we addressed the needs of a range of students: the high fliers, students with IEPs, students with English as their second language, and struggling learners. The science teacher and I together planned, delivered instruction, created the scoring rubric, and graded students’ work.

Technology

But there’s more! I’ve just begun using MakerSpace projects to support literacy, admittedly late realizing how powerful hands-on activities are in improving literacy and learning. This year I hosted Maker lunches for 6th graders, using simple, fun activities to complement content standards. In a session on electrical circuits, students watched a short BrainPop video twice: before and after I led them through directions for a pre-made activity (with their hands on the supplies and directions). Then we let it roll. The light bulbs went off literally, and also figuratively for several at-risk students: “Hey, this is what we’re doing in science!”

And the possibilities for Ozobots in HS history and MS SS, especially for interactive timelines! Here’s an elementary-level project provided by Ozobot – substitute your content and start dreaming of teaming with your TL.

Side B (also known as the “Flip Side”): Hang on Sloopy

Photo by Victrola Record Players on Unsplash

Well, this side of the vinyl is not yet a hit. The 12 weeks of “online learning” were a cipher and challenge to me as a TL. As I try to plan for the new school year, some days I can’t even get my Side B to spin on the turntable. That chipper “song” writer for Side A has been replaced by this less confident, but still hopeful TL.

On the plus, I did district-wide read-alouds of Some Kind of Courage by Dan Gemeinhart, my school’s guest author in 2019. Dan participated in one of the first sessions, trading time reading with me and talking about his next novel. But student engagement was low, as it was for most of our district-sponsored read-alouds for MS and HS.

On the minus, I struggled to find my traction for how to help content-area teachers. I created/updated a spreadsheet with online resources that supported the Quarter 4 standards for each subject/grade level; worked with some Related Arts teachers to set up Google classrooms (which they had not previously needed), and trouble-shot teachers’ and students’ technical issues. But I did not establish new and meaningful ways to support literacy. Shame on me.

Photo by Gabriel Barletta on Unsplash
Photo by Gabriel Barletta on Unsplash

But even during this summer limbo, TLs are spinning the turntable: sharing ideas about supporting literacy with new instructional models. As we teachers “hang on” to learn what instruction will look like, your school’s TL is ready to jump in to make the new model work for you and your students. With collaboration, Side B has the potential to be a chart-topping hit!

About the Author

BT has been teaching for 36 years, the last 12 as a teacher-librarian at Camp Road Middle School on James Island, SC.

Categories
Teaching

Breaking the Mold: Using Digital Literacy Outside the Traditional Classroom

By: Hannah Kottraba, SC Teacher

Dear reader, I ask you to consider these two questions: How can I create a digital classroom? And Why should I? 

Six months ago, technology was a component of my methodology, but not the primary platform for my instruction. That all changed when COVID-19 brought my in-residence teaching to an abrupt halt, and I decided to use Zoom as a digital classroom. The platform allowed my students and their families to present an artifactual literacy project we began before my school’s closure. Pivoting from the traditional classroom to online allowed my families to participate from any location, share a broader range of documents, and feel more at ease in a low-anxiety environment because they presented from home. By using a digital medium, families shared in powerful ways that would not have been possible had we remained in a traditional setting. If you seek to make your classroom more inclusive but have not found an appropriate way of doing so, you should consider the impact a digital platform can have on your students’ education.

On the Job and in the Classroom

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

In my ten years of teaching, I have experienced the struggle of working around schedules to invite relatives into the school. Getting time off from work can be challenging for parents- though they want to show up for their student, sometimes, it just is not possible. Using a digital classroom helped families bypass such hindrances for school participation. To join our class from any location, parents simply logged in using the access code I sent through our school email system. 

I recognized how impactful an online space is when a student’s mother joined us during her 15-minute break in a hospital room from where she worked. The student was at home with her grandparents, who also made an appearance on screen. It was moving to watch this mother share pictures and videos using her phone from a separate location than her child and parents. The reality that she could still participate in her daughter’s educational experience while never leaving her workplace made me realize that I need to use a digital platform when school resumes; doing so will provide more flexibility for my families. 

