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Opinion

5 essential tips to structure your day in this unstructured time

Yes, it is possible to experience burnout while teaching online.

With the current surge in schools turning to the web to keep instruction going while physical buildings are closed, many teachers are being thrust into teaching 100 percent online for the first time. For some, especially those on the outside looking in, this may seem like a dream. But this shift may take teachers who are already quite exhausted to full-fledged burnout.

In 2011, I made a bold move and began working completely online. My family and friends thought I had miraculously scored a piece of heaven when they saw me working in my pajamas, but what they didn't know was that the reason I had on those pajamas was because I had been up for over 24 hours straight trying to meet a deadline that had crept up on me-and I was severely burned out.

I know what you're thinking: Why did you wait until the last minute to get all your work done? Why hadn't you organized your time better?

It started innocently enough. I would wake up early to usher the kids off to school, then as soon as I returned and logged into the computer, I found myself answering one email after the next, clicking one link after another, browsing one website for information after another. Then, somehow I'd end up scrolling social media in the name of "researching to find valuable resources."

Days would roll by this way. Just because I was working from home didn't mean I was getting more rest. Then add a few all-nighters or near all-nighters, and you have a volatile mix of burnout juice.

So what can you glean from my experience?

You have to treat working from home the same way you would in your classroom-pajamas or not. Even though I was working from my dining room table and not my desk in a classroom, I learned that structure and time management are two of the most essential skills for efficiently teaching online.

I learned some important strategies along the way.

1. Conduct essential self-care activities first, preferably right after you wake. Yes, you should still get up and brush teeth, comb hair, shave, and/or even put on makeup (where applicable) if you know at some point you'll need to be seen-even if only by video. (Importantly, during this time of uncertainty, you do not want to find yourself in an emergency situation in which you have to leave your home quickly. If you're already dressed, you'll be able to do this at a moment's notice.)

You will be tempted to just roll out of bed and tiptoe downstairs for some coffee. Then while you're conducting your morning browse of your notifications, news, and a myriad of other things we check on our phones when we have a quiet moment, you'll be tempted to respond to emails. That morphs into trying to problem-solve, and then you've somehow shifted into completing work activities.

2. Plan your week, and schedule the tasks you need to get done. That means you need to set specific times for specific tasks to maintain structure for your day. While a to-do list is a useful visual tool, if your tasks are not set for specific times and lengths of time, you will ultimately find yourself struggling to get things done.

Schedule the most important, must-get-done today, essential activities first. Checking and responding to emails can seem essential, but it can become a rabbit-trail activity that leads to more rabbit-trail activities that could likely end in hours passing of unproductivity.

Remember to schedule your household chores to determine which chores will get done and when.

3. Set some alarms on your phone to enforce structure. There will be no bells ringing to remind you that valuable time is passing. The key to making this work, is setting realistic time limits on your work. We often underestimate how long a task will take.

4. Meal prep the night before or first thing in the morning, especially if you have children at home. And then be diligent about scheduling those meal and break times logically throughout your day.

Working from home can easily become a marathon of sitting in a chair and snacking while typing away at the computer until your body suffers. Just mindlessly snacking while you work can easily usher in an unhealthy eating habit. You can ward off burnout by carving out adequate time to take a break, actually enjoy what you're eating, and rest your brain.

5. Get out, and get some fresh air as much as possible. Seriously, take advantage of the flexibility that comes with working from home. You could even choose to set up your workstation on your patio or in your yard, if your internet range will allow it. If you have the capability to go to a park or another place you enjoy, do that, too.

Even though structure and time management are important, this is an unusual time in history, so allow yourself some flexibility. Every day won't go exactly according to plan, and that's okay. The point is to keep yourself healthy.

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I've Been Teaching Online for Years. Here's How to Prevent Burnout During a School Closure

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Opinion Yes, it is possible to experience burnout while teaching online. With the current surge in schools turning to the web to keep instruction going while physical buildings are closed, many teachers are being thrust into teaching 100 percent online for the first time.

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Teachers love their students deeply and want nothing more than for them to have a positive experience regardless of circumstance. So when thousands of teachers heard that they had a mere 24 hours to move instruction online, they naturally started working harder to figure out logistics. But many of us are perfectionists, and this is one case where we shouldn't be. As the country scrambles around for toilet paper, chicken breasts, and hand sanitizer, this is one area we should let go of a bit and perhaps strive for imperfect online learning. Why?

1. One day, or week, isn't enough time to plan an online course

So don't try to. Teachers who virtually teach as a career spend months planning, examining resources, and recording videos. This is not the same thing, nor should it be, as we have very little time to prepare and we will be planning and teaching almost simultaneously as we all figure out what it will look like. Many districts are limiting online learning to review and extension work, rather than demanding new content be taught as thoroughly and efficiently as it is in a classroom. Don't feel the need to overachieve beyond that requirement, as you, your family, and your students have other concerns to attend to.

2. Acknowledge the limitations of learning from home

Before you plan a 50-minute lecture on science theory, consider what it will be like for students to receive and learn in their environments at home. If a student has WIFI and if it's fast enough, they may listen. If their parents aren't panicking in the background about where to get food and childcare, they may listen. If they aren't watching their three younger siblings, they may listen. If their parents are around and forcing them to do school work, they may listen. If they, or a family member, aren't sick themselves, they may listen. If their anxiety is not through the roof, they may listen. This is a lot of if's. Don't make that 50-minute video if you don't have to. Remember ... imperfect online learning.

3. Consider assigning the simplest task: reading

When, in the history of being a student, have your kids had unlimited time to read? Consider minimizing your worksheets, packets, videos, and online lectures, and replace whatever you can with reading. Let them read for fun, for once, without the looming tests and curriculum schedule. Give them fascinating articles to read and host an online discussion board or chat time. Students without WIFI can still access books.

4. Ease up on rules

Limit tests that may time out with slow WIFI, extremely strict deadlines that may not make room for technology problems, and similar rules. Instead, encourage communication with you, and in some cases other classmates. This isn't the time to be more by-the-book or to increase emphasis on grades. In a popular article circulating amongst teachers in the past week, Dr. Rebecca Barrett-Fox suggests everything be open book, open note, and re-doable for a bit. Teachers accounting for the challenge of adjusting to a potential pandemic shows compassion

5. It's time for the mini-lesson to shine (again)

If you are still required to teach new content, communicate new concepts in small sections, videos, posts, or increments to allow students to learn in short spurts of time. That way, they can do ten minutes of work before helping their little sister. A five-minute video seems much more approachable than one that would have replaced a full class period. Also, consider allowing students to make their own videos and to post them, allowing for 30 mini lessons to be posted at once. This obviously would vary based on age and accessibility to technology.

6. Keep communication brief and clear

In speaking with your students' families, be clear about your available times and office hours, as you too will be dealing with all of the stressors of Coronavirus, including teaching from home without childcare. Parents shouldn't be expecting a permanently on-call teacher, so make sure they know when you are available and how to reach you. Reclarify the 24 hours response time you've always maintained on responding to parent emails (or whatever your boundary is).
Need help with online resources? We've built a list with over 70 options here. Feeling overwhelmed? Share your thoughts on imperfect online learning. Join fellow educators in the WeAreTeachers Chat group on Facebook to get support from others just like you.

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Teachers, The Next Weeks of Online Learning Don't Have to Be Perfect

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Teachers love their students deeply and want nothing more than for them to have a positive experience regardless of circumstance. So when thousands of teachers heard that they had a mere 24 hours to move instruction online, they naturally started working harder to figure out logistics.

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identifies which one is best for which grades

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Lesson-Planning Apps and Websites | Common Sense Education

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Paperless, painless planning for teachers. Explore this Lesson-Planning Apps and Websites Top Picks list of 30 tools curated by Common Sense Education editors to find relevant and engaging edtech solutions for your classroom.

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This story is part of a group of stories called

Finding the best ways to do good.

If you're feeling extra anxiety these days due to the Covid-19 coronavirus, you're not alone. This pandemic has us all facing more stress and uncertainty than usual. It also has many of us asking: How do we keep from spiraling into full-blown panic?

As we try to navigate our anxiety about the coronavirus, there's one quote I've been trying to keep at the forefront of my mind. It's by the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh: "When the crowded Vietnamese refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked all would be lost. But if even one person on the boat remained calm and centered, it was enough. It showed the way for everyone to survive."

Tara Brach, an American psychologist and a widely respected teacher of Buddhist meditation, sent out this quote in a recent email newsletter. It prompted me to call her up and ask for some guidance about using meditation to navigate this pandemic.

The first thing to know is that the word "meditation" actually refers to many different practices. In the West, the most well-known set of practices is "mindfulness meditation." That means paying attention, purposefully and non-judgmentally, to your experience in the present moment. It can involve a formal practice - like when you sit down, close your eyes, and focus on feeling your breath go in and out. But you can also practice mindfulness while you read the news, say, or shop for groceries.

I talked to Brach about how we can use mindfulness and other meditative techniques to find balance during the coronavirus crisis, and about why this is not a selfish escape from reality: Many neuroscience studies have shown that meditating can help us regulate our own emotions so we can better pay attention to other people and act more altruistically. A transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows.

Sigal Samuel

I'm guessing that you, like the rest of us, have been feeling stressed about coronavirus. What have you personally been doing to stay calm and centered?

Tara Brach

Yes, like everyone else, I feel the hugeness of this and I feel fear for my dear ones and for the most vulnerable people in our world. What I've been doing is a mix: walking in nature and taking in beauty; talking to people and feeling our shared vulnerability and connectedness; and doing a lot of meditating. It gives me a pathway back to steadiness that's just immeasurably helpful.

Sigal Samuel

For people who don't have experience meditating but who are looking for a way to avoid sinking into the panic vortex, can you suggest one or two simple meditation practices that would be useful for our current situation?

Tara Brach

Sure. The first step when we get really gripped in fear is to calm our sympathetic nervous system. A simple way to do this is with long, deep breaths. Take at least three full breaths, counting to five with the inhale, and counting to five with the exhale. And with the exhale, intentionally release tension. That begins to calm down the nervous system.

Our breath is often the most helpful home base for coming out of our circling worry thoughts and back into our senses. But we can also come back to the sounds we're hearing in the moment, or the sensation of our hands or feet tingling, or the sight of a tree or table. Coming back to the senses in our body helps us come back to the present moment.[SS: You can listen to a five-minute guided mindfulness meditation here.]

Sigal Samuel

In your new book Radical Compassion, you also offer a short meditation practice called RAIN, which I've found helpful. Can you spell out what the acronym means?

Tara Brach

Yes, I use the acronym because It's an easy-to-remember handle if you're getting caught in fear. It stands for recognize, allow, investigate, nurture. [SS: You can listen to a guided RAIN meditation here.]

First, just recognize, "Okay, I'm feeling fear." Mentally whisper it, and that helps right away.

Then allow it. Just let it be there, don't try to run away or fix it or control it or judge it.

