“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent
who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson,
Professor of Management and Marketing at Louisiana State University at Baton
Rouge
With such a broad horizon and
seemingly limitless possibilities it is important to establish your
non-negotiables in the classroom. For me, this means making my expectations
around organisation of work and also my availability very clear from the
out-set.
Naming work and
taking responsibility for backing work up
I have never named students work.
If a student hands me a piece of paper with an amazing essay on it and no name,
it will not get marked. I also place the responsibility for naming work squarely
on the students' shoulders. The same goes for 'backing up' your work. Students
in my classes are frequently reminded not to hand me a piece of hand-written
work if they don't want it to get lost. I am organised and I have my systems
but there are days when my desk will end up looking like a pigsty and, shock
horror, I have lost work.
And this philosophy is still in
practice in my classroom. If students share their work with me through Google
Drive I expect them to do the following:
- Select the correct folder so I actually see it when I'm marking work
- Name it as follows: Hamilton, Polly: The Hunger Games Essay or Hamilton, Polly: Research notes
- Take responsibility for creating a back up at regular intervals
With Year 9s you should probably
back up work to your laptop every so often (just don’t tell them about it!)
until they are used to this process.
Establishing boundaries and how to maintain them
Student-student
interaction
I am fairly ruthless about
maintaining a professional environment on our Edmodo page: if the comment or
question isn't about our learning in English, I press delete. It doesn't matter
where you draw the line, as long as you maintain it. You may not think this
matters very much, but I have found that deleting the 'lols' and 'rude!'
comments mean there is no slippery slope into disrespectful or inappropriate
comments.
Parent-student-teacher interaction
Because I established clear
expectations with my students, I was able to deal with the one occasion I have
had a student over-step the mark (and then parent...) quite painlessly.
The parent 'element' is an important one to consider. When interacting with
your students on Edmodo their parents are able to see all of the comments you
write. This is further incentive to keep the conversation focused and
appropriate. You are modelling positive digital citizenry to students and parents.
Student-teacher interaction
Further to this, it is important
to remember that you can just ignore messages from students that are
inappropriate or inconvenient. Creating an online learning environment does
lend itself to students blurring the lines and suddenly they will message you with
inane questions through whatever mode of communication is most handy. I have a
'teacher' Facebook profile that I use very occasionally and students do use it
to try and ask me about school work. I just don't respond. Edmodo, email and
Google Drive/Docs are the way that I will interact with my students online and
they do not get to dictate the terms of our interactions. Prepare yourselves
for the following 'questions':
- i dont get it
- can u tel me wat to do next?
- I'm stuck!
When they sit down and type to
you, they are forgetting that what they are typing has no context and makes no
sense. They are used to sitting with you one-on-one and often having the
question teased out of them. What might take one minute of concentrated 'teasing'
time in the classroom could be an exchange that takes place over 48 hours
online - who has the patience for that! So you may want to consider teaching
your students how to formulate effective questions.
Well, what is the point of all of
this? As the title suggests, you need to avoid spreading yourself too thin. It
can be tempting to just take five minutes and re-name their documents so
they're organised, or just reply to that student's question on Facebook, or
just check to see if Johnny has uploaded his document before you go to bed.
Just because you can be available 24/7 doesn't mean you should.
Our role is not to baby students
through this process at the expense of our own sanity, but to manage the change
in order to maximise its benefit for all involved.
Pursue excellence – should you stumble, let it be to a lofty mountain
No comments:
Post a Comment