Artifacts Online 

Initially, I feared that the details and significance of my students’ artifacts would get lost through the screen. However, they far surpassed my expectations for presenting. They found new and inventive ways to share their research, interview transcripts, and artifacts. Some students transitioned their hard copy documents into Google Slides or PowerPoint presentations by scanning their records and creating PDF formats that they could insert into a more extensive online collection. Other students made a digital compilation of images and videos with the use of video editors and screen recorders. Because  students were at home, they could share an extensive range of objects that otherwise would have been impossible to bring to school, like the portrait of a student’s ancestor hanging in her living room. 

The emotional component of the artifacts and stories came through the screen and the wide use of technology astounded me. I was proud of how the students took ownership of their stories and challenged themselves by transitioning tangible objects to digital relics. 

Connecting in a Comfortable Space

Photo by Francesca Tosolini on Unsplash

Standing in front of a group of people is never easy; speaking about personal stories that bring forth emotions is even more difficult. My students’ literacy projects asked parents to do just that, be vulnerable, and share intimate details of their past. Had we remained in the traditional classroom, I doubt parents would have felt as comfortable to speak openly in a conversational manner about their lives. However, meeting online made parents feel more at ease during the presentations because they were at home in a familiar and safe space. 

The effect of speaking online led parents whom I had not met all year to participate with their child because of the convenience and low-anxiety environment. Two separate families talked about adoptions that were unknown to me before this project. One student shared about the loss of her dear mother, and another student spoke about leaving his native country to come to America. With families logging in from home, our conversations felt more like our class was sitting in a family’s living room, and they were telling us stories as if we were all old friends. 

A Missing Link

             To circle back to my original questions of how to create a digital classroom and why you should, I would recommend testing several digital platforms to see which one will work best for your needs. Zoom worked for my class while we were in this transitional period. The students had no issues with logging into the digital meeting and using the program’s screen-sharing and recording features. Creating a digital space was as easy as setting up an account and sending out a link with an embedded password through my school’s email system. Parents, who had never owned a computer, were able to access our classroom from their phones with ease. As to why you should invest in creating a digital platform, I hope that by sharing my students’ literacy project, you can see how impactful technology was for my families to be able to connect in meaningful ways outside of the traditional classroom. 

About the Author

Hannah Kottraba has ten years of teaching experience and recently graduated with a M.Ed. in Language and Literacy as a Literacy Coach from The University of South Carolina. She is creating a new literacy lab program for the 2020-2021 school year at Thomas Sumter Academy in Sumter, South Carolina.

Categories
Research

New Literacy Studies: For What It’s Worth…

Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash

By: Dr. Todd Lilly, University of South Carolina

(For what it’s worth, this blog is peppered with a few hyperlinks to entertain the reader and to illustrate New Literacy Studies… for what it’s worth. Enjoy!)

Here’s a scene you might recognize: Everyone is concerned about the mental health of the young prince. The father of his fiancé finds him alone in a room in the castle, absorbed in a book. “What do you read, my lord?” The prince stops reading, flips through his book as if to try to find an answer to this most-important question. Then, as if making an astonishing discovery, he answers: “Words. Words. Words!”

I know what you’re thinking: “I’m not an English teacher! What’s this got to do with me?” Well… In the context of New Literacy Studies…Plenty. For what it’s worth, there was certainly a whole lot more in the prince’s book than words, and that should interest all of us.

“private property” by Lost Albatross is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Our house backs up to a popular public recreation area, so our Home Owners’ Association (HOA) posted signs: “Private Property/ No Trespassing!”

Many third graders would have no trouble sounding out the words:

“Pr…Pr… Pr  as in Pretzel”

“Tr…Tr…Tr… as in Truck”

Hmmmm… I have no idea why the ‘ATE’ in “ PRIVATE” shouldn’t be pronounced like “8” or why the ‘ei’ in “eight” should. What exactly is a ‘ə’ anyway? “I’m not a reading teacher!” Anyway, that’s the gist of old literacy studies.            