Then investigate it. Begin to come into the body and just feel where the fear is in the body. Find out how it feels and breathe with it, with a gentle quality of attention.

And then nurture. You might just put your hand on your heart and offer a kind or soothing message to yourself. You can say to the fear, "Thank you for trying to protect me; it's okay." I sometimes will say to myself, "It's okay, sweetheart."

Sigal Samuel

I'm curious about the "recognize" part, this idea that when you can name a fear, it loses some of its power over you. What is it about that mental notation that changes the activity in the brain?

Tara Brach

When we're in fight-flight-freeze mode, our limbic system has basically hijacked us, and we lose contact with our prefrontal cortex, the most recently evolved part of our brain, which has to do with executive functioning and making good decisions. When we name what's going on, we start to activate the prefrontal cortex. Mindfulness reconnects us with that.

"The single most important thing that can happen right now in this pandemic is that we feel our collectivity - that we're here to help each other move through this"

Sigal Samuel

Outside of a formal meditation practice, how can we use mindfulness in our daily activities while we're navigating this pandemic? For example, should we be mindful of our news intake - how, and how often, we're taking in updates about the virus?

Tara Brach

I think it's good for all of us to take in the amount of news we need to take in to be informed, but also to know how to turn away from our screens. Listening to beautiful music or going outside for a walk will really nourish us. What the news will do is keep on agitating us. For some people what really works is [to limit news intake to] one time a day, and that can really make a difference.

Sigal Samuel

What about practicing gratitude? I've generally found that my brain can't be anxious when it's busy being grateful.

Tara Brach

Yes. Human beings have a negativity bias. We get very fixated on threats and often overlook goodness and beauty. So it needs to be an intentional practice to celebrate goodness. By that I mean that we actually pause and savor seeing the gleam in our child's eye or watching the new blossoms come out.

Many people get gratitude buddies and, at the end of the day, they'll send a note to their buddy naming three things they're grateful for. That can really lift people up and change the mood.

Sigal Samuel

I think some people in the West see practicing meditation as this very individualistic or even selfish thing, because it's often presented to us as divorced from a broader ethical framework. But in Eastern traditions, meditation has always been part of this broader framework of moral responsibility toward the other. So what would it look like to make sure we don't divorce it from that in the context of coronavirus?

Tara Brach

In China, the word for mindfulness is "present heart." If we keep emphasizing the heart side of things, if we keep offering care to ourselves and others, that's going to make us much more tender and we'll live naturally from a more ethical place. The true impact of meditation is that it actually dissolves our excessive sense of self. It frees up our sense of connection with each other.

But if we think mindfulness is just something I do so that I can feel better in the midst of fear, then it's going to have a much more self-centered feel.

So I think emphasizing the heart practices is critical. One of the heart practices is called lovingkindness. That's where we take time to appreciate the goodness in other people. We might remind ourselves of the health workers on the front lines who are risking their lives to help people who are suffering. Or we might think of someone we know and remind ourselves of their humor, their intelligence, their care. And then we offer them our best wishes.

Sigal Samuel

Someone reading this might think, "Oh, so you're just mentally sending someone a wish like 'May you be free from suffering' - that's not actually doing anything to help them." But I'm guessing the next step is that you also want to convey that to them out loud, right?

Tara Brach

Absolutely. When I wrote Radical Compassion, what I meant by those words is a mature compassion that has three elements to it. First, you're feeling the caring viscerally in your body. It's embodied, it's not just an abstract idea. Second, the care is active and engaged - it actually leads to reaching out. The third part is that it's all-inclusive: I'm not just caring about my sister but also about everybody in every country.

It might be that in the meditation we're simply offering someone a prayer, but after that we're much more inclined to reach out and make that phone call or go get someone groceries or medicine.

The single most important thing that can happen right now in this pandemic is that we feel our collectivity - that we're really here to help each other move through this. And the truth is each one of us can help. We have a real gift to offer each other just by who we are and how we come forward. If we can find an inner refuge of calm, our calm is contagious.

Sigal Samuel

A lot of us are experiencing fear around our mortality right now, and in the West, that's something we don't talk about much. Do you think we should respond to the pandemic by leaning into that - uncovering the fear and bringing it up from the subliminal to the conscious level? Or is that a terrible idea?

Tara Brach

I think it's not going to be a choice to bring it up. We will all be faced with the fear of mortality and the grief of loss. We can't use our normal mechanisms to avoid it anymore.

When things fall apart, it's a really horrible time in the sense that there's so much suffering, but it's also an opportunity for us to wake up our hearts in an unprecedented way. The ultimate gift of meditation is that it helps us come home to a space of presence that is large enough for whatever we encounter. And it's from that space that we can actually live from who we most want to be.

So really the question is, how will you be with the fear and the grief? What is being called forth in you in these times? Who do you want to be? And what kind of world do you want?
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter Future Perfect is funded in part by individual contributions, grants, and sponsorships. Learn more . and we'll send you a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling the world's biggest challenges - and how to get better at doing good.

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"Our calm is contagious": How to use mindfulness in a pandemic

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Finding the best ways to do good. If you're feeling extra anxiety these days due to the Covid-19 coronavirus, you're not alone. This pandemic has us all facing more stress and uncertainty than usual. It also has many of us asking: How do we keep from spiraling into full-blown panic?

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Wow.

If you’re anything like me, you’re experiencing a lot of different emotions right now. But chances are we are all marveling at how different the world looks than it did a few weeks, days, even hours ago. Big events canceled. Travel bans. School closures. Toilet paper becoming the nation’s hottest commodity.

This post is not about health measures or containment or COVID-19 symptoms. It’s not about curriculum or technology recommendations or teaching remotely. I’m not going to talk about flattening the curve or social distancing or exponential growth. There are 900 million other articles, posts, and podcasts for that.

This is about taking care of yourself and your mental health during COVID.

I love teachers, and even in the best of times I’m concerned about our self-care. But now, at a time when we’re all taking on the stress, anxiety, and fears of how a global pandemic will affect our children, it’s more critical than ever to remember that we cannot effectively take care of other people if we are not taking care of ourselves.

1. Be kind to yourself.

We are all learners here. This situation is new for all of us, and that means new emotions, new reactions we didn’t know we’re capable of, new fears, new bodily functions (hello, stress burps, I guess you’re a thing now). Would you be hard on the young people in your classroom learning new, tough information? Of course not. So don’t put any more pressure on yourself to learn this new way of living than necessary.

Also, I’m going to say something that could be controversial here: I don’t think those of us teaching remotely should exhaust ourselves trying to drum up ways to make learning exactly the same or better as it was in our classrooms before we left. Will we have to do things differently? Yes. Could this be an awesome opportunity for all of us to learn platforms and tools? Yes. But are our students already dealing with more stress than we could imagine? ALSO YES. They are a a generation who is aware of EVERYTHING because of the Internet and social media. But their frontal lobes are still developing, leaving them with tons of information but perhaps not a lot of emotional capacity to handle or process this in a healthy way. In short: don’t put more pressure on yourself than necessary to put on a dog-and-pony show during tough times. Simple is OK.

2. Keep your hands busy.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received when I was super anxious a few years ago was to keep my hands busy. There’s science behind it, I promise. And, when I’m doing something tactile, it’s hard for me to think too hard about anything, really. And not in the way that I zone out when I’m scrolling Instagram like a zombie, but more of a mellowing out that happens when I truly plug into creativity. My top recommendations:

Puzzles! Y’all. I’m obsessed. My favorite brands are Galison and Mudpuppy. (Yes, I have puzzle brands.)

Embroidery. Look up this old-made-new trend on Pinterest. So many fun ideas!

Calligraphy

Other recommendations: making bread or something else hand-intensive, drawing a mandala, painting or making a collage, playing an instrument (what a great time to learn on YouTube!)

3. Move your body.

Don’t worry about strenuous exercise right now if that’s not your jam. But I think it’s good for all of us to make moving a regular habit (especially if we are teaching remotely and not up out of our seat all the time like a regular school day). Go for a walk if you can. Take a fitness class on YouTube (Yoga with Adriene is a personal fave). Have an impromptu dance party to your favorite song. Ultimately just get the blood flowing and the endorphins pumping.

4. Calm your mind.

This looks different for all of us, but it’s super important to give your mind a break from the barrage of information out there. I don’t know if there has been a better time to download the Calm app (it’s free for teachers!) With guided meditations, nature playlists, relaxing songs, and bedtime stories, you’ll wish you’d have done it a long time ago. But whatever you do, try not to simply distract yourself, but truly disconnect and let your mind “be” for a while. It’s working overtime these days.

5. Laugh.

A global pandemic is obviously very serious. But so is your mental health during COVID. As anyone who has ever cared for a family member with Alzheimer’s will tell you, sometimes you have to laugh in the midst of a terrible thing. Gloria Gaynor washing her hands to “I Will Survive.” Relatable tweets like this one:

me and my coworkers logging into all of our meetings remotely for the next couple of weeks pic.twitter.com/fpOYiHJLcl

— isha (@ikasliwal) March 9, 2020

But if you’re overwhelmed with COVID-19 information—even humor—this is my official plug for the TV show King of the Hill on Hulu. I did not think I would find this show funny, and I have laughed myself to tears. You’re welcome in advance.

6. Stay connected in the right ways.

Use the technology we do have—FaceTime, WhatsApp, Skype—to check in with people remotely. Kelly Wickham Hurst, an educator I follow on Twitter (@mochamomma) had a great suggestion of using each other’s names as often as possible when in social isolation. Check in on your neighbors, the elderly people you know (especially those living alone), and others in vulnerable populations. And if social media is overwhelming you, by all means, disconnect for a while. You will know when you’re overwhelmed. You’ll be at the grocery store and see a long line of people waiting to grind coffee, and you’ll turn to your fiancé with wild eyes and say, “I can’t do this!” Or at least that’s what I did.

How are you taking care of your mental health during COVID closures? Come and share in the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.

Plus, why online learning doesn’t need to be perfect right now.

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Teachers, How Can We Care for Our Mental Health Right Now?

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Gr. 6-12 Structuring Online Learning March 2020

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Whether you go by applied arts, unified arts, related arts, specials, or something else, there is never enough love for what we do. We're often last to get picked to accompany fun field trips, but first called when admins need a warm body to cover a class or duty (amiright?!). And honestly? Some colleagues don't see what we do as essential, academic, or a "core" subject. None of that is true, of course. As far as I'm concerned, specialists are miracle workers! To show collegial love to my fellow specialists, I'd like to highlight some of their inventive Bitmoji virtual classroom ideas!

Quick Links

Distance Learning & Virtual Classrooms

As I stated previously, the best way to combat the divide of trying to engage young learners while distance learning is to create a friendly virtual space to meet them in. In order to do that, you need to think about the content you want to deliver and how you intend on organizing it. Successful Bitmoji virtual classroom scenes are organized, educational, and inviting.

Think of your virtual classroom as a portal to all the learning content you want to deliver remotely. Many of you are recording lessons and uploading them to YouTube. You could make your virtual space a gateway to the content you want students to consume (rather than going directly to your channel and finding the content themselves).

