7 Things I Learned Starting a School Year Online

The box of books that came with me on vacation...

The first week of school is always the hardest for me, even in normal conditions (even after 30 years!). Getting to know students and establishing classroom culture are huge, crucial jobs which lay the foundation for the whole year’s learning. How do I even begin to imagine what that will look like online? Those were my thoughts back in April when I started a new school year at a new school with new classes—because the international Christian school in Japan that I’d just moved to operates on the Japanese academic year. So if those are your thoughts now as US schools begin to gear up, here are a few things I did and learned:

1. Keep the main thing the main thing: My main thing is students growing in their English skills of reading, writing, thinking, listening, and speaking. We might not cover every lit term, grammar construction, or piece of literature that was planned, but as long as students are growing in their English skills of reading, writing, thinking, listening, and speaking, we’re good. 
2. Ask questions: I started with a letter of introduction to my students, and then asked them to write a letter back to me. (I supplied a list of optional questions they could respond to in case my model was not enough to give them inspiration.) This also gave me a baseline writing sample. Here's another idea for getting to know your students by Betsy Potash on Spark Creativity. I started synchronous classes in Google Meet with an attendance question to be answered in chat. As in person, linking learning to life is important: what does this theme look like in your life or in the world today? Write a poem about a time you were afraid. Write a personal narrative about a time you learned something. 
3. Start slowly: I used small pieces of reading and writing, low-stakes assessments, mindful that the relationships, class culture, and procedures established now would be foundational to the rest of the year. Start with why and how. Content can take a back seat in the first weeks.
4. Keep it simple: There might be 25 different applications and websites out there I hear colleagues raving about. I don’t have to use all 25. That’s too much of my time and the students’ time learning new platforms and programs rather than reading, writing, thinking, listening, and speaking. My school uses Google Suite, so I’m focusing on those tools and learning to use them well (see #5). Plus CommonLit for resources and Quizlet for vocabulary. Maybe in the fall I’ll add Flipgrid for a video recording response option. 
5. Actively engage students: This is part of the class culture I want to build, and this was probably my biggest challenge in distance learning. “8 Ideas Designed to Engage Students in Active Learning Online” by Catlin Tucker is a blog post with fantastically helpful ideas I’ll be using heavily as I make my fall plans. And in keeping with #4, it’s all doable with Google.
6. Provide models: While this is always ideal, I found it golden in distance learning. You know the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”? A model poem, reflection, paragraph is worth pages of directions. See below for part of the model poetry project I wrote with my 6th and 7th graders. (Here are 5 other ways to provide models.)
7. Get mentors: Follow educator blogs/podcasts that inspire you and feed you ideas. Here are some of mine: Cult of Pedagogy, Spark Creativity, Truth for Teachers, Catlin Tucker.

How are you planning to start the new school year?