5 Lessons I Learned from a Year of Pandemic Teaching

I’m going to say something that is not being said enough: The pandemic did not create problems in education. It forced us to recognize and stop ignoring the ones that were already there. Before, there was no money to waste on 1:1 technology. Suddenly, students had access to wifi and laptops. Before, students had to sit in a chair for each class from 7-3. Suddenly, we could give independent, asynchronous options. The list goes on.

Although this year of teaching has easily been the longest and most exhausting year of my career, I realize that in a lot of ways it has been a blessing, and not just because my students been provided with equitable computer and internet access for the first time in their lives. I discovered how to cut my curriculum by 1/3 and still meet the necessary standards. I’ve transformed my students’ mentality about completion versus mastery. In short, the pandemic has pushed me to reimagine my entire teaching philosophy.

While there are some things I will be thankful to leave this school year (teaching to a sea of black squares, anyone?), there is so much more that I will be taking with me – not just all of the technology and digital teaching applications I have grown to love – but practices that have revolutionized the way I will teach from here on out.

1. Learning Management Systems are Essential

The LMS has become an essential component of the pandemic classroom. No more misplaced assignments, no more ” I didn’t realize we had to do that.” A well- organized LMS is something I never want to live without. In the future, I plan on utilizing my learning management system as a way to process summative assessments. Before the pandemic, it would take me a week or more to get student work back to them. Then it would be another week or so before I might get to see that assignment again and to give extra feedback. The learning management system removes the lag associated with paper. A quick click of a few boxes on the rubric can show students exactly what they need to do to demonstrate further mastery on a task.

2. Self- Paced Learning and Flexible Deadlines for the Win!

At the beginning of the year, I tried hard to maintain the status quo. I tried to follow my usual pacing and routines, my usual assignments, my usual assessments, just in digital form… but it was way too much. Even my typically high achievers were falling behind. No matter what pace I tried to follow, even giving a week for assignments that I would have done in one class period in the before times. I was always going too fast. It took me half the year to finally change things up. Instead of daily tasks, I chunked assignments into a weeklong project that students could work on at their own pace. I blurred the lines between each days work in order to support students who were behind as well as those who were moving along. Students had fewer “assignments” which made them feel less overwhelmed, and encouraged them to work at their own pace. They could go back and watch videos of my direct instruction if they needed help or missed something.

When every student feels empowered to move to the curriculum at their own pace we create a space where it’s okay to be challenged by something because it’s no longer a frustrating that you’re not as fast as someone else or that you missed a day of class and already have missing assignments to complete on top of all of the new work.

I did have to overcome some ideological hurdles. First, I had to let go of some control of my room and my students. I had to let students prioritize their own tasks and schedule their own time, rather than forcing students to all work on the same thing at the same time. Next, I had to minimize the time I spent at the front of class giving directions or teaching content and completely dump a lot of activities and assignments that I would have given in a pre- pandemic year to let students learn more through discovery. I had to be okay knowing that some students didn’t need to and weren’t going to complete formative assignments, but were going to jump right in to the summative, which meant I had to facilitate mastery and rethink my project requirements. I also had to let go of most due dates, and provide feedback when students were ready for it ( which also meant I couldn’t sit on a stack of grading for a week). Overall, this move has facilitated a healthier classroom environment where the focus can be on mastery of skills rather than a game of beating the clock and collecting points.

3. Grading Should be Based on Mastery

Related to self- paced and project- based learning is grading. The routines that I learned as a new teacher and experienced as a student myself are simply not equitable. Traditional points systems and policies such as late work service the students who eat 3 meals a day at home, who have parents encouraging them to get on the bus and get to school, kids who can do their work on time, kids who are independent readers – which leaves out a majority of my students.

The first thing I did this year was give up taking off late points. I have always been a stickler for late points – I felt that students should be held accountable for deadlines. Hybrid learning showed me I had to completely throw that out the window. Nearly every student ( even the ones who are traditionally academically strong) would have lost too many points that would have nothing to do with how well they actually understood the material, and it just was not okay.