Consider organizing your lessons based on grade level. If you're doing choice-based lessons, each grade level could have it's own color-coordinated slide. All kindergarten classes are red. All first grade are orange, and so on.

It's important that you give students directions on how to engage in the space. Just sending them a link to the space isn't enough. They need to know what to do once they get there. We would never provide lesson materials without directions on what to do. If your virtual classroom is too filled, put the directions on another slide.

Free Stock Photo Websites

When you start out designing a Bitmoji virtual classroom, begin with the background image for the slide. It sets the scene perfectly. You can either search for one or even better, use an image of your own.

There are many sites that have free commercial and personal use photos that don't require attribution. These are labeled CC0 meaning "Creative Commons Zero." Others, however, are allowed for commercial and personal use but do require attribution. Those are labeled as CC2.0. Just be aware of the difference. Here is a short list that may help you get going.

Posing Your Bitmoji

In my previous post, I talked about how to make your Bitmoji. But one common question that's asked repeatedly is how to find the right pose. The key is searching for the best word for your pose. Here's a chart that demonstrates some poses to help gear your search queries. I find this particularly helpful for specialists because it can be challenging to find poses that uniquely match what we do.

But what if you just want someone standing there? Just search the word "pose" and you'll get some of these.

More Tips & Tricks for Your Bitmoji Virtual Classroom

If you read my last post about Bitmoji virtual classrooms, you saw I gave a nice list of tips and tricks. Here are some more.

Kids are OBSESSED with animated gifs. So, include some! And the older they are, the more funny and ironic the gifs should be. They can be cropped to fit a tv, tablet, or laptop screen. Just select the image and then quickly double-click to crop. You can even link to outside content from the gif. There's nothing better than tricking kids into learning. Check out giphy for free animated graphics for nearly every topic imaginable.

15 Bitmoji Virtual Classroom Ideas for Specials Teachers

One of the best features within Google Slides is the REPLACE IMAGE feature. It does exactly what it sounds like it does. First, select a graphic on your slide. Then at the top of the screen, tap on the REPLACE IMAGE button. When the window appears, search for an image on your computer to replace that one with. Why is this so helpful? Say you spent a half hour trying to get magazines and books on a rack. You cropped them to fit perfectly. Simply swap them out!

Stay Fit Challenges

If you want to see what kids are clicking on (and not clicking on), try using a link shortener like bit.ly. It will cloak the link so when students tap it, they won't see the direct name of the link where it leads to. However, you can see roughly how many link clicks that particular item has received. If you're teaching a choice-based class, you can get a sense of what's popular and what's not. This can be helpful data that can inform you future lesson choices. Just be aware that some school servers block these cloaked links.

Add audio to your clips! Check out this great tutorial:

Want to pump up participation in physical education during distance learning? Why not create some exciting challenges! First, create a 5×5 grid. Then fill each with a Bitmojo alongside an object a child might have at home accompanied with an exercise they have to perform. The first have a select amount of time to search for the objects. Then they have a certain amount of time to perform the corresponding exercises. This is a great way to get their hearts racing!

Make Choice the Choice

Promoting choice in your lessons will increase your engagement rate. Think about it: would you rather be told what to do or would you rather have to choose from a list of options? Whatever you teach, think about using different objects to represent those different choices. If it was an art lesson, pencils, paintbrushes, play dough, blocks, and a camera could represent all the different choices you're giving students that week. Depending on which one they click, it could lead to another slide where you have a curated list of activities within that content area. Clicking a pencil would lead to a list of sketchbook ideas. Clicking a paintbrush could lead to painting ideas. Some of these could include links to video content where you're demonstrating techniques.

Sing Your Heart Out

There's something to be said for teachers showing their true colors ( Right, Cyndi? "I see your true colors shining through!). If you love to bring literature into your music lessons, include a bookshelf with your favorite musically-inspired books. Each book could link to YouTube videos that get kids singing, moving, and grooving.

Cultural Exploration

Speaking a foreign language isn't just about the language. It's about understanding how it's culture, it's people, and the unique region of the world that country is in. So why not take your students on a trip there to learn about the sights and sounds from the region? Each graphic in your Bitmoji virtual classroom could link to virtual tours, YouTube videos, and your daily lessons. This is how to make distance learning fun!

STEAM

Add a little art to STEM and you get something way better: STEAM. Include pictures of different devices like laptops, desktops, and tablets. Use them to link to content you're teaching that's saved on your Google Drive or elsewhere. Also, think about doing STEAM stations. Each of the cafe style tables below could represent one station giving kids a choice of activities to engage in.

Get in Shape!

Gymnasiums are naturally very active. And physical education teachers have to be all over the place. So why not make it look that way? Because what's more fun: one of you or more of you?! Bonus points for including clear signage in your slides to students know how to engage in your Bitmoji virtual classroom.

Get your Tech On

Are you head of your district's technology department or a computer specialist? You can get in on the fun, too! Curate a space for your colleagues. No doubt many teachers are learning how to use new technologies for the first time. And you're likely to be asked the same questions repeatedly. Why not gather all your frequently asked questions and design a space to help deliver them to teachers. Add objects in the room like laptops, desktop computers, TVs, routers, and other devices where links to a slide with tips, tricks, resources, and support.

Filed Trip Extraordinaire

Can't go on a field trip? Why not take a virtual one to a place you could normally not venture to? Bonus points for adding in some virtual reality experiences and links to Google Earth within your Slides doc. Discover cities, towns, and historic locations with your students! Also, a scene like this with all those old school TVs would be perfect for the animated GIF idea I mentioned earlier.

Say Cheese!

There are only so many drawing lessons and art teacher can do before kids get bored and don't participate. Why not change it up by designing some photography art lessons? If you recall, I mentioned this in my distance learning post awhile back. You can teach all the elements of art - line, color, shape, texture, value, form, and space - using whatever picture-taking device a student might have. Display some of your student's photos in each week's new Bitmoji virtual classroom scene. Show them you're proud of their accomplishments even though you can't be there in person to tell them.

Field Day Bonanza

Your field day might have been cancelled but there's no reason you can't still host it online! First, create all of your fun activities. Then, design your space. It can be indoors or outdoors. A nice picture of your school's gym of field would be awesome. Lastly, link to each of the activities using bright orange cones. You can even come up with a schedule like you normally would on field day so students can participate in real time. Don't let distance learning stop you from planning field day!

Be a Drama Llama

Create a cool vibe for your drama lessons using snapshots of you school's stage. If you can't get a picture, design your Bitmoji virtual classroom using bits and pieces to make it work. Any wooden floor will do. Throw in a couch, some theater signs, and link to some of your awesome lesson materials and YouTube videos. Bonus points for linking to funny animated GIFs of facial expressions that get kids laughing and smiling.

Coordinate with Specialists

Why not coordinate links to your lesson materials for all specialists in one Google Slide doc? This is such a fun way to continue creating a sense of community within your school. You can even use a snapshot of your school in the background, inside or out, to show school pride!

Beat Your Own Drum

Drum up some spirit by including different groups of instruments like string, wind, brass, percussion, etc. Each one of those instruments if clicked on could lead to a list of lessons. Adding your online office hours and classroom posters is a great way to top off your room!

Check Mic, One Two One Two!

Making your Bitmoji virtual classroom space warm and inviting is a great way to invite students to participate in your content area. Adding in instructional classroom posters, decorations, and other trinkets that might personalize the space is also awesome. But if you really want to know your students are engaging with your lessons, include a clickable link back to a self-correcting Google Form that students fill out to demonstrate their understanding of the lesson. It's tough getting work back during distance learning. So make it as painless as possible to receive.

I Can, Too!

Here a can. There a can. Everywhere an "I can" statement! Organize your weekly lessons using AIM or I Can statements. Add a title at the top of the slide so students know these will be all the virtual lessons for each particular week.

Templates to Make Your Bitmoji Virtual Classroom

Some of the ideas being shared by other teachers are simply amazing! But if you don't have the time to craft your own virtual classroom, I've gone ahead and created some for you.

The bonus here is that not only will you not have to spend the next several days searching for the right graphics, you won't have to be concerned about copyright issues.

All of the graphics in my sets have been designed by me and are for personal use. That means you can create as many rooms as you like to send to your students.

And because the pieces move, you can rearrange your space however you like. You can make multiple rooms using the same graphics in a different placement. I've also included 5 virtual classroom backgrounds. So you have all the space you need to spread out your lesson materials.

So far, I've designed spaces for visual arts, gym, music, and now media specialists!
Leave a comment if you think I should make one for theater teachers and what I should include. Love hearing your thoughts!

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15 Bitmoji Virtual Classroom Ideas for Specials Teachers

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Whether you go by applied arts, unified arts, related arts, specials, or something else, there is never enough love for what we do. We're often last to get picked to accompany fun field trips, but first called when admins need a warm body to cover a class or duty (amiright?!).

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Listen to my interview with Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton, and Sarah Landis, authors of The HyperDoc Handbook ( transcript):

In many classrooms, a learning cycle looks something like this: First, we write plans for a series of lessons and a final assessment. We gather materials-handouts, websites, rubrics, video clips. Then we teach the lessons one at a time, to the whole class, at the same pace, distributing materials as needed. Finally, we end with a project, test, or other assessment.

It's a very teacher-directed model, which can limit learning in a number of ways:

Students don't feel much ownership for their own learning. Instead, they depend on the teacher to tell them when and how to learn the material.

Because so much of the teacher's time is spent in direct instruction, there's little opportunity to work one-on-one with students.

Because it's up to the teacher to adjust instruction for students with varied needs and levels of readiness, differentiation becomes one more thing to do.

ENTER THE HYPERDOC

A HyperDoc is a digital document-such as a Google Doc-where all components of a learning cycle have been pulled together into one central hub. Within a single document, students are provided with hyperlinks to all of the resources they need to complete that learning cycle. Here's an example.

In the above HyperDoc, all of the bolded words are linked to outside resources. The right-hand column is set aside for students to take notes and do other kinds of thinking and planning as they work through the lesson.

One of the earliest iterations of the this type of "hub" was the WebQuest, which guided students through a lesson using all online resources. Now that Google tools like Docs and Slides have become so prevalent, teachers are using these tools to create similar lessons, choosing and mixing resources that go well beyond simple web pages. Last year, we looked at something called a playlist, which teacher Tracy Enos used to organize her language arts lessons and differentiate instruction for her students.

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links; if you purchase from Amazon after going through these links, Cult of Pedagogy receives a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Meanwhile, teachers Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton, and Sarah Landis were doing similar work in their own classrooms. They coined the term "HyperDoc" to describe their version of this, and in 2016, they published The HyperDoc Handbook to teach others their method for creating these lessons.

The book explains how HyperDocs work, why they have such an impact on instruction, and their model for how teachers can design HyperDocs for high-quality instruction. In the podcast episode above, I interviewed all three about their work. Here I will blend their expertise with some of my own thoughts about this exciting format.

