Discussion Thread
I am teaching remotely and it is very challenging.
I have a lot of EL's in my class, many who are new to the USA and do not speak much English. I use a lot of pictures/visual to help cue them on where to go and what to do. My other students struggle with technology issues, making it hard to make connections with them. They are very distracted by phones and pets. The first 6 weeks - we focused on SEL and getting to know you lessons - even with those, I feel like I've only made connections with 4-5 kids out of 22. I still have students who have not come to a live zoom meeting. It's also challenging to help them when they are struggling because it's hard to gauge if they are doing their work, googling the answer, or getting help from a sibling or adult in the house. How is everyone else dealing with these issues? Any advice/suggestions?
Hi Jill ! I think first try to gain their confidence by doing some activities which they are interested in.Then, I think they will start responding and if one or two does not then you can ask the parents to make them sit during the class in common area at home. This I tried and it helped me .So, thought of sharing .
I agree - this is a big challenge. Ranjana, those are good ideas. These are some of our biggest challenges: technology and language barriers. We are leaning a lot more on parents / caregivers at home as partners because they help provide a missing link that we can't right now. It takes a lot of work to get them on board with everything but I think this will help us not only while we are remote, but also when we return to being fully in-person because we will have more engagement from our families. Some of our students are home alone during the day, so that is even more challenging because they need to take responsibility for themselves, which is not easy depending on the age.
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