I thought this would create a lot more work for me, grading multiple different assignments at any given point, but it actually made things easier. When students felt empowered to turn things in when they were finished rather than turn them in sloppily or incomplete because they knew they had to turn SOMETHING in, their score was based on mastery of the content and not on completion by a specific date, or class attendance, or how long it took to understand the material. I also started grading every single assignment on a rubric, even assignments that would typically have been considered in- class work in the before times. Doing this helped students understand the expectations for each assignment, and the ability to go back and read do assignments to meet the mastery of the skills being taught, rather than just turning it in “for points.”

There is a culture with the students I teach that turning something in should earn them full points, so using a rubric with clear expectations started to reshape their mindset ( don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t perfect and there is still a LONG way to go). Not only do students know what is expected of them, but when they don’t meet those standards, they see it immediately on the rubric. Then, they can go back into the assignment and work on it again until they achieve mastery. That’s right, I let students redo any formative or any summative assessment as many times as they would like. That way by the end of the quarter there grade truly reflects their mastery of the content.

I am planning on diving way deeper into equitable grading on the blog this summer as I transition to full on standards- based grading, and I know that people have a lot of strong opinions about the subject. I’ll be honest, I had them as well. This year made me realize that I want my students’ grade in my class to be earned by mastering content required by the standards, rather than measure how good they are at turning things in on time, or how much support they have at home.

4. We Can Do More With Less

The first directive we received from administrators in August was to cut our curriculum by at least 1/4th. I was thankful to have the freedom to choose which parts of the curriculum were essential for a survival kind of year. But I felt like I was going to be sacrificing too much. Would the students learn enough? Would it still be rigorous? How could students POSSIBLY master the content when so much is taken out?

What I realized is that we can achieve mastery of the standards or skills we are teaching without dumping a ton of work on students. This includes homework, but it also includes classwork. Having to look through my curriculum and pare it down to just the essentials has empowered me to use smaller amount of work to teach more concepts and skills.

I think we’ve all been able to see this year that more work does not always mean a higher quality of instruction. A lot of the things that I assigned pre-pandemic were things that were in all honesty not totally necessary for students to accomplish the skill being taught. There were also a lot of old relics in my curriculum from when I was in school or lessons that I wanted to incorporate but didn’t really tie to the standards that I was teaching. Certain tasks – like reading quizzes – became obsolete. With longer texts like Hamlet, I realized I was focusing on so many things ( that I LOVE) about Hamlet that really had nothing to do with the culminating assessment I was asking students to complete. Next year, instead of adding everything back into my curriculum, I will be very purposeful about every lesson and task I give to students. Instead of adding in more work, I’ll make more room for organic learning, true retention of concepts, and mastery of prioritized standards.

5. Incorporate Social Emotional Learning All Year Long

At the beginning of each year, I do the usual “Getting to Know You” type activities. But then I would dive into content as soon as possible, excited to get the year “really” started. This year has shown me that relationship building is the most important tool we as teachers have. I teach a tough group of kids who don’t inherently trust and respect the adults in their life. You have to earn it. Showing students I cared about them as humans and not just little writing machines was paramount to success this year, even more so than usual. Checking in with students, offering opportunities for breaks, and incorporating time to let kids be silly ( even those too- cool- for- school Seniors) can really get that buy in that even the most engaging lessons sometimes won’t do.

This year has certainly been one for the history books. I am thrilled to hopefully return to some kind of “normal” next school year. But there is one institution that should never return to business as usual, and that is education. The pandemic accidentally presented teachers with the opportunity to break out of the factory style of instruction that has been the norm for far too long. I’ve been pushed far out of my comfort zone as a teacher during this school year, as all of us have. As tragic as the pandemic has been for our country and the world, I hope that in the education field we continue to push forward into this new world of instruction and not move back into the archaic methods of the before time.

What aspects of pandemic teaching will you be holding onto next year? And, if you’re curious, Jennifer Gonzalez of the Cult of Pedagogy just wrote an amazing blog post on a similar topic! Read it here.