BENEFITS OF HYPERDOCS

Fewer lectures. Teachers have been told for decades that we need to do less lecturing, to step away from being the sage on the stage and become more of a guide on the side. "I feel so bad for teachers when they hear that," Highfill says, "because they're like, 'Well, what am I supposed to do? I need to get information into their heads.'" A HyperDoc offers a solution by taking care of the direct instruction part of a lesson and offering a lot more as well.

More face-to-face interaction. A good HyperDoc runs itself, allowing students to work through it without needing you to guide them through each step. "Although it seems odd that you're putting a student in front of a device," Landis notes, "really what it's doing is freeing you up to move around and have increased face time with the students."

Flexibility. If one part of your lesson isn't working, you can just change it in the HyperDoc and the change takes effect immediately; no need to re-copy all your materials. Similarly, if each student gets their own copy of a HyperDoc, the elements can be changed on each to meet individual students' needs.

Multimodal opportunities. Because it is digital, a HyperDoc allows us to include all kinds of multimedia. "Living in this digital age, we're able to expose kids to different types of media that allows each child to access the learning or the content or the information in a way that's visually or auditorily appealing to them," Landis says. "I might be visual, and I might first study an image, then watch a video, and then I'm finally ready to tackle that article my teacher really wants me to read."

They don't know that maybe their text ... is at a different reading level," says Hilton. "Or they're able to use Privacy. If students' HyperDocs have been customized for them, no one else needs to know. "Read&Write for Google and just put headphones in, and that's just a little agreement between you and that student."

MODELS FOR BUILDING HYPERDOCS

Because HyperDocs are such adaptable tools, teachers structure them in many different ways, and you should experiment until you find a structure that works for you. Here are some options to consider:

Playlist: This model, explained in this article, follows a step-by-step sequence of activities that consist of learning activities as well as check-ins with the teacher and housekeeping tasks like setting up accounts on websites.

Self-Paced Learning: Explored in this post by math teacher Natalie McCutchen, this system lays out a path of lessons for a whole unit, along with links to review materials, pre-tests, and practice questions. Students decide how much practice they need and determine when to take the assessment for each learning goal. If they grasp the material quickly, they can test and move on.

5E Model: This first stage of this model is to Engage student interest. Next, students Explore the topic, Explain what they have learned, and Extend their learning by applying it in new situations. The last stage Evaluates student learning.

HyperDoc Model: The HyperDoc Handbook authors have developed a model that has some components of the 5Es above, but with some additions and adjustments. This template explains all 7 stages. One important component of this model is the first step, Explore. Highfill explains the value of this stage: "Kids are exploring and coming up with ideas and answers about a concept on their own, and it's engaging them from the beginning, instead of passively listening to a teacher explain something." During this time, while students explore, the teacher is actively gathering information: "I listen to my students," Highfill says, "I'm studying them and hearing to what level are they understanding a concept. I have the ability to pull a small group. I can work with my language learners during that time. The whole time I'm doing formative assessment in the classroom, which will then really be my basis for the next part of the lesson."

Agenda: This model, borrowed from the kind of planning done at a typical Montessori school, provides each student with a planner listing out their assignments for the week. Students decide how they want to use their class time each day, but are expected to complete all goals by the end of the week. Although these are traditionally done on paper, they could easily be converted to a HyperDoc format.

OTHER USES FOR HYPERDOCS

Building an extended lesson or unit is one of the most instructionally robust ways to use HyperDocs, but they can also be used for:

substitute teacher plans

video or podcast playlists

learning centers or stations

student-made HyperDocs

parent resources

departmental-, team-or grade-level HyperDocs to gather and share resources among teachers

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

Start with a template.
Rather than build your first HyperDoc from scratch, you might find more success by starting with a pre-made template, like the ones available for free on HyperDocs.co. You could also start with a completely finished HyperDoc that someone else created for their own classroom and modify it for your own use.

Build in participation, collaboration, and multimedia.
One risk inherent in HyperDocs is that they could simply become online worksheets, replicating the kind of work students could just as easily do on paper. Take advantage of this medium by including ways for students to participate actively, collaborate with others, and learn from a variety of media: video, interactive posters like ThingLinks, podcasts, online flashcards, and so on.

Offer choice...
HyperDocs are designed to allow students to work at different speeds and navigate learning in a way that works best for them. So when you can, offer choices: Give students options for the kind and quantity of materials they need to learn the material, how they will practice and apply it, and how they will demonstrate their learning.

...but don't "kitchen sink" it.
If you stuff your HyperDoc with every possible resource on a topic ("everything but the kitchen sink"), you'll overwhelm students. Choose resources thoughtfully.

Give students HyperDocs training.
Even if your students have used HyperDocs in other classes, your design probably has its own unique qualities, so take the time to demonstrate how it should be used. And within the HyperDoc itself, provide clear directions for its use.

So if you create a HyperDoc," says Hilton, "in the header or footer, say Collaborate with other teachers.
You do not need to do this alone! Thousands of teachers are sharing and collaborating on the HyperDocs.co site and using the #hyperdocs hashtag on Twitter. And be sure to give credit to the person who created the original: " Created by, and maybe link to your Twitter handle or your email, for yourself, and then if you make a copy of someone's, we encourage you to give that person credit by saying Inspired by or Remixed HyperDoc originally created by, just because we want an inclusive, appreciative sharing community."

Don't feel like you have to create a HyperDoc for every lesson.
"That's not something that any teacher should feel pressured to do," says Landis, "and it's not really realistic. We don't want teachers doing any one thing all the time, because then it becomes redundant for our kids."

HyperDocs Resources: How to Learn More

Book: The HyperDocs Handbook

Website: HyperDocs.co: The online hub for Landis, Hilton, and Highfill's work on HyperDocs. It contains helpful blog posts and the Teachers Give Teachers system where participants share their own HyperDocs with one another. To browse and borrow other teachers' HyperDocs, all you need to do is register.
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How HyperDocs Can Transform Your Teaching

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HyperDocs make room for more interactive, personalized, and student-directed learning. Let's look at how they work.

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help sheet for jam board

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Directions for "KNOW" Jamboard for families for an Interactive Brainstorm

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FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL

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A study of asynchronous and synchronous e-learning methods discovered that each supports different purposes

Defining Asynchronous and Synchronous E-Learning

An ongoing debate addresses the usefulness of asynchronous versus synchronous e-learning. Asynchronous e-learning, commonly facilitated by media such as e-mail and discussion boards, supports work relations among learners and with teachers, even when participants cannot be online at the same time. It is thus a key component of flexible e-learning. In fact, many people take online courses because of their asynchronous nature, combining education with work, family, and other commitments. Asynchronous e-learning makes it possible for learners to log on to an e-learning environment at any time and download documents or send messages to teachers or peers. Students may spend more time refining their contributions, which are generally considered more thoughtful compared to synchronous communication.

Synchronous e-learning, commonly supported by media such as videoconferencing and chat, has the potential to support e-learners in the development of learning communities. Learners and teachers experience synchronous e-learning as more social and avoid frustration by asking and answering questions in real time. Synchronous sessions help e-learners feel like participants rather than isolates:

Isolation can be overcome by more continued contact, particularly synchronously, and by becoming aware of themselves as members of a community rather than as isolated individuals communicating with the computer.

Three Types of Communication

Haythornthwaite argues that three types of communication in particular are important for building and sustaining e-learning communities: content-related communication, planning of tasks, and social support (see Table 1). Firstly, communication related to the course content is essential for learning. Just as in traditional education, e-learners need to be able to ask questions and share information and ideas. Secondly, support for planning tasks is essential, especially when learners produce some kind of product, such as an assignment, in collaboration with peers. Finally, social support relations are desirable for creating an atmosphere that fosters collaborative learning.
Table 1. Three Types of Communication*

Content-related

Ask or answer a content-related question

Share information

Express an idea or thought

Planning of tasks

Plan work, allocate tasks, coordinate joint efforts, or review drafts

Negotiate and resolve conflicts

Social support

Express companionship, emotional support, or advice

Use emoticons (such as J, L)

Provide support when problems arise (such as when having technical difficulties)

Talk about things other than class work

* Adapted from Haythornthwaite.

Research Background

In my PhD thesis, I compared asynchronous and synchronous e-learning. In this article, I focus on the analysis of asynchronous and synchronous online seminars held as part of two e-learning classes. The first class included 3 females and 5 males with a mean age of 38 years. The second class included 14 females and 5 males with a mean age of 43 years. Both classes studied knowledge management at the master's level. Potential differences might arise because of the different group sizes (8 versus 19), but only a few such differences were evident in the data from this study.

To understand student opinions of asynchronous and synchronous e-learning, I also conducted 12 half-hour telephone interviews. Four of the interviewees were enrolled in the first class and eight were enrolled in the second class. The interviews, which I recorded and transcribed, were conducted within one month after the seminars concluded.

In the online seminars, I suggested questions for the class to discuss and also asked learners to submit questions about the course literature for discussion. The synchronous discussions were conducted by chat and scheduled for three hours. The asynchronous discussions used a discussion board and were scheduled over a week. I chose two asynchronous and two synchronous discussions from the middle of each course for further analysis. The classes used the same literature and the suggested questions were of similar character, designed to stimulate reflection and sharing of personal experiences relating to the literature in both the asynchronous and synchronous settings. After the online discussions concluded, I classified every written sentence according to the three types of exchanges described in Table 1. Some sentences included more than one type of exchange and were counted in more than one category.

The studies reported here were conducted in a specific context and with a small sample size. However, the key arguments are also supported by theory, as will become evident. I did not use learning outcome measures because only two pass/no pass grades were given in the courses, making it difficult to identify statistically significant differences given the small populations. Instead, this article relies on measures and perceptions of communication, which have been shown to have a positive effect on perceived learning, grades, and quality assessment of assignments.

Benefits and Limitations of Asynchronous E-Learning
Table 2. Sentences Categorized by Type of Communication and E-Learning
The cognitive model of media choice proposed by Robert and Dennis theorizes that asynchronous communication increases a person's ability to process information. The receiver has more time to comprehend a message because an immediate answer is not expected. My interviews support this argument, as illustrated by the following quote:

In the [asynchronous discussions] it is easier to find some more facts, maybe have a look in a book and do more thorough postings.

In fact, according to Kock's estimate, an exchange of 600 words requires about 6 minutes for complex group tasks in face-to-face settings, while exchanging the same number of words over e-mail would take approximately one hour.

Benefits and Limitations of Synchronous e-Learning

When studying Table 2, it becomes apparent that synchronous e-learning supports other types of communication more often than does asynchronous e-learning. Almost 60 percent of the sentences related to content, while a third of the sentences related to planning of tasks. This can be explained by the fact that these discussions were limited by time-the participants had to make sure they did what was expected during the scheduled three hours. In synchronous discussions, participants also discussed things other than course work. This was especially evident at the beginning and end of each discussion. No apparent difference could be discerned in the synchronous discussions when comparing the smaller and larger classes.