So, maybe we secondary teachers don’t actually know all that much about Old Literacy Studies, but still, we get the idea: If kids know enough rules to sound out words, they can read just about anything we give them, whether it’s a social studies text book or Hamlet. It’s an autonomous design: Learn to decode and you have power. It’s that simple.

Well… actually, no, it’s not that simple. And neither are the literacy events and practices we expect students to engage in when they enter our classrooms. That’s where New Literacy Studies gets interesting.

About 30 years ago, just about the same time as “You’ve got mail!” several out-of-the-box smart people from a few English-speaking countries got together and kicked around the idea that literacy was more than decoding, semiotics, and semantics. In the mid-1990s they saw how the rise in popularity of digital technology had the potential to radically change the way people produced and consumed all kinds of texts. They got so excited about this “New” idea that they made plans to meet in a small New England town, New London, New Hampshire, just to talk about it. And they did. They came to be known as “The New London Group.” What was their conclusion?

This might be a good time to get up, stretch, visit the bathroom and/or the refrigerator, maybe do a little yoga… Ok, here goes:

They decided that literacy is a social event embedded in a complex web of power-laden social and technological contexts that all revolve around texts and language. (Yes, English teachers; that’s what Pygmalion, written a century ago was all about… “Duh!”). Another way of looking at it is that literacy exists by means of some technology (a book, a sign, a billboard…) in a social space between a producer and a consumer. It involves ways of speaking, thinking, acting, and believing, which would mean that one’s identity and membership in social groups can and does affect meaning. This mutation from literacy as merely decoding to literacy as a social practice was coined “the social turn.”

So there. Move over Gutenberg!

That’s pretty much what they could agree upon. I can imagine the discussion got a bit contentious when they started thinking about the definition of “text.” Is an embroidery of birds on a pillowcase a text? Seriously, that’s an important question in the context of multiliteracies, but we’ll save that for another blog.

For now, let’s consider the “No Trespassing” sign above as a text. It’s not a Falkner novel or a Shakespeare play, “but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.”

Someone created the sign, someone nailed it to a tree, and there are indeed people who have come along and read it. The sign successfully transfers an idea from the sign’s producer to the consumer: “Keep off OUR property!” The literacy event is accomplished. What more might these New Literacy folks say?

Well…plenty. They would point out that that the posting and reading of the sign was but an event, part of a larger practice that brought together myriad social and power connections. The sign was initially a reaction to a legal context. At our annual HOA meeting, our lawyer noted that if we hadn’t posted these signs, we would be liable for any damages incurred by anyone who stepped onto our property. (Don’t you just LOVE lawyers?)

There’s also, of course, a power dynamic. Who are these potential trespassers? We can only imagine them happening by and reading our message: We own something/ you don’t/ you can’t have it/ We deserve it/ You don’t. Nanananana…  “The sign said you got to have a membership card to get inside…Ugh!”

I’m sure y’all noticed the graffiti on the sign, probably a tag, a unique form of literacy that a certain group of people (in this case, graffiti writers) use to identify their work: Loosely translated, it says: “Hey, I’m somebody too!” And am I wrong to deduce a bit of anger and animosity?

If literacy, then, is all about contexts and social memberships, who gets to decide meaning? ELA teachers have heard this refrain before; it’s not new.

Student: “Mr. Lilly, I think Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ is about Santa Claus.”

I can’t remember my reply, but now in my current life, I call forth the literacy gurus:

Louise Rosenblatt would have said, “Ok, a reader has a right to make meaning out of otherwise meaningless symbols.”

E.D. Hirsch might exclain: “Hogwash! Go ask Frost!”

Michel Foucault would look up from his bath: “Go for it kid ‘cuz Robert Frost is dead!”

Here’s some song lyrics that were a bit more popular than Frost when I was a kid:

“Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re aways afraid. You step out of line, the man come and take you away.”

