Distance Learning Week 2: Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8

There’s a Japanese saying that’s been running through my mind this week: “Fall down 7 times, get up 8.” In my second week of online teaching, there have been some tumbles. The good news is, my students and I keep getting up. And each time we do, we have learned some things—about poetry, grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, computers, Google Classroom, and growth mindset. 

Online teacher flops for the week: 

• A vocabulary quiz that told 6th and 7th graders the answer had to be a number.
• Sending 8th graders the sign-in code to the 6th/7th grade class on NoRedInk.
• Realizing as students took a short quiz during a live online class that the answers to pre-quiz review questions engaged students had offered in the chat bar were still sitting there on the screen. Guess we won’t do that again.

Online teacher wins for the week:

• Building in plenty of time to learn and make mistakes—for myself and for students. Helps us all not panic but relax and learn, developing a growth mindset.
• Flipping the switch in my head quite intentionally from “Oh, no, this is a failure, what are we going to do!” to “Hey, we get a chance to solve a problem and learn something different from what I had planned!”
• Elegantly streamlined quizzes on Google Classroom—for my first class, it took 3 tries. By the second and third classes, it only took 2. Now I’m a pro and already have one ready for next week!
• Using a rubric in Google Classroom. I just tried this out for the first time yesterday and today, and it is so quick and easy once I have the rubric in! I think my life as a writing assessor may just have been revolutionized. 

It’s been a long time since I have felt this viscerally that I am truly learning as much as my students. Maybe not the English content and skills, but definitely the online platforms and processes. So it’s vital that I embody the growth mindset, the fail-forward approach to learning and challenge that I hope they'll have. Because yes, these times are challenging for us all. And we can learn.