The interviews revealed that many e-learners felt that synchronous communication was "more like talking" compared with asynchronous communication. It seemed more acceptable to exchange social support and discuss less "complex" issues. Consequently, the higher sentence counts when communicating synchronously (see Table 2) can be explained by the fact that the e-learners felt more psychologically aroused and motivated, since this type of communication more closely resembles face-to-face communication. This finding was especially evident in the smaller class.

Synchronous communication enables monitoring the receiver's reaction to a message, which makes the receiver more committed and motivated to read and answer the message. The interviews conducted as part of my empirical studies supported this argument:

Even if I cannot see the person, I write so to speak to the person directly and get an immediate answer.

It can also be expected that the sender becomes more psychologically aroused and motivated because he or she knows a response is likely. In synchronous e-learning, learners respond quickly because they do not want to disrupt the conversation. A downside revealed in the interviews is that the focus is often on quantity rather than quality-that is, trying to write something quickly because "someone else will say what I was going to say."

Cognitive and Personal Dimensions of E-Learning

In the previous section, I suggested that synchronous communication makes it possible to monitor the receiver's reaction to a message, making the receiver feel more committed and motivated to read it. When communicating asynchronously, however, the receiver has more time to comprehend the message, since the sender does not expect an immediate answer. Thus, synchronous e-learning increases arousal and motivation, while asynchronous e-learning increases the ability to process information.

The concepts of personal participation and cognitive participation describe the dimensions of learning supported by asynchronous and synchronous e-learning (see Figure 1). Personal participation describes a more arousing type of participation appropriate for less complex information exchanges, including the planning of tasks and social support. Cognitive participation describes a more reflective type of participation appropriate for discussions of complex issues. I suggest that, other things being equal, synchronous e-learning better supports personal participation and asynchronous e-learning better supports cognitive participation.

Figure 1: Click image for larger view.

The research discussed here demonstrates that asynchronous and synchronous e-learning complement each other. An implication for instructors is to provide several types of asynchronous and synchronous communication so that appropriate means are available for different learning activities. The combination of these two types of e-learning supports several ways for learners and teachers to exchange information, collaborate on work, and get to know each other. As stated earlier, many learners enroll in online courses because of their asynchronous nature, which needs to be taken into account. For the discussion of complex issues, synchronous e-learning, by media such as videoconferencing, instant messaging and chat, and arranging face-to-face meetings as a complement, may be essential as support for students to get to know each other and for planning the tasks at hand. However, when discussing complex issues, in which time for reflection is needed, it seems preferable to switch to asynchronous e-learning and use media such as e-mail, discussion boards, and blogs. Table 3 summarizes when, why, and how to use asynchronous versus synchronous e-learning.
Table 3. When, Why, and How to Use Asynchronous vs. Synchronous E-Learning

Asynchronous E-Learning

Synchronous E-Learning

Reflecting on complex issues

When synchronous meetings cannot be scheduled because of work, family, and other commitments

Discussing less complex issues

Getting acquainted

Planning tasks

Students have more time to reflect because the sender does not expect an immediate answer.

Students become more committed and motivated because a quick response is expected.

Use asynchronous means such as e-mail, discussion boards, and blogs.

Use synchronous means such as videoconferencing, instant messaging and chat, and complement with face-to-face meetings.

Students expected to reflect individually on course topics may be asked to maintain a blog.

Students expected to share reflections regarding course topics and critically assess their peers' ideas may be asked to participate in online discussions on a discussion board.

Students expected to work in groups may be advised to use instant messaging as support for getting to know each other, exchanging ideas, and planning tasks.

A teacher who wants to present concepts from the literature in a simplified way might give an online lecture by videoconferencing.

Conclusion

The media investigated in this article have been key in transforming the focus on e-learners as individuals to e-learners as social participants. A parallel move has occurred toward Web 2.0, which emphasizes the increasing use of the web to support social relations. This shift will surely lead to new ways of collaborating in online education. Initial efforts include the adoption in educational settings of emerging media such as virtual worlds, blogs, wikis, and video sharing, and synchronous software that supports audio and video.

An essential challenge is to critically study the benefits and limitations of emerging types of asynchronous, synchronous, and hybrid e-learning. This will facilitate understanding of the complex task ahead-taking advantage of emerging media in ways that benefit learning.

Endnotes

1. Dongsong Zhang, J. Leon Zhao, Lina Zhou, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., "Can E-Learning Replace Classroom Learning?" Communications of the ACM, vol. 47, no. 5 (May 2004), pp. 75-79. ↩

2. Thomas L. Russell, The No Significant Difference Phenomenon, 5th ed. (Montgomery, AL: International Distance Education Certification Center, 2001). ↩

3. Alexander Romiszowski and Robin Mason, "Computer-Mediated Communication," in Handbook of Research for Educational Communications and Technology, ed. David H. Jonassen (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), pp. 397-431; and Stefan Hrastinski and Christina Keller, "Computer-Mediated Communication in Education: A Review of Recent Research," Educational Media International, vol. 4, no. 1 (March 2007), pp. 61-77. ↩

4. Kinshuk and Nian-Shing Chen, "Synchronous Methods and Applications in E-Learning," Campus-Wide Information Systems, vol. 23, no. 3 (2006). ↩

5. Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). ↩

6. David H. Jonassen and Susan M. Land, preface to Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments, ed. David H. Jonassen and Susan M. Land (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000), pp. iii-ix. ↩

7. Stefan Hrastinski, "The Potential of Synchronous Communication to Enhance Participation in Online Discussions," paper presented at the 28th International Conference on Information Systems, Montreal, Canada, December 9-12, 2007. ↩

8. Caroline Haythornthwaite and Michelle M. Kazmer, "Bringing the Internet Home: Adult Distance Learners and Their Internet, Home, and Work Worlds," in The Internet in Everyday Life, ed. Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), pp. 431-463 [quote p. 459]. ↩

9. Charlotte Nirmalani Gunawardena and Marina Stock McIsaac, "Distance Education," in Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, ed. David H. Jonassen, (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), pp. 355-395. ↩

10. M. Lynne Markus, "Electronic Mail as the Medium of Managerial Choice," Organization Science, vol. 5, no. 4 (1994), pp. 502-527. ↩

11. Caroline Haythornthwaite, "Building Social Networks via Computer Networks: Creating and Sustaining Distributed Learning Communities," in Building Virtual Communities: Learning and Change in Cyberspace, K. Ann Renninger and Wesley Schumar, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 159-190. ↩

12. Stefan Hrastinski, "Participating in Synchronous Online Education," PhD dissertation, Lund University, 2007, available from http://www.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=12588&postid=599311. ↩

13. Eric Fredericksen, Alexandra Picket, Peter Shea, William Pelz, and Karen Swan, "Student Satisfaction and Perceived Learning with On-line Courses: Principles and Examples from the SUNY Learning Network," Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, vol. 4, no. 2 (September 2000), pp. 7-41; and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Nancy Coppola, Naomi Rotter, Murray Turoff, and Raquel Benbunan-Fich, "Measuring the Importance of Collaborative Learning for the Effectiveness of ALN: A Multi-Measure, Multi-Method Approach," Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, vol. 4, no. 2 (2000), pp. 103-25. ↩

14. Haythornthwaite and Kazmer, "Bringing the Internet Home"; and Haythornthwaite, "Building Social Networks." ↩

15. Rena M. Palloff and Keith Pratt, Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999). ↩

16. Lionel P. Robert and Alan R. Dennis, "Paradox of Richness: A Cognitive Model of Media Choice," IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, vol. 48, no. 1 (March 2005), pp. 10-21. ↩

17. Ned Kock, "Media Richness or Media Naturalness? The Evolution of Our Biological Communication Apparatus and Its Influence on Our Behavior Toward E-Communication Tools," IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, vol. 48, no. 2 (June 2005), pp. 117-30. ↩

18. Robert and Dennis, "Paradox of Richness." ↩

19. Haythornthwaite and Kazmer, "Bringing the Internet Home." ↩

Stefan Hrastinski ([email protected] ) is a Research Fellow and Director of Master Studies in Computer and Systems Science at Uppsala University in Sweden.

© 2008 Stefan Hrastinski

EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 4 (October-December 2008)

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A study of asynchronous and synchronous e-learning methods discovered that each supports different purposes An ongoing debate addresses the usefulness of asynchronous versus synchronous e-learning. Asynchronous e-learning, commonly facilitated by media such as e-mail and discussion boards, supports work relations among learners and with teachers, even when participants cannot be online at the same time.

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Choice boards- explanation and examples

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Ready to create interactive learning opportunities for students? Take advantage of choice boards. In this blog entry, we'll explore a few reasons why they are powerful and provide examples you can adapt. First, let's answer a simple question.

What are Choice Boards?

"Teachers will plan in a whole new way," says Kathi Kerznowski (). Wondering what choice boards are? Some define them as graphic organizers that provide students choices about how they learn. "Choice boards are awesome," tweets Stacey Noonan (@snoonan44)

"Choice boards are set up in a grid, generally with 9 squares," says Cassidy Reinken. She says, "You can require that students complete items from the choice board in a specific way." This can involve expecting students to choose choices in a row, one activity from every colored section or choose at random. You can vary level of difficulty. Cassidy makes four suggestions about choice boards:

1. Focus on a single concept or learning expectation.

2. Each activity square should relate to a different multiple intelligence.

3. Encourage students to complete three activities in a row.

4. Each square, with the exception of the interpersonal square, are individual activities.

Watch this short video how to teach with choice boards(updated video):

Why Choice Boards?

Here are ten reasons why choice boards engage learners. Choice boards:

1. Facilitate differentiated learning opportunities.

2. Can be used in any subject.

3. Provide different contexts for students and engage a variety of their senses. These approaches are supported by research (Source).

4. Offer learners of all ages choices in how they learn about a new topic or understand a familiar one.

5. Provide tiered levels of learning opportunities.

6. Serve as a contract between student and teacher.

7. Can be adapted for special education or individualized education plans (IEPs).

8. Increase student ownership.

9. Focus students on essential knowledge, skills, and strategies aligned to curricular goals.

10. Make it easy to manage "a single lesson, a week-long lesson, or even a month-long period of study" (Source).

Want to see some examples of choice boards or learning menus?

Where Can I Find Choice Board Examples?

Looking to get started with designing choice boards? Some choice board sources include:

Wondering how to design your own digital choice board? Read Caitlin Tucker's instructions.

Create Interactive Learning with Choice Boards

Begin with digital choice boards. Use tech tools like Google Docs, Microsoft Word Online, or Microsoft OneNote. Adapt these tools to create choice boards. All of them support tables, image insertion, and sharing with students. Make a digital choice board to facilitate access to activities, and be sure to include multimedia.

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Create Interactive Learning with a Choice Board

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Innovative teachers empower students through the use of the choice board, either in paper or digital format. Learn how and see examples in this blog.

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10 Great Free Websites for Middle School | Common Sense Education

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Free middle school-focused websites across all subjects. Explore this 10 Great Free Websites for Middle School Top Picks list of 10 tools curated by Common Sense Education editors to find relevant and engaging edtech solutions for your classroom.