–Stephen Stills

In the words of the great Yogi Berra: “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” For you youngins (“Ok, Boomer…”), long before Post Malone, Lizzo, Chance, JayZ/ Beyoncé; long before Justin and Taylor, even before Back Street Boyz and still further back before AC/DC there was the Buffalo Springfield. Band member Stephen Stills, in 1967, during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights, immortalized these words in his “For What It’s Worth” which rocketed to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Ok, what’s it about? Vietnam Protests? The Generation Gap? Was it a precursor to NWA? “Words, words, words.”

Nope, it was about an event in which riot police confronted a large gathering of young people who came together to protest a curfew in Hollywood, California. But to hundreds of thousands, it represented a division in America, an anti-establishment movement that exists to this day. If you don’t recognize the lyrics, I’ll bet if you click on the above link, you’ll recognize the tune. And if so, is the tune an integral part of the text? (If you actually click on that link, you’ve officially become involved in New Literacy Studies!)

Ok, that’s cool, but here’s the kicker: What happens to a text when it becomes older than the generation for which it was written? In the 1990s, about the same time the New London Group met in New Hampshire, the Buffalo Springfield band members (minus Neil Young, of course) all in middle-age, allowed their song to be used in a Miller Beer commercial. What?! An anthem of protest converted into an anthem of capitalism?! “Something’s happenin’ here. What it is ain’t exactly clear…”

Well, actually, it is quite clear. The baton had been passed to a new generation. The context, the setting, the medium, the identities and power dynamics of the producers and consumers had changed from social injustice to quaffing a cold one. If you think about it, it’s much like what kids experience when they march from math to social studies to ELA and to lunch, all in the course of a typical morning. Everything changes. Students might read the same word in each class’ lesson, (“plot,” for example), but it will have a totally different meaning as the bell rings and students march from one class to another. The fact that they can pull this off day after day demonstrates remarkable sophistication. No science teacher is going to accept a lab report written as a rhetorical composition. As soon as students cross the threshold into the science room, they abandon the aesthetics of poetry that defined the day’s ELA class and magically conform to the inductive reasoning espoused by Francis Bacon, whoever he was.

Where old school technology goes to die-
Alex Watson, CC.org

Nothing is benign; a literacy event is always at the intersection of competing contexts (identities, histories, cultures, purposes, technologies) that can wax and wane over time. While in the course of a single day, we demand students think like a historian, think like an artist, think like an author, think like a scientist, think like a mathematician, think like a musician; all of which require a different literacy practice.

This past March, those kids were sequestered to rooms in their home “castles” somewhere in the village or in places even Verizon won’t go. And at the flip of a switch we were found alone at our laptop at our kitchen table desperately trying to replicate the old literacy practices of a face-to-face classroom and project it onto the new, unseen, unfamiliar contexts of the students’ existence. We tapped out words that were meant to convey the same curriculum and the same standards, but we all sensed the inevitable: “Something’s happening here/ What it is ain’t exactly clear.” More than a few of us have been confronted students’ equivalent of “No Trespassing/ Keep Out;” maybe not in so many words,

This could be a very long, very hot summer!

Robert Davy “Protest” Licensed through Creative Commons

“What a field-day for the heat. A thousand people in the street. Singing songs and carrying signs. Mostly say, “Hooray for our sign!’…You step out of line, the man come and take you away. It’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down…”

For what it’s worth, this New Literacy Studies stuff never gets old.

“It’s only words and words are all I have to take your heart away” –Shakespeare  (Just kidding; it was the Bee Gees, and if that makes a difference to you, welcome to New Literacy Studies!)

About the Author

Todd Lilly has been a teacher for over 40 years, the majority of which was invested in middle and high school ELA and theater classes in and around Rochester, NY. Over the past 10 years he has served on undergraduate and graduate faculties in Wisconsin and currently at the University of South Carolina. He earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include out-of-school literacy practices and the stories of marginalized, disenfranchised students. He is married to Dr. Catherine Compton-Lilly who holds the John C. Hungerpiller chair in the College of Education, University of South Carolina

Categories
Teaching

Finding Your Literacy Sweet Spot

Photo by Chris Chow on Unsplash

By: Salena Davis, South Carolina High School Social Studies Teacher

It’s spring, and I have to say that I’m missing the spring sounds of school—you know, prom chatter… concerts and plays…baseball…  Instead, I’m sitting at home in my “new normal” pjs with every commercial reminding me about these “times of uncertainty” while I try to figure out how they are going to put fewer kids on busses, how it will affect my class sizes and will the students be able to take off their masks, if they end up eating in my classroom?  Yes, I am way past sensory overload.

