As a student of education, I have learned to engage students, to give them choices, breaks, goals, and differentiation. But what happens when the typical signals of student engagement disappear? When an eager expression and a hand raised so high it seems to be trying to touch space become a static icon? How do you gauge students’ level of enthusiasm and understanding? You do what teachers do best--adapt.
The Many Faces of Student Engagement
Online tools can convey our thoughts and emotions with frequent success. Through Zoom, we can still give thumbs up to show approval and celebrate well-given oratories with a clap. Students can color their thoughts in the chat feature with capitalization and exclamation points. Context will, of course, help you determine whether a statement is meant to express excitement, anger, fear, etc. A joke or well-wish received in the private chat can convey comfort much like the physical cues we are used to--posture and facial expressions. However, if students solely use the chat feature, this may be a sign that they are uncomfortable and need reassurance. All these cues are likely things we have picked up on intuitively as educators who crave feedback from students. We want to assess their comfortability and understanding, so we are not afraid to follow the virtual breadcrumbs, or, in other words, “take the road less traveled by.” And, if we stray down the wrong path, perhaps misinterpreting a message or symbol, we are not afraid to learn from our mistakes and start again.
What We Have Learned
Experiencing my longest practicum yet in a completely virtual environment has helped me cultivate the resilience so characteristic of educators. This field can be laden with barriers as gargantuan as a global pandemic and as small as a snowstorm. Each challenge is an opportunity for growth. I consider my unique practicum as a high steppingstone. I had to reach a bit to get here, but now I am at an advantage. When I have my own classroom, I will have a myriad of technological resources at my disposal: Nearpod, iReady, Newsela, Padlet, Flipgrid, Dochub, and Loom. I will be less phased by unanticipated time sucks such as sharing and un-sharing your screen. And, I will have the crucial skill of intuiting students’ subtle signals.
The lessons we were forced to learn in this past season of life can make us better educators. When the pandemic has become a distant memory, let our reflections be dominated by the moments of growth: the day we all made our backgrounds pictures of our pets, the time the quiet student articulated a light bulb moment with an all-caps message, the activity where students posted videos of themselves performing their own poems and you realized screens can truly be a siphon for passion.
Author Bio: Marah Hoffman is from Exeter, Pennsylvania. She is a junior English, Creative Writing, and Secondary Education major at Lebanon Valley College. Besides being a student, Marah is a cross country and track athlete, tour guide, writing tutor, poet, and poetry editor of her college’s literary magazine. Marah’s current practicum is with Ms. Lewis’s English classes at PALCS. After graduation, Marah hopes to secure an English or creative writing teaching job. Her dream is to instill in her students passion and appreciation for the written word. It is, afterall, a form of magic.
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