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10 Great Free Websites for High School | Common Sense Education

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10 Great Free Websites for High School is a list of 10 apps, games, and websites curated by Common Sense Education editors.

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MS & HS

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Parents who will be homeschooling (temporarily) while schools are closed because of COVID-19 can only do so much to keep kids learning, so do your parents a solid and use this time to find subjects that get you excited! There's only so much Netflix you can watch before you get a funny taste in the back of your mouth. As Mike Petrilli wrote in a recent blog post, "It's highly unlikely that our children will learn as much at home as they would have at school. That's OK." To me, at least, this unexpected and largely unstructured break is ideal for finding one's own passion project (or more than one)! Here are some educational YouTube channels that have helped me find and explore my interests:
The Art Assignment
Produced by PBS digital, this channel-which is hosted by art curator Sarah Green-asks the big questions about art and tackles some of the most common critiques of art in general and of contemporary art in particular. Because most museums are closed (though you can and should visit a few virtually, including the Musée d'Orsay, the Van Gogh Museum, the Uffizi Gallery, and even the Guggenheim), this channel is the perfect entry into thinking deeply about why art matters. Whether or not you like modern art, videos like " The Case for Conceptual Art" and " Art Is Pretentious and other things I learned about art from the Internet" will make you reflect on why people make art and what art has to offer. The Art Assignment (as its name might suggest) also gives "assignments." The host meets with artists who issue these "assignments" based on their work (no, not finger painting; more like creating a flyer for an event that does not exist). And because you may be avoiding restaurants for a while, look out for their Art Cooking videos and perhaps learn to cook like Salvador Dalí (among others).
Ours Poetica
This channel, coproduced by The Poetry Foundation, recreates the best part of elementary school: being read to! The poems range from classics such as Lewis Carrol's "The Walrus and the Carpenter" and Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" to "Good Bones" by Maggie Smith and "Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem" by Matthew Olzmann. The videos are short-two to seven minutes-and are read either by poems' own authors or by other writers who love them. Each video starts with a thirty-second introduction by the reader, explaining why they love the poem. Their love for literature is contagious.
3Blue1Brown
Run by Grant Sanderson, the man behind Khan Academy's Multivariable Calculus Series, this YouTube channel covers linear algebra, calculus, 3-D geometry, probability, and a little physics. Though the list of topics may seem a bit intimidating, the gorgeous animation and clear visual explanations make even " the hardest problem on the hardest test " approachable and intuitive. The stunning graphics mean that math once obscured by complex notation is now accessible to anyone with a solid foundation in algebra and some curiosity. Sanderson takes a new approach to math, saying, "When people engage with fiction, no one ever asks, 'When am I going to use this?' The same thing fiction can do for people, so can math. There's wonder and mystery-and once there's a story, you can go behind the mechanics." After watching his videos, it's hard to disagree.
Numberphile
Featuring a rotating cast of mathematicians and professors, this channel highlights almost every field within math. From ancient geometrical proofs to cutting-edge mathematical research, there's something for everyone. This channel also highlights the human side of mathematics, focusing on the individual professors and researchers sharing their favorite tidbits. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and you too will start to look forward to the crinkle of their trademark brown paper.

This YouTube channel is run by Vi Hart, a self-described "mathemusician and philosopher." Characterized by a goofy, surrealist style that belies its true educational value, this channel is almost certainly unlike any math class you have ever taken (for instance, it contains a video on Borromean onion rings). Anyone interested in fractals, conic sections, and the Fibonacci sequence, as explained by stick figures, should check out her " Doodling in Math Class" series. For those intrigued by infinity, her aptly titled " Infinite Series " is the thing. So long as you have a taste for the absurd, these math videos are exceptionally approachable!
History on Trial (Ted-Ed)
This series, by Ted-Ed (whose entire channel is great), was recommended to me by a good friend. The conceit, putting historical figures on trial, lends itself to drawn-out dinner table debates and lots of fun. It also encourages nuance in historical thought. At about six minutes each, the itch to dig deeper afterward is almost impossible to resist. Some notable defendants include Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, and Richard Nixon.
Journey to the Microcosmos
You may or may not have heard of the tardigrade (adorable microscopic water bear), but Journey to the Microcosmos will introduce you to other microorganisms. If you have ever struggled with a school microscope to see a blur that is, apparently, some sort of microorganism and wished you could distinguish any features, this channel's gorgeous videography will more than satisfy your desires. Endosymbiotic theory is never better than with crystal clear visuals of assorted Eukaryotes. The almost hypnotic voiceovers and soothing music make this a sort of bedtime story for the biology enthusiast. All you need to enjoy these videos is a healthy sense of wonder at the beauty of the natural world.
Minutephysics
Via illustrations done in magic marker and explained by stick figures, Minutephysics delves into the nuances of physics and doesn't shy away from any of the complexities. The short videos (typically one to ten minutes) are the perfect combination of mad scientist ( How to Build a Lava Moat) and distinguished professor ( a series on special relativity). The clear images and helpful analogies render even more complex videos clear to anyone with a decent understanding of geometry and algebra. In fact, for his series on special relativity, he built a diagram that "does the math of special relativity" for you and allows the viewer to focus on the physics at play.

If you have fond memories of field trips to the Natural History Museum, Eons, coproduced by PBS Digital and Complexly (the production company behind Crash Course), will bring you back to the Hall of Fossils of your childhood. With gorgeous graphics and ten- to fifteen-minute videos hosted by a variety of enthusiastic science communicators, what more could you want? This is intended for slightly younger audiences-but if you, like me, never outgrew your fossil phase, it is informative and tons of fun.

Wash your hands, and learn something interesting!

A note to parents: Both the Art Assignment and Ours Poetica may contain some material not suitable for younger kids, so consider giving them a onceover beforehand. Are you looking for YouTube channels, streaming videos, podcasts, and more for elementary school students? See Mike Petrilli's suggestions here.
Emma Finn is a tenth grader at Phillips Exeter Academy and the granddaughter of a certain someone at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

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Great YouTube channels for middle schoolers and high schoolers for learning from home during COVID-19 school closures

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Parents who will be homeschooling (temporarily) while schools are closed because of COVID-19 can only do so much to keep kids learning, so do your parents a solid and use this time to find subjects that get you excited! There's only so much Netflix you can watch before you get a funny taste in the back of your mouth.

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all grades - various subjects

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Hand-picked tools for every scenario, all well-suited for use during the coronavirus pandemic.

It's tough in a typical school year to serve each student's unique learning needs, but the coronavirus pandemic has transformed the meaning of meeting all students "where they are." For many, this means converting some or all elements of your teaching and curriculum to distance learning.

We've heard from educators how overwhelming it can be to wade through the dozens of emails and articles with hundreds of "great apps for distance learning" from people and companies that possibly have their interests -- and not yours -- in mind. That's why we've curated this short list of free, quality classroom resources for each grade band and subject area. Each tool has scored well on our research-based ratings rubric. More importantly, each tool is something we think would work well given the unique circumstances of the pandemic. Of course, you'll also want to dig in to their privacy and safety practices, so make sure to check out the privacy evaluations on the review pages (when available).

Elementary school math and science

Elementary school ELA and social studies

Free, expansive digital library unlocks treasure trove of books
Price: Free for teachers
Platforms: iOS, Android, Chrome

K-2 literacy program offers comprehensive, adaptive activities
Price: Free and paid versions
Platforms: Web

Elementary school arts and creativity

Middle school math and science

Middle school ELA and social studies

Middle school arts and creativity

High school math and science

High school ELA and social studies

High school arts and creativity

Check out our Common Sense Selections for Learning to find best-in-class media resources and tools that facilitate great learning experiences for students and educators.

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Distance Learning Short List: Best Free Resources by Grade and Subject | Common Sense Education

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It's tough in a typical school year to serve each student's unique learning needs, but the coronavirus pandemic has transformed the meaning of meeting all students "where they are." For many, this means converting some or all elements of your teaching and curriculum to distance learning.

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Terrific Websites for Science | Common Sense Education

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Terrific Websites for Science is a Top Picks list of 46 apps and websites curated by Common Sense Education edtech editors.

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identifies which one is best for which grades

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Great Social Studies Apps and Websites | Common Sense Education

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Great Social Studies Apps and Websites is a list of 42 apps, games, and websites curated by Common Sense Education editors.

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move away from the textbook to other tools

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G Suite

It's easy to feel anxious, overwhelmed and frustrated if you're asked to create elearning activities and teach remotely because of a school closure.

You might be asking ...

What are my students going to do?

How can they continue learning at a high level?

Can I maintain that teacher/student connection through elearning?

How can I keep up with the demands of elearning?

Some ideas and examples to follow can help. Having some plug-and-play activities to assign students can help, too -- even if you need to adjust them to fit your students' needs.

We've got you covered.

In this post, you'll find 100 elearning activities, templates and tutorials. They'll help you create elearning activities that lend themselves to powerful learning when students are away from school.

Some ideas to keep in mind as you roll out your eLearning activities:

Keep communication with students and parents at the forefront. Be ready for questions. Make your communication more thorough than you anticipate.

Simplicity is key. Activities that are too complicated can be hard to follow through without the proper support.

Make space for students' emotional needs, too. Their routine is disrupted. They don't get to see their teacher or their fellow students. Help them to make those connections while they're away.

Don't be too hard on yourself. If you've never taught with eLearning activities, it'll be a learning process. Do your best. Learn and improve.

Lean on others for support. Use social media and colleagues in your school/district to brainstorm ideas.

Here are over 100 remote learning activities, templates and tutorials you can use tomorrow:

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Downloadable planning guides

Lifetime access

Forum for sharing ideas

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Looking for more teaching ideas like these?

Get three FREE ebooks sent right to your inbox!

101 Practical Ways to Ditch That Textbook, Matt's insanely practical guide full of new teaching ideas.

101 Ways to Ditch That Textbook with G Suite, tons of practical, creative ways to use Google tools in the classroom.

50 FREE Templates for Teachers, with templates you can copy and download to assign directly to students.

Do More with Google Classroom

Teach better. Save time. Make a difference.

The short how-to tutorials on Google Classroom are EVERYWHERE. But how do we teach well with it? In this book, you'll find practical ideas to do great teaching with Google Classroom and thrive.

Looking for more remote learning resources? Our distance learning page has TONS of resources for bringing learning directly to your students no matter where they are! 💻 100 remote learning activities templates and tutorials
💻 Distance learning lesson planning guides and templates
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©2023 Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller.

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100 remote learning activities, templates and tutorials

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Remote learning activities can be fun AND promote quality learning. Here are lots of examples and templates to use!It's easy to feel anxious, overwhelmed

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a padlet of resources with extensive information and examples of the visible thinking routines and the pedagogy behind

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Yoga Moves to Relieve Tension in the Neck & Shoulders

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yoga "yoga videos" "free yoga videos" "yoga for weight loss" "yoga for beginners" "morning yoga" "home yoga practice" "yoga with adriene" "at home yoga"

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WELCOME to Yoga With Adriene! Our mission is to connect as many people as possible through high-quality free yoga videos. We welcome all levels, all bodies, all genders, all souls! If you're brand-new to yoga, check out my Yoga For Beginners and Foundations of Yoga series.

