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Online classes make some kids anxious, but building relationships with them can go a long way toward helping them feel secure.

Teachers, as an instructional coach, I hear you when you ask, "What do we do about those kids who didn't show up to remote learning sessions last spring if we are still teaching remotely in the fall?" How do we get them to show up, to do the work-in essence, to comply?

My daughter was one of those kids who, because of anxiety, refused to participate in virtual learning. Some of her teachers may have figured that she was one of those noncompliant kids, and of course, it looked that way. But for her, the issue wasn't about compliance. It was about feeling safe and understood.

Most educators understand the importance of establishing respectful relationships with students, but it is often difficult to put that theory into action without a model or plan. The five steps below serve as a relationship framework for teachers to consider as they prepare for the possibility of remote learning this fall and when trying to establish lasting and meaningful relationships with their students.

Step One: Let's Get to Know One Another

A personal connection makes us feel as if we matter. Building relationships on a human level is the first and most powerful move we can do as educators, and it is fairly simple to do. Write a letter. Send a survey that you will later respond to personally, or simply call students to say hello. Help them to understand that you'd truly like to get to know them, to establish a rapport and mutual respect. Getting to know our students as humans will give teachers a better understanding of what makes them tick and perhaps help us understand why remote learning may be tough for them.

In my shy daughter's case, she absolutely loved her teachers but had massive anxiety around whole-class Google Meets and all those people seemingly staring at her. Luckily, her fourth-grade teacher knew the value of putting aside work in order to prioritize the students' need to feel safe, seen, and understood. They spent several days on one-to-one Google Meets chatting about our child's pets, her love of writing, and their mutual admiration of all things Harry Potter. Seeing that her teacher was truly interested in who she was and how she was doing made her willing to try, albeit in small ways, to participate in virtual learning.

Step Two: Using What You Know About Students to Spark Engagement

If teachers know who their learners are, they can find texts they will read and tasks they will care about, thereby motivating them to participate. My daughter's band teacher did this masterfully. After discovering our tween's current Star Wars obsession, she gave our daughter the trombone music to Darth Vader's theme song, "The Imperial March."

For the first time in weeks, low and warbly blasts of bass permeated our small home as our thrilled and motivated child immersed herself in perfecting the piece. Embedding learning within the structures of something she cared deeply about became a potent way to get her involved and to ease her wariness of remote education.

Step Three: Student Partnerships Can Advance Participation

Teachers inherently know that peer relationships are just as important as teacher-student relationships. So how can we use that knowledge to help students move on to the next step in our relationship framework? Once again, teachers should rely on what they've learned about the student, but this time in order to create meaningful partnerships.

Our daughter's writing-club teacher used what she knew about our child's favorite pastime-writing comics and short graphic stories-and facilitated a beautiful online-writing partnership with one of her friends, an equally enthusiastic writer. These relationships with her teacher and her writing partner made her feel valued, and that was beginning to make all the difference.

Step Four: Using Small Groups to Increase Engagement

The power of a partnership naturally lends itself to the next step in the framework, which sets out to get students to interact remotely in larger peer groups. These groups should be highly engaging in order to motivate students to attend. For example, some teachers hold fun days where kids get together to play games online.

When our daughter was still having anxiety attending whole-class meetings, her teacher created a book club in which our daughter took part. The more she attended club meetings with a few trusted friends, the easier it was to share her ideas. She had come a long way in a short time, and that was directly correlated to the effort her teachers put into establishing a genuine connection with her.

Step Five: Checking In and Letting the Students Lead

It's important to remember that a genuine connection has to be seen as an ongoing process. In the final step of our relationship-building framework, educators should leave space for lots of scaffolding and practice. They should find ways to remind students that they care about who they are and what they need, all year long. This can be accomplished with periodic check-ins.

On her first try at participating in a whole-class meet, even with the beautiful relationship she had built with her teacher and the knowledge that her writing partner and some of her reading-club friends would be attending, our daughter didn't make it. When she heard the teacher begin speaking, she ran out the front door. When her teacher reached out to ask her what she needed to feel safe, the thoroughness of the first four steps of this relationship model meant that our daughter felt secure and could articulate what she needed.

In his book Personal & Authentic, Future Ready Schools founder Thomas C. Murray says, "The best thing we can give kids this school year is not a new curriculum or technology. It's an empathetic heart that sees and hears theirs." This five-step relationship framework aims to achieve just that: educators with empathetic hearts seeing and hearing their students-taking the time to know them utterly and completely.

