When school comes back into session in a few weeks, there are going to be plenty of classrooms that completely virtual.
With measures in place to prevent disease spread, teachers need to be able to successfully run online lessons.
If you’re a school administrator, these are ways you can assist your teachers with online teaching.
Better Internet Connections
In many cases, a quality internet connection is not a luxury but a necessity. Inequality with internet connections means that two students could go to the same school and one is at a severe disadvantage.
Providing strong internet access to all students may not be possible, but see if you can for your students. Look for the best internet options in the area and help your teachers to get set up with them.
You might also ask your teachers to test their connection speeds and share the results with you. There are simple and free sites out there to do this, and you can easily find rubrics about what qualifies as "high-speed." Should any teachers have connections that seriously lag behind, you can do your part by helping to boost their speed.
Empathy Training
Empathy is something that teachers should have no matter what, but the isolation of current circumstances makes it especially important. Many strong emotions can be brought to the classroom, especially in times like these.
While they’ll likely want to help as many of their students as they can, the current situation can make things especially tough.
Empathy training for teachers online can be a great help. These programs train teachers is understanding how to show support for their students during all times, even difficult ones.
It’s important to recognize the validity of emotions, but not to let negative emotions make the learning experience difficult for anyone.
Checking Programs
Whatever programs are being used for virtual teaching need to be properly tested. These need to be able to perform all the necessary tasks in order for teachers to be able to run their classrooms.
Before it’s time for classes to recommence, hold seminars with your teachers so they’re able to grasp these programs and any issues can be realized and resolved early. You should also make sure all teachers have a proper understanding of the program before its time to teach.
If numerous staff members are having issues or the program is proving to be quite ineffective, it might become necessary to choose a different route in terms of software.
Have Tech Support Available
Once it’s been established that programs are running properly and will serve teachers and their students, there still needs to be support in place. The information technology department at your school should be trained on these programs, and the programs should also have easily reachable helplines.
In case of widespread issues, you need to have backup plans available so that lessons can continue, even if sacrifices have to made. Pay attention to what issues are arising the most and determine if the teacher needs additional training or if it’s a programming flaw. You don’t want either to be holding back any opportunities for students to learn under these difficult conditions.
Don’t try to micromanage your teachers, especially not with their lesson plans. However, it’s still good to provide them with guidelines of what sort of lessons they may want to avoid, due to the lack of practicality.
other valuable tips:
Effective Teaching: Top Tips That Work
Want A Career In Teaching? Seven Tips To Become A Successful Teacher
Some of these could be lessons with video or other multimedia components, as the range in internet quality for different students may make things difficult. Before the new school year starts, ask your teachers to show you their lesson plans individually. Tell them these need to be tailored for the new school year.
If there’s anything that seems like it might not fit, politely ask your teachers how they plan on implementing it. They may realize then that they need to make some changes to their lesson plans. As long as you’re not necessarily stifling your teachers or their students, you can know that you’re intervening under the right circumstances.
As frustrating as it may be to have to rely on online teaching, the fact that such an option is available is worth embracing. Teachers already dedicate so much time to creating lesson plans and classrooms. They deserve to be given as much help as possible with online teaching.
Image Credit: prepare for online teaching by envato.com
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