Photo by Patrick Amoy on Unsplash

It has, however, helped me appreciate how difficult e-learning has been for my students.  My daughter told me this week that she had over 1,300 school emails in her inbox—800 of them she never even opened. (We agreed that “delete” is an awesome button, and we could go look through the trash if there really was an email she desperately needed.) 

Even the youngest among us are not immune.  My elementary son brought me his school Chromebook this morning with at least ten tabs opened trying to figure out what was due today.  It’s Monday…10:00am.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t schedule our mental meltdowns until at least Tuesday afternoon this week.

Literacy during Covid-19

Many of our educational challenges have been logistic—do my students have a computer?  Internet access?  Printer?  This week’s packet?  If those were our only challenges, we would be doing pretty well.  Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.  I would argue that our most significant challenges have been directly tied to literacy. 

Literacy is more than defining terms and understanding of syntax. Literacy is first communication.  Communication is easier when we are with our students. They can decode our messages through our expressions, animation and feedback. Our proximity and interaction help keep their minds focused and in sync with the material.  With distance learning, they lose the audible, tangible, visual aspects of communication and have only the words to process—a skill which requires more mental focus and more self-discipline.

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Comprehension occurs in the quiet of the mind. Students flit from texts to Instagram to Snapchat to whatever else pops up on their screen. They need a teacher (or parent) to actively keep them focused in order to understand what they are learning, especially if it is a skill they don’t necessarily desire of their own accord.  It would be interesting—perhaps horrifying—to know when they last sat quietly and did one thing—whether that was playing an instrument or reading a book or painting a picture. 

What can we do to help students with these literacy challenges as they navigate their own trauma?

Now add a layer of COVID-crisis—with parents losing jobs, and social distancing, and caring for siblings, and worrying they may catch the virus…  No wonder they’re struggling.  They have lost their normalcy and much of their support network.  We need them to discipline their minds and create routines, yet many of them have never done so without the structures of school and don’t know where to start.

  1. Ask them how they are doing.  Many of them they need the encouragement of knowing that someone cares before they are willing to do the hard work.  (ex. https://bit.ly/2zemIjb )
  2. Give them options.  In a time when people lose control in some aspects of their lives, the ability to make a choice can help alleviate discomfort.  (ex. https://bit.ly/3cz2cYU )
  3. Limit communications.  This may seem counterintuitive, but remember those 1,300+ emails in my daughter’s inbox?  When people are feeling overwhelmed, less can be more.  Consider doing one post with all of the assignments.  The visual impact of having one new item in Google Classroom can be less discouraging than five new items for each class each week.
  4. Encourage students to make a hand-written checklist or calendar to organize their assignments.  Tabbing through multiple screens adds anxiety to students who are already feeling overwhelmed.
  5. Remember they may be facing more hardship with fewer coping mechanisms.  One of my students has not turned in any assignments, but she did fill out my “Checking In” Google Form. She told me she’s been a little busy—her grandmother, who was her only guardian, passed away. Maybe social studies isn’t going to be at the top of her list right now.

I believe this experience gives us the opportunity to reevaluate our goals for our students.  While we may be in a temporary period of coping with COVID, the lessons we are learning can help us re-commit to our literacy goals for our students.  When we go back this fall and get to hear those beautiful sounds of school again, let us continue to help our students learn how to find the sweet spot of their minds where they can focus, engage, learn, persevere and grow.

About the Author

Salena Davis has taught social studies and communication courses for 26 years on the elementary, middle, high, and post-secondary levels.  She holds three Masters degrees in Secondary Educational Leadership, Political Science with a Comparative Government emphasis, and Dramatic Productions.