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Connecting With Reluctant Remote Learners

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Online classes make some kids anxious, but building relationships with them can go a long way toward helping them feel secure. Teachers, as an instructional coach, I hear you when you ask, "What do we do about those kids who didn't show up to remote learning sessions last spring if we are still teaching remotely in the fall?"

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Sponsored by PowerSchool and ISTE U

It's a pretty safe bet that most teachers will be doing some form of online teaching in the coming year. Maybe you'll do it full-time, maybe it will be some kind of hybrid model, but one thing is for sure: This time around you won't be dropped into it without warning.

So with this chance to take a breath and do more thoughtful, intentional planning, the next question is What do we do differently? What shifts do we need to make in our face-to-face teaching practices to make the most of online learning?

To find out, I sought the help of Melanie Kitchen, a Coordinator of Instructional Technology and Staff Development serving 19 school districts in Western New York state. Melanie has years of experience working with teachers on developing blended learning and has now shifted to helping teachers develop best practices for remote learning.

Melanie Kitchen

I asked Melanie to share some ways online teaching should be different from face-to-face teaching. She came up with nine: three that are specific to community building and communication, and six that focus on instructional design. Along with these differences, she also shared a few things that should stay exactly the same.

Community Building & Communication

1. The first weeks of school should be devoted to community building and digital competency.

Resist the temptation to dive right into curriculum at the start of the school year. Things will go more smoothly if you devote the early weeks to building community so students feel connected. Social emotional skills can be woven in during this time. On top of that, students need practice with whatever digital tools you'll be using. So focus your lessons on those things, intertwining the two when possible.

"If you are explicitly teaching persistence," Kitchen says, "maybe I'm going to give you a challenge that's not content-related, but something that you might have to kind of grapple with. But when I assign that, if I'm using Google Classroom, then I'm going to assign that through Google Classroom and teach you how you're going to open an assignment, how you're going to submit it, how you'll be receiving feedback. So you are teaching these skills all at once, and it's not something separate or extra. It's just all done together."

Other good resources that can guide and inform the conversations you have in these early weeks are:

2. Communication with parents needs to be more thorough, streamlined, and predictable.

Parents are also adjusting to this new way of doing school. Because they are sometimes expected to play an even more prominent role in supporting student learning, they need more support from you. "We really need parents to be our partners in this learning community," Kitchen says.

Here are some guidelines:

Establish a consistent location and predictable schedule for sharing information. When parents know where and when to look for information from you, they'll do a better job of keeping up with it and following through on their end. Weekly updates are a good way to keep everyone informed about what's going on in your class. And rather than toggling around between emails, text alerts, blog posts, website announcements, and newsletters, choose one platform for outgoing information and stick to it; if your whole school can do the same you'll see even better results.

Set clear expectations and boundaries for communication. When can students and parents expect to hear from you? How and when can they get in touch with you when needed? If you don't set boundaries you'll end up feeling like you have to be available 24/7, which will quickly lead to burnout. Establish regular office hours and advertise them in an easy-to-find place so parents know when you'll be most accessible.

Create a backup plan for off-hours and tech support. If parents or students need help outside of your regular office hours or they need help with technology, who can they contact? Make this information clearly available.

Make communication multimodal. Although it's important to consistently post through one platform, it's also helpful to provide the information in more than one mode. For example, you might offer written announcements and record the same announcements in a short video each week so students and parents can choose the format that works best for them.

Provide parent tech training. Parents will be better able to support students if they understand how to use the technology, so provide them with tutorials on the tech you use, including whatever platform you use to disseminate information.

3. Community and connection need to be a priority for teachers, too.

"Teachers need to connect with each other now more than ever," Kitchen says. Your school leadership should be building in regular opportunities for you to stay connected to your colleagues during this time. If they are not, create those opportunities for yourself.

Staff meetings should still be held regularly-even if it's through a videoconferencing platform-to keep staff connected.

During these meetings, some time and attention should be given to teacher well-being and emotional health.

Smaller groups like teaching teams or content-area PLCs can offer even more support.

If you're not getting the support you need, seek it out through platforms like Twitter.

This article offers a more in-depth look at teacher well-being: How to Support Teachers' Emotional Needs Right Now.

Instructional Design

4. Teacher collaboration is even more important.

Meeting the challenges of online learning gets easier when we work together. "As we're all trying to get to know these students better," Kitchen says, "we need to be working together to do that." That means working more closely with specialists to make sure our lessons and materials meet the needs of all students, partnering with others in our content area to plan instruction, working together on cross-curricular projects, and dividing up the things all students need (like technology instruction) among teachers on a team or grade level so students aren't doing the same lessons over and over and our work isn't duplicated.