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Squats

Squats are also a full-body movement, engaging your core while strengthening your glutes and quads. Robin Arzon, an RRCA certified running coach, NASM certified personal trainer, and Schwinn spin instructor, says to relax your upper body and keep your shoulders away from your ears. Stand with your feet spread, shoulder-width distance apart, and begin to engage your core and bring your hips back. Sit back as if you were aiming for a chair that was 90 degrees or lower. "You don't want to overextend your lower back, [as to] protect your spinal column," she says. "You want to get below the 90 degree angle with your hips and glutes to really fully activate your glutes and quads." Your weight should be closer to the balls of your heel, so that you could wiggle your toes at the bottom of the move. This enables you to push yourself back up. To make this quick workout move more challenging, hold a weight in your hands.

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Sneaking In These 60-Second Exercises Can Transform Your Body

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Squats are also a full-body movement, engaging your core while strengthening your glutes and quads. Robin Arzon, an RRCA certified running coach, NASM certified personal trainer, and Schwinn spin instructor, says to relax your upper body and keep your shoulders away from your ears.

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How to get unstuck from your anxiety.

Credit...

By

In this emotional equivalent to an ultramarathon, it's key to have some stress-reducing strategies available that work quickly and efficiently to help you hit the reset button.

Here's why: Struggling with chronic worry gets in the way of effectively managing your emotions. Unfortunately, many people who experience distress try to escape their unpleasant emotions by distracting themselves in ways that ultimately backfire.

If you suspect you might be one of them, ask yourself whether you have a tendency to judge your emotions - it's a common thing to do. But it can fuel a vicious loop of feeling, then avoiding the feelings and feeling even worse. Pushing away feelings is like trying to force a beach ball underwater: They will pop back up. Instead, notice and normalize difficult emotions; ideally, negative feelings, including fear, can motivate us to solve problems.

So rather than dealing with anxiety and uncertainty by getting lost worrying, then chasing short-term fixes with longer-term consequences, like procrastinating, using food or marijuana to cope or relying on benzodiazepines - the anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax - it's helpful to experiment with quick strategies that will empower you. These strategies are not necessarily a cure, but can help lower the intensity of overwhelming emotions, allowing you to recalibrate to better deal with challenges you face.

My patients often reflect that an additional perk of strategic coping is boosting your sense of mastery - the hope that arises when you stretch yourself and accomplish something difficult, like coping with your anxiety in a productive way.

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Focusing on relaxing sounds reduces stress. In research spearheaded by Dr. Veena Graff, an assistant professor in the department of anesthesiology and critical care at the University of Pennsylvania, preoperative patients were assigned either to music medicine - listening to Marconi Union's " Weightless " - or prescribed a benzodiazepine. Remarkably, serene music proved nearly as effective in easing patients' jitters as the medication option, with no side effects.

To honor your unique taste, explore different options and create a playlist that you find comforting when you need a break. Keep in mind that although it can seem cathartic to hear songs that validate your emotions (for example, listening to lyrics about heartache while feeling lonely), research on inducing varying mood states concludes that we can improve our experience with a more uplifting soundtrack. "Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear," as Dr. Oliver Sacks wrote in "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain."

Marsha Linehan, a professor emeritus in psychology at the University of Washington, popularized an exercise in dialectical behavior therapy to regulate intense emotions that involves immediately lowering your body temperature by creating a mini plunge pool for your face. This sounds odd, but it activates your body's dive response, a reflex that happens when you cool your nostrils while holding your breath, dampening your physiological and emotional intensity.

To do it, fill a large bowl with ice water, set a timer for 15 to 30 seconds, take a deep breath and hold your breath while dipping your face into the water. While this isn't conventionally relaxing, it will slow your heart rate, allowing blood to flow more easily to your brain. I love watching my clients try this over our telehealth calls and seeing firsthand how quickly this shifts their perspective. Just being willing to do this, I tell my clients as they prepare to submerge, is a way to practice being flexible.

One of my favorite ideas that never fails to fill me with gratitude, no matter what else is happening, comes from the mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn, who likes to say, "As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you." In "The Healing Power of the Breath," Drs. Richard Brown and Patricia Gerbarg offer a range of exercises to promote resilience. One of my favorites: Slow your breathing down to six breaths a minute by consciously inhaling and exhaling (to practice this timing, you can use a secondhand and inhale for five seconds, exhale for five seconds, and repeat four times, or try a guided recording). Paced breathing offers a host of physiological benefits, like reducing your blood pressure, which helps promote a sense of tranquillity. When people tell me it feels challenging to breathe in a certain way when they feel panicked, I tell them to start with alternative soothing activities, like music, and work their way up to paced breathing.

Another way to stay present rather than spin into a crisis is to notice if you are engaged in thinking that isn't helping you. Our interpretations of events supercharge the intensity of our emotions. After all, anticipating, "This will go on for years!" in a moment of anguish will only inspire more hopelessness. But mindfulness, or learning to see more clearly as opposed to jumping to conclusions, is a nice remedy for anxiety. One brief way to enter the moment is known as "anchoring," a popular strategy.

The Coronavirus Outbreak ›

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated August 4, 2020

I have antibodies. Am I now immune?

As of right now, that seems likely, for at least several months. There have been frightening accounts of people suffering what seems to be a second bout of Covid-19. But experts say these patients may have a drawn-out course of infection, with the virus taking a slow toll weeks to months after initial exposure. People infected with the coronavirus typically produce immune molecules called antibodies, which are protective proteins made in response to an infection. These antibodies may last in the body only two to three months, which may seem worrisome, but that's perfectly normal after an acute infection subsides, said Dr. Michael Mina, an immunologist at Harvard University. It may be possible to get the coronavirus again, but it's highly unlikely that it would be possible in a short window of time from initial infection or make people sicker the second time.

I'm a small-business owner. Can I get relief?

The stimulus bills enacted in March offer help for the millions of American small businesses. Those eligible for aid are businesses and nonprofit organizations with fewer than 500 workers, including sole proprietorships, independent contractors and freelancers. Some larger companies in some industries are also eligible. The help being offered, which is being managed by the Small Business Administration, includes the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. But lots of folks have not yet seen payouts. Even those who have received help are confused: The rules are draconian, and some are stuck sitting on money they don't know how to use. Many small-business owners are getting less than they expected or not hearing anything at all.

What are my rights if I am worried about going back to work?

Should I refinance my mortgage?

It could be a good idea, because mortgage rates have never been lower. Refinancing requests have pushed mortgage applications to some of the highest levels since 2008, so be prepared to get in line. But defaults are also up, so if you're thinking about buying a home, be aware that some lenders have tightened their standards.

What is school going to look like in September?

It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California's two largest public school districts - Los Angeles and San Diego - said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won't be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation's largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There's no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.

Start by physically centering yourself by digging your heels into the floor - this evokes a feeling of being grounded in reality. Then take a moment to observe: What am I thinking? Feeling in my body? Doing? Then ask yourself: Is my response: A) Helpful? B) Aligned with my values now? Or C) Related to future worries or a past problem? While we can get stuck in specific thoughts, stepping back to more generally decide if those thoughts are helpful can get us out of rumination mode. It may also help to tape a list of these prompts on your computer to remember to take a step back and refocus when your thoughts are only making things worse.

If you struggle with physical sensations of anxiety, like muscle tension and feeling like you can't get enough air, a counterintuitive yet important way to manage is to practice bringing on those sensations in more quiet moments to improve how you tolerate stressful ones.

Learning to repeatedly welcome physical symptoms allows you to stop seeing them as catastrophic. In a recent therapy group I led on Zoom, my clients prepared to try this by ordering thin coffee straws. I set my timer for a minute as they pinched their noses and tried to breathe only through the straw.

We also worked on replicating the other sensations they associated with fear, like muscle tension, dizziness and shortness of breath. We held a plank, spun in circles and ran in place. Some people were surprised that the practice experience was worse than the anxiety they normally felt. Others found it was similar, which felt liberating - they didn't have to wait for the feelings to catch them off guard - and instead could purposefully habituate themselves to them.

Recently, at the end of a long day of video calls with patients, my 5-year-old daughter asked, "When will the germs go away?" After removing my 3-year-old's sneaker from my 1-year-old's mouth, I saw a request from a client about an urgent check-in. I practiced paced breathing and pulled up our nightly dance party playlist (by request: Justin Timberlake's "Can't Stop the Feeling") before discussing my daughter's feelings and returning to work.

Now I hope you create your own plan with the strategies above. By practicing managing your emotions, you'll experience a sense of freedom in your life. I don't know about you, but I'd chase that over any mindless short-term alternative.

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How to get unstuck from your anxiety. Credit... By In this emotional equivalent to an ultramarathon, it's key to have some stress-reducing strategies available that work quickly and efficiently to help you hit the reset button. Here's why: Struggling with chronic worry gets in the way of effectively managing your emotions.

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If you are a sleep deprived teacher you may not be aware of the term woodpeckering, but you've probably done it. It happens the day following a bad night's sleep. You're sitting in a long meeting and you can barely keep your eyes open, so you prop your head up with your hand. Next thing you know, you are jerking your sleeping head back to its upright position. Do this a few times and you are woodpeckering.

I thought I knew sleep deprivation when I did my medical internship in hospital. That year I frequently went 36 hours with no sleep. When I finished my residency in neurology, I welcomed the promise of full nights of sleep ever after. It went pretty well for the next 10 years until I became a school teacher and experienced a whole new level of sleep deprivation.

Teachers' working hours go far beyond the 8am to 3pm schedule of kids in school. There are hours spent at faculty meetings, correcting homework, preparing for the next day - and then there is the worrying. Nothing I ever did in a hospital emergency room or doing CPR required the intense mental energy needed to keep 30 kids attentive enough to learn what I was teaching.

Good teachers are like jugglers keeping a dozen balls in the air so come nighttime, with alarm set for 6am to finish grading papers, memories of the day that's gone - including the students who didn't understand something, forgot their lunch or were embarrassed by wrong answers - become sleep-resistant barriers. Add to these financial stress - potential loss of income from spending cuts and job losses - and you have cycle of insomnia with its band of unwelcome consequences.

What is the impact of not getting a good night's sleep?

With inadequate sleep comes irritability, forgetfulness, lower tolerance of even minor annoyances, and less efficient organisation and planning. These are the very mental muscles teachers need to meet the challenges of the next day. In wanting to do a better job the next day, the brain keeps bringing up the worries that deny it the rest it needs.

Studies of teachers' response to high job strain reveal that they spend more time than most people ruminating about work-related issues and their brains take longer to unwind. Sleep hours suffer as well as sleep quality.