Categories
Research

High Tech Means Missed Connections

By: Dr. W. Ian O’Byrne, College of Charleston

The world has not seen a school shutdown on this scale before. According to UNESCO, roughly nine out of ten schoolchildren are out of school worldwide. As many school districts shut their physical doors for months, or the remainder of the year, there is an understanding that these closures are a serious threat to children’s academic progress, safety and social lives. 

To alleviate these concerns, there is hope that shifting to online learning will provide opportunities to lessen these losses and support learners. The challenge is not all schools, educators, parents, or children are equipped to effectively learn in digital spaces. Many of these challenges disproportionately impact low-income students and those with special needs.

Research suggests that 4 in 10 U.S. teens say they haven’t attended a single online or virtual class since schools closed.

With many millions of Americans working or attending virtual school from home during the coronavirus pandemic, the longstanding gap between those who have reliable, affordable internet and those who do not has never been so clear. Much has been made about the efforts to make sure students have the devices and internet access they need for online education. Yet in actuality, signing up for free, or low cost internet service is difficult, leading to students sitting in school or library parking lots to connect online.

US Schools Deploy Wifi Buses Amid Virus Pandemic

The vast majority of households with children have broadband internet, but there are still big disparities by income, race and the education level of parents. Many families are likely to rely on smartphones for Internet access and children in those households may not be able to use learning software that requires a tablet or computer. It is not unusual for students to try to complete schoolwork on a single cellphone. Educators need to be careful about expectations that all students can go completely online. 

Digital Divide

There are many ways to define “digital divide” as it relates to technology usage and equality, and it also has very specific meanings in the United States, as opposed to the remainder of the planet. Digital divide refers to the growing gap between the rich and poor as it relates to Internet access. The rich and educated are still more likely than others to have good access to digital resources. When it comes to education, the digital divide has especially far-reaching consequences.

Many of the reasons for the gap in the digital divide focus on access, education, income, as well as a number of demographic and socio-economic characteristics. To address the challenges of a digital divide, it is often helpful to think about the connections involved as we connect to the Internet.

  • What kind of technology? To what does the subject connect: fixed or mobile, Internet or telephone, digital TV, broadband, etc. 
  • Who is the subject? Who is the subject that connects: individuals, organizations, enterprises, schools, hospitals, countries, etc. 
  • Which attributes matter? Which characteristics or attributes are distinguished to describe the divide: income, education, age, geographic location, motivation, reason not to use, etc.
  • How to connect? How sophisticated is the usage: mere access, retrieval, interactivity, intensive and extensive in usage, innovative contributions, etc.
How to Define the Digital Divide

Due to the growing amount of information on the Internet and people’s increasing dependence on information, internet skills should be considered a vital resource in contemporary society. Complicating these issues of connection, are the problems that educators, parents, and students have with moving learning environments to online spaces. Recreating a classroom online is a logistical challenge that comes with a learning curve for students, teachers and parents. For children in low-income school districts, inadequate access to technology can hinder them from learning the tech skills that are crucial to success in today’s economy. 

Rural Connections

Urban and rural areas in the U.S. feel the effects of the digital divide more than their suburban counterparts, with most of this stratification correlating with socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Overall, geographic disparity of income in the United States is best explained by first dividing the nation into regions and then further into urban and rural areas. This impacts youth as those raised in better socioeconomic conditions are more likely to have computers in their homes, attend better schools, and have more qualified teachers with better computer skills. The digital divide is exacerbated when America is split into areas of concentrated advantage juxtaposed with areas of concentrated disadvantage.

“Rural” is generally defined as a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Rural areas also contain many areas of inequalities of opportunity, including healthcare, education, and jobs. Examinations of these inequalities in the U.S., found the largest disparity in the South, and the least amount of inequality occurring in the West. 

Rural areas have an additional obstacle when it comes to digital access where high-speed internet can be sparse and expensive, or sometimes not even an option at all. In many rural areas, the only Internet options are near-obsolete DSL, satellite, or even dial-up. These internet access methods are often more costly, despite being less reliable and more easily affected by poor weather or infrastructure. 