Fortunately, collaborating online can be even easier than trying to do it when we all teach in the same physical building. "This virtual environment has provided us the opportunity to break down those walls, to break down those silos," Kitchen says. "Our schedules and time constraints that we may have had before will come down. We may have more opportunity to partner with people that we didn't have the time or the space to be able to do that before."

5. "Face-to-face" time should be used for active learning.

Online instruction is made up largely of asynchronous instruction, which students can access at any time. This is ideal, because requiring attendance for synchronous instruction puts some students at an immediate disadvantage if they don't have the same access to technology, reliable internet, or a flexible home schedule.

But you're likely to offer "face-to-face" or synchronous opportunities at some point, and one way to make them happen more easily is to have students meet in small groups. While it's nearly impossible to arrange for 30 students to attend a meeting at once, assigning four students to meet is much more manageable. Kitchen likes "campfire groups," which are permanent groups of about four that stay together for long periods of time. This arrangement allows students to get to know each other better and establish more trust. Students might be rearranged for other activities to provide some variety, but the campfire groups would provide a stable base throughout the school term.

So what kind of instructional activities should be used for these different formats?

What works best, Kitchen says, is to keep direct instruction-things like brief video lectures and readings-in asynchronous form, using checks for understanding like embedded questions or exit slips.

You can then use synchronous meetings for more interactive, engaging work. "If we want students showing up, if we want them to know that this is worth their time," Kitchen explains, "it really needs to be something active and engaging for them. Any time they can work with the material, categorize it, organize it, share further thoughts on it, have a discussion, all of those are great things to do in small groups."

Small group strategies she strongly recommends:

6. Content needs to be simplified and slowed down.

Online instruction is not conducive to covering large amounts of content, so you have to choose wisely, teaching the most important things at a slower pace. To make those choices, Kitchen recommends asking some key questions:

What really holds leverage for the students? What has endurance? What knowledge is essential?

What knowledge and skills do students need to have before they move to the next grade level or the next class?

What practices can be emphasized that transfer across many content areas? Skills like analyzing, constructing arguments, building a strong knowledge base through texts, and speaking can all be taught through many different subjects.

What tools can serve multiple purposes? Teaching students to use something like Padlet gives them opportunities to use audio, drawing, writing, and video. Non-digital tools can also work: Students can use things they find around the house, like toilet paper rolls, to fulfill other assignments, and then submit their work with a photo.

7. Instructions should be easy to find, explicit, and multimodal.

Because you are not in the same room with students, your instructions have to work a lot harder than they do in a brick-and-mortar setting.

Provide instructions in a consistent location and at a consistent time. This advice was already given for parents, but it's worth repeating here through the lens of instructional design: Set up lessons so that students know where to find instructions every time.

Make instructions explicit. Read and re-read to make sure these are as clear as possible. Make dogfooding your lessons a regular practice to root out problem areas.

Offer multimodal instructions. If possible, provide both written and video instructions for assignments, so students can choose the format that works best for them. You might also offer a synchronous weekly or daily meeting; what's great about doing these online is that even if you teach several sections of the same class per day, students are no longer restricted to class times and can attend whatever meeting works best for them.

8. Traditional grading practices should take a backseat to feedback.

"We saw a transition during emergency remote teaching where each of us had different requirements about grades or no grades, pass and fail," Kitchen says. "This whole environment really needs to be supported by communication and connection. If I'm to receive an A or a 95 or a 65, that doesn't necessarily tell me as much as verbal feedback or print feedback to what I'm doing right, what I can improve on."

So when teaching remotely, put the emphasis on formative feedback as students work through assignments and tasks, rather than simply grading them at the end.

Most learning management platforms, like Google Classroom, have built-in features for giving feedback. Use these as your primary method.

Tools like Floop offer other ways to provide on-the-spot feedback and can be especially good for math.

Feedback should be frequent and specific. Consider some of the methods shared by Matthew Johnson in Flash Feedback.

Provide a pathway for students and parents to give YOU feedback on assignments as well.

9. Summative assessment should focus on creation.

In online learning, Kitchen says, "There are so many ways that students can cheat, so if we're giving them just the traditional quiz or test, it's really easy for them to be able to just look up that information."