We need sleep to think clearly, react quickly, and create memories. It is during the later hours of sleep (especially between the sixth and eighth hour) when the brain releases the neurochemicals that stimulate the growth of the memory connections. The average teacher is reported to sleep six hours a night, falling short of the most valuable sleep time.

It is also during sleep that the brain has some its most profound insights and does some of its most creative problem solving. During the day, the neural networks for highest cognition are kept busy directing the rest of the brain's moment-to-moment decisions, choices, prioritising, and just getting through the day. At night, these executive control circuits are free from those distractions. As seen on brain imaging, these regions can be extremely active during sleep.

After such brain activity, the subjects often awaken with solutions to problems, new insights, and ideas for creative innovation.

How to get a good night's sleep: tips before bedtime

Increasing sleep time from six hours or less to eight hours promotes the growth of the brain connections that increase memory up to 25% and restore emotional calm, alert reflectiveness and job efficiency. Here are some general and teacher-specific tips:

1. The best sleep hygiene includes regular sleep and wake schedules - even on weekends. Exercise is also good, but avoid vigorous exercise in the two hours before bed. Vigorous exercise releases adrenalin and noradrenalin, both stimulants that could delay falling asleep. Vigorous exercise before bed also means it will take longer for your body to cool down to the lower temperature that promotes sleep. That said, calming music and gentle stretching, yoga, and progressive muscle relaxation (going through each muscle group and tensing and relaxing it) before getting into your cosy bed is great.

2. Thinking about what you eat and drink before bed also has an impact. You may think you are avoiding caffeine, but look carefully at teas, soft drinks, cold and headache medications where caffeine may be hiding. Alcohol near bedtime might help you fall asleep, but when it wears off, you'll wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble falling back to sleep.

In the normal cycle, deeper REM sleep does not come until several hours in. Alcohol before bed results in early onset REM thus helps with falling asleep. However, after several hours, the early REM is followed by sleep fragmentation - frequent awakenings. One lies in bed awake and come morning does not feel refreshed. The environment in which you sleep should also be cooler as this is more sleep conducive.

3. For teachers, bedtime rituals can clear your brain of that ruminating about work-related issues so why not have a warm bath with relaxing music before you go to bed?

4. If some worries do wedge themselves into your sleep cycle, write them down on an external notecard. Most importantly, let your last thoughts include self-recognition for the vital work you do and drift to dreamland recalling the day's school successes and the faces to which you brought smiles.
Judy Willis is a neurologist and former teacher. She writes books and does international presentations about how the brain learns best.

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Teacher's guide to sleep - and why it matters

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If you are a sleep deprived teacher you may not be aware of the term woodpeckering, but you've probably done it. It happens the day following a bad night's sleep. You're sitting in a long meeting and you can barely keep your eyes open, so you prop your head up with your hand.

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Over the course of my over forty years as an educator and researcher, I've learned that teachers are often incredibly altruistic and devoted to making a positive difference in children's lives. But too many of them are not well prepared for the social and emotional demands of today's classroom. Stressful conditions-like high-stakes testing or students with severe psychological problems-can lead us to feel discouraged, burnt-out, and ready to quit.

Most teacher training focuses primarily on content and pedagogy, overlooking the very real social, emotional, and cognitive demands of teaching itself. Luckily, learning and cultivating skills of mindfulness -the ability to stay focused on one's present experience with nonjudgmental awareness-can help us to promote the calm, relaxed, but enlivened classroom environment that children need to learn. Mindfulness can also help us to be more effective at reducing conflict and developing more positive ways of relating in the classroom, which can help us feel more job satisfaction.

How does mindfulness do this? By training our minds consciously to become more aware of our inner and outer experience, and learning how to manage our emotions.

In my new book, Mindfulness for Teachers, I outline several mindfulness practices-including focused breathing, open awareness, loving-kindness, and others-that teachers can use in the classroom, whether they want to invoke a sense of mindfulness in the classroom or to become a more mindful person, in general. These practices can help a teacher to slip into a mindful presence when it's most needed, allowing us to pay better attention to the learning environment and our students' needs within the classroom.

Here are some of the many ways that developing mindfulness can help us be better teachers.

1. Mindfulness helps teachers understand our own emotions better

When I teach, I sometimes notice that my mind is so focused on thinking about what I need to do and how to do it that I'm not paying attention to the present moment. I have expectations about how things ought to be and I become attached to them, rather than noticing and accepting how things actually are.

This causes distress, making me emotionally volatile, which in turn affects my perceptions and makes me more sensitive to threat. I may imagine a student's disruptive behavior is intentionally designed to interfere with my teaching when in fact it is the normal behavior of a child who needs help with his self-regulation. If I take his behavior personally, I may lose my temper and say something that makes matters worse.

Practicing mindfulness can help teachers to recognize our emotional patterns and proactively regulate how we behave, responding in the way we want to rather than reacting automatically. It can also help us to savor the positive moments in our job-when we feel the joy of true connection with our students or resonate with the joy and excitement our students feel when learning clicks for them.

2. Mindfulness helps us communicate more effectively with students

During my first year of teaching I had no idea how to get my students to pay attention to my lessons, respond to directions, or behave appropriately. I thought that if I was nice to my students, they would like me, want to please me, and do what I wanted them to do.

However, I was wrong. My students didn't respond or behave that way at all, and, day by day, my frustration grew to the point where I was impatient and snapping at them.

One day a supervisor came to observe my teaching and gave me some important feedback: She told me that I was saying "okay?" at the end of many of my instructions to students, giving them the message that whatever I asked of them was optional. No wonder they were so unresponsive!

After that feedback, I began to monitor myself to break this bad habit, and this helped me see how mindful self-awareness could help me succeed as a teacher.

3. Mindfulness helps us manage students we find difficult

All teachers have problems with particular students who misbehave in the classroom. Mindful awareness helps us attend to what's happening with a child to cause them to misbehave.

Sometimes students misbehave because the environment is inappropriate for their developmental stage-for example, we can't expect kindergarteners to sit quietly listening to an adult talk for long periods of time. Children exposed to trauma in their lives tend to be hyper vigilant-which consumes a lot of cognitive resources, and can lead them to learn more slowly than other students or to be overly sensitive to changes in environment.

Nonjudgmental awareness is an important aspect of mindfulness, too-one that involves accepting things as they are in the present moment. When we first practice mindful awareness, we often notice how hard it is not to judge. But, as we observe ourselves engaging in judgment, we become more aware of it in the moment, our mind begins to settle, and eventually our tendency to judge subsides.

Judgment often induces feelings of guilt and shame. Sometimes teachers judge their students harshly and unconsciously use guilt and shame as management techniques with their students-probably because they've learned these techniques as a child from their own parents. But there's plenty of evidence that this approach doesn't work. Rather than encouraging children to behave, it promotes resentment, distrust, and retaliation.

Mindfully recognizing our emotional responses toward students may help us understand why they are behaving the way they are. If we feel annoyed, the behavior is likely attention seeking. If we feel threatened, the behavior is likely a bid for power. If we feel hurt, the behavior is likely an attempt at revenge, and if we feel discouraged, the student is likely giving up. These feelings can help us respond more appropriately to the underlying issues of our students, and help us shift from a negative appraisal to a state of compassion.

4. Mindfulness helps us set up a positive learning environment

There is a mistaken belief among many teachers that we can and must control our students' behavior. This sets us up for power struggles, where our attempts to control are likely to backfire.

It's far better to create and maintain an effective learning environment by learning to control ourselves. We can control how we communicate, how we behave and where we position our bodies in space. We can set and reinforce expectations and limits. And, we can control the classroom physical space so that it supports learning.

A kindergarten teacher I know couldn't get his students to stop running in the classroom, even after repeated reminders, and he was getting very frustrated. But, once he became mindful of the fact that his classroom furniture was arranged to create distinct "runways" in the class space and remembered that children have a natural inclination to run in open spaces, he could see what needed to be done: he moved the furniture to block the runways, and the children stopped running.

Knowing what's going on in your classroom and with your students is critical to your ability to orchestrate the social-emotional dynamics and the physical spaces that are conducive to learning. Practicing mindful awareness helps you develop the skill of paying attention in the present moment and learning to see what's truly happening in your classroom, allowing you to come up with better solutions to problems you see.

5. Mindfulness helps strengthen our relationship with students

Research on effective classroom management points to the importance of teacher-student relationships. We can set up great management systems involving guidelines and limits, but if our students don't trust and respect us or think we don't respect them, we're in for some challenges.

Giving each student our full mindful attention for even a short period of class time gives them the message "I see you." By making a connection with our students, we let them know we value them as individuals.

Because the goal of school is learning, we naturally tend to signal to students that we value high academic achievement. However, we need to be mindful when we see students displaying non-academic attributes, such as helpfulness, friendliness, creativity, problem-solving, and conflict resolution, and to communicate that we value these as well. Students feel connection with teachers when they know their teachers truly see them and appreciate them.

6. Mindfulness helps us slow down when we need to

Sometimes as new teachers we can be overly concerned about getting through our lesson plans and can unconsciously start to rush. Slowing down and deliberately pausing for a moment of mindfulness can give us time to ask ourselves how we are feeling, what's happening in the classroom, and what our students need at that particular moment. It also models mindfulness for our students.

The speed at which students process information varies. Some students process auditory information very quickly, while others tend to have more visual or sensory-motor strengths. Younger children require more time to process than older children, though adults often forget this. No matter their ages, students process information better when there are given a little extra time, and consciously creating pauses throughout a lesson helps support learning.

Too often teachers forget to pause after asking a question or interrupt student pauses and hesitations, not giving students a chance to think through their answers. Pausing is helpful during lecturing (to give students time to absorb the information and consolidate their thinking) and during student work periods (to give students uninterrupted time to figure things out for themselves). It can also generate feelings of suspense and expectation, enlivening the classroom.

If we rush because we are anxious, we may miss these opportunities to deepen learning. Mindfulness can teach us to wait and be patient and to time our pauses appropriately.

7. Mindfulness helps us build community

Students have a basic need to belong to and contribute to a community. We can foster a sense of community by modeling caring and other prosocial behaviors, instituting caring routines, and mindfully listening to our students.

To cultivate a community of learners, we can provide students with opportunities to collaborate with and help one another-for example by having students work together in groups where each student has a specific task that contributes toward the outcome. Collaborative learning gives students the opportunity to help others and to reflect on the experiences and needs of others, which promotes empathy and perspective taking.

Another way to build community among students is through joint service learning projects, where students work together on giving back in some way to their community. Mindfully taking note of different student strengths and challenges can help teachers make these shared work opportunities enrich student learning and can help build a positive classroom climate.

In all of these ways, mindfulness can help teachers to be the best they can be and bring out the best in their students. Being able to approach a classroom with a sense of calm understanding and the skills to intervene appropriately can make learning a pleasure for everyone.

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Seven Ways Mindfulness Can Help Teachers

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Patricia A. Jennings explains why teachers should cultivate moment-to-moment awareness of thoughts, feelings, and surroundings.