Research suggests that even as technology becomes more ubiquitous, rural Americans remain less likely than urban and suburban Americans to have and use various digital technologies. This data suggests that rural users are less likely to have home broadband. Rural users increasingly use mobile devices, but rarely own a desktop or laptop, and even more infrequently own multiple devices. Lastly, this research suggests that rural Americans go online less frequently than their urban and suburban counterparts. 

https://medium.com/@pewresearch/digital-gap-between-rural-and-nonrural-america-persists-53bec5ebc6de

Maintaining Rural Connections

Much of the mythology of rural America emphasizes the challenges and hardships that exist, even as we recognize the lack of educational and economic opportunity for residents. As we increasingly move to a globally connected society, there is a need to consider whether we are unfairly hindering rural youth without providing them with the access, skills, and knowledge necessary to survive and compete in today’s economy. 

A review of digital learning strategies for rural America (PDF) suggests rural school districts face many challenges that are substantively different from urban and suburban districts. These include:

  1. Decline in enrollment,
  2. Lack of computer and Internet access,
  3. Lack of high quality professional learning,
  4. Shortage of teachers,
  5. Inequitable course access,
  6. Gap in college and career achievement,
  7. Increase in underserved populations, and
  8. Lack of funding and resources.

The report suggests digital learning initiatives, directed by the state, or local, district/school programs can help alleviate some of these challenges. Specifically, they give guidance on four broad categories of online and blended learning options that can help rural schools and students. These include state virtual schools providing supplemental online courses and other services, course access programs, fully online schools, and consortium or regional service agencies.

It should be noted that there is also a need for better access to broadband Internet in rural areas. Perhaps there is also a need for improved state and regional policies that can improve the lives of digitally literate rural youth. Despite these challenges and opportunities, many youth are currently being left behind as our schools move online. 

To address these concerns in real-time, educators need to once again remember that not all students may be able to access and connect to digital learning spaces. A certain amount of creativity is needed as you make these transitions. Before you worry about specific tools to use, or automatically jump to video conferencing because you think it is expected, Stephen Merrill suggests the following mindsets:

  • Expect trial..and plenty of error – There will be mistakes made. Make peace with it.
  • Acknowledge the extraordinary – Focus on enrichment and meaningful activities.
  • Reduce the workload (for yourself and your students) – Focus on “need to know” and not “nice to know” in your courses.
  • No person is an island – We’re all in this together. Keep in contact.
  • Everyone thinks they can’t, before they can – You know how to teach. You will figure this out in time.
  • Mind the gap – Your work will be hard, but there are students facing more severe challenges.

Stay Connected

As our schools, communities, and systems close down, we cannot assume that all learners will be able to engage and connect online. We need to be intentional in uses of technology, and push for more informed, thoughtful instructional uses of technology. We need to advocate for privacy, security, and more informed uses of our data in these spaces. There is a need to educate, empower, and advocate for ourselves and our students. 

Together we can use this as an opportunity to forge a future for all that is more accessible and approachable. I also examine these questions from a parental lens at the Screentime Research Group and on my blog. Lastly, my weekly newsletter provides a weekly glimpse of the changing landscape in a rapidly changing, technological society. Together we can use these experiences to identify the broken parts of our system and hopefully build new ones to support all learners. 

About the Author

W. Ian O’Byrne, PhD is an assistant professor of literacy education at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. His research focuses on the dispositions and literacy practices of individuals as they read, write, and communicate in online and/or hybrid spaces. O’Byrne is the author of many journal articles and book chapters focusing on initiatives ranging from online and hybrid coursework, integrating technology in the classroom, ePortfolio systems, and supporting marginalized students in literacy practices. Ian is a former middle school and high school English Language Arts teacher. He can be found on Twitter (@wiobyrne) and his work can be found on his website (https://wiobyrne.com/). His weekly newsletter (https://digitallyliterate.net/) focuses on the intersections between technology, education, and literacy.

Assistant Professor, Department of Teacher Education, College of Charleston

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