A great solution to this problem is to have students create things. These can be videos, podcasts, digital or physical art, writing pieces, comics, and so on. "It's a lot more difficult to cheat when you have to make something or do something. And it also integrates all of the areas and it builds up, all of that learning builds up into this creation that they will do."

For assessment, use a detailed rubric that highlights the learning goals the end product will demonstrate. A single-point rubric works well for this.

To help students discover tools to work with, this list of tools is organized by the type of product each one creates. Another great source of ideas is the Teacher's Guide to Tech.

When developing the assignment, rather than focusing on the end product, start by getting clear on what you want students to DO with that product. This list from Bill Ferriter explores the difference:

Image Credit: Bill Ferriter (CC BY-NC-ND)

What Stays the Same

Not everything in online teaching is different. Some aspects of good teaching should definitely stay the same.

Clear and consistent communication

Creating explicit and consistent rituals and routines

Using research-based instructional strategies

Determining whether to use digital or non-digital tools for an assignment

A focus on authentic learning, where authentic products are created and students have voice and choice in assignments

The teaching environment may not be the same as we're used to, but it's important to remember that good teaching is still good teaching. "All of those things that we know are really good practices can still be done virtually," Kitchen says. "It just might look a little bit different."

You can find Melanie on her website, creativecuriosity.org, or on Twitter at @MelKitchenEDU.

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9 Ways Online Teaching Should be Different from Face-to-Face

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What shifts do we need to make in our face-to-face teaching practices to make the most of online learning? What can stay exactly the same?

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The sudden, unplanned move to distance learning during spring 2020 drove a wedge into the middle of the school year-disrupting academic schedules, putting an end to extracurriculars, and undercutting the assessment and academic feedback cycles in most schools. Student motivation, predictably, foundered.

As one of our students put it, online school "is just like in-person school but with all the fun bits removed." Without the ambient social interactions that are such a rich part of a regular day at school, and without in-person guidance from teachers, coaches, and counselors, many of the key motivational drivers were suddenly gone. In most K-12 schools, there were no fully formed distance-learning alternatives waiting in the wings. Indeed, glaring holes and inequities were exposed in the first days and weeks of distance learning: families with sporadic or no connection to Wi-Fi; students who lacked a calm place to study; siblings who needed to chip in to take care of brothers and sisters, or needed to contribute money by getting a job. Over and above it all were increased levels of trauma.

In short order, the move to online learning also laid bare some of the instructional flaws in our traditional structures of accountability, evaluation, and standardized testing. We hope for intrinsically motivated students, but we tend to design for the opposite, often with the best of intentions in mind. But motivating students with carrots and sticks-through endless, demoralizing cycles of high-stakes testing and assessment-is not getting us the deep learning and love of learning we desire.

Fortunately there is a science of motivation, and we need to design it into the very fiber of our virtual courses. There is a pressing need to do so now in order to help keep students engaged through the challenges of distance learning, and to avoid exacerbating the previously existing gaps in learning opportunities born of systemic inequities.

A Two-Stage Approach to Motivation

You may have heard of the major theories of motivation that researchers discuss, like self-determination theory and expectancy-value-cost theory. We will discuss these in a second article coming soon. For now, we think that learning mindsets-students' beliefs about themselves, their potential, and the learning context-are a better starting point that we can understand and implement relatively quickly in classrooms. Once we get proficient at learning mindsets, then we can go take the next step toward an understanding of the deeper structure of motivation, and how it can be applied to create fundamental structural reform in schools.

Researchers talk about three learning mindsets: sense of belonging, purpose and relevance, and growth mindset. If we want to design for intrinsic motivation, this is where we need to start. Some of these learning mindsets may be familiar to you, but they are often misunderstood and misapplied in schools.

Creating a Sense of Belonging

Make students feel heard: Include activities, topics, and examples that students identify with so they feel it's OK to bring their authentic self to class each day. Work hard at eliminating identity threat. Every child deserves to feel seen, listened to, and respected, and that their unique story is a part of the larger story of the class.

For example, you can create a ritual for starting your online class in which every child speaks and every child hears their name spoken by somebody else; incorporate fishbowl discussions online and encourage students to "speak from the I perspective"; co-create class rules and norms with your students and post them on the first page of each unit on your learning management system (LMS), and revisit and renew the norms periodically; have each child share their preferred pronouns with you instead of making assumptions.

Reduce barriers to connecting online: Let students know that there is an easy way to communicate with you outside of class-you can manage expectations by telling them how quickly you'll respond-and that they are welcome to do so. While setting clear expectations for the whole class, it's also important to be creative and proactive in identifying and finding solutions to challenges-emotional or academic-that individual students are facing. For example, you can set up one-on-one phone or video calls with each child on a rotating basis, or offer them the ability to text or call you directly.

Remind yourself that social time is as important as academic time: If you are teaching online, deliberately use some of your precious time for social connection. For example, begin your class time with a social ritual: try a short "mental stretch" break; offer some monitored hangout time before class starts; or create small groups that meet socially asynchronously. This isn't wasted class time-it's an investment to help keep them motivated and present for the long haul.

Connecting Work to Purpose and Relevance

Work hard to articulate purpose: Teachers often underestimate the importance of purpose and relevance in building motivation, and overestimate how good a job they are doing making the purpose clear. Deliberately and regularly state the purpose of assignments and activities-this is especially important when you are distanced from your students.

Use online surveys to solicit-and leverage-student interests: Ask students about their interests and passions, and design activities that target things that your students genuinely find personally relevant. It's not always necessary to make the activities academic: During distance learning, you should cut down some of your traditional content in order to forge deep connections-the goal is to boost students' long term buy-in for the year.

Build connections to real life: Research suggests that students' motivation toward education is improved when they take the time to link their learning to their existing interests-or to the world around them.

Try having students complete this activity, which asks students to connect recent academic insights to their interests, by interviewing each other, perhaps over Zoom.

Give students choice: Adding well-chosen, constrained elements of choice in topic or medium are great options to help boost motivation during distance learning-students feel empowered while also learning how to improve their ability to choose. But be mindful that too much choice creates decision fatigue. Example activities: Choose from one of these four essay prompts; select a renowned leader that meets a set of criteria to study for your project; produce your work in the form of a podcast, children's book, 2- to 3-minute video, art installation, or paper.

Hard Work, Failure, and Growth Mindset

Explain how learning works: Begin by talking to your students. Tell them that studying is hard, but it gets easier over time when you begin to use effective study strategies. Teach them about neuroplasticity-that effortful practice over time helps rewire their brains.

Give them effective study strategies: Students should favor study strategies like articulating key concepts in their own words, active retrieval, and spaced practice over rereading and highlighting-and you should build in time to let them practice and refine those strategies. During distance learning it is especially important to be deliberate about this because students are on their own more often and need strategies for self-regulation.

Help them get unstuck: Be concrete with students about the fact that they will periodically get stuck, so they'll need tactics to get over the hump. Have you created a class climate where kids feel comfortable asking peers for help-or considered setting up small study groups to facilitate better communication? Have you given your students easy ways to contact you during business hours, and even urged them to do so when they're stuck? Have you created a useful, easily accessed list of class resources in your LMS?

Use tech to create a low-stakes environment: Create low-stakes quizzes in your LMS, or use tech tools like Pear Deck, Quizlet Live, and Poll Everywhere to support frequent but gradeless retrieval practice and formative assessments. Reposition these "quizzes" as part of continuous learning, and help students see them as useful tools to get a sense of where they are, how well their study strategies are working, and what they need to do next. Finally, don't confuse low-stakes with easy; students work harder and learn more deeply when they are challenged. Build time for getting things wrong and learning from those mistakes into every class.

Alter your grading systems and structures: Despite the conventional wisdom in education, grades don't motivate students to do their best work, nor do they lead to better learning or performance.

What better time than now to adjust your grading structure to reward growth, development, and improvement? Even if summative assessments are beyond your control, consider adjusting your mid-unit grading by awarding points and grades based on student work related to continuous improvement. This not only helps the struggling learners, but also pushes the top achievers to show that they are putting in the effort needed to demonstrate clear improvement in their skill levels.

Be constantly ready to adjust your teaching: Because it's hard to "read the room" and determine what your students know in a virtual classroom, use your formative assessments to continually adjust your own teaching. This is a great way to model the growth mindset behaviors that you'd like your students to adopt.

Create a digital record of competence: Motivation can be boosted when students notice their growing competence. Create short activities to promote this rather than leaving it to chance-for example, bring back a piece of older work and do a then-and-now comparison, or create a simple online portfolio that can be regularly updated and revisited. Be sure that students link their competence to hard work and the right strategies, not to innate ability.

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The Science of Keeping Kids Engaged-Even From Home

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The upcoming school year will be filled with uncertainty, but the need to keep students engaged while working from home feels like a sure thing. Fortunately, there is a science of motivation.

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10 tips to make distance learning more successful

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10 tips to make distance learning more successful