I think this course will be valuable to me because I will learn and hopefully have a better vision of how education might (hopefully!) change in the next five years. When I received this email from the DOE (emails I usually ignore, sorry!), I was very excited to see how visionary NH was in offering this to teachers. I also really enjoy reading the experiences, perspectives, and opinions of other teachers.

What are your intentions/goals for your learning in this course?   

I hope to create my own vision of my class for the post-2020 environment. I also hope to gain more knowledge to be able to help move my department to incorporate a variety of instructional methods and tools. Ultimately, I hope at the high school level, we see more hybrid type classes in which students could be face to face for 2-3 days and then do asynchronous work at their own pace for 2-3 days. But in order for that to happen, more students, teachers, administrators, and parents need to believe in online/remote learning. 

I think this course will be valuable for me in many ways. First, I am excited to learn about experiences and successes that other NH teachers encountered during remote teaching and the pandemic that may be useful in my teaching. Second, I am eager to discover ways to work with at-risk student populations that encourage online participation and learning. Finally, I can tell that this is going to be a class where I can actively learn and reflect with colleagues with similar interests. 

What are your intentions/goals for your learning in this course?   

I would like to become more confident and competent as a remote ESOL teacher.  Also, I want to discover ways to keep students engaged, to complete classroom assignments, and to encourage attendance. During remote learning, many of my ELLs did not attend classes regularly or complete work, even work that was at their appropriate proficiency levels. 

1.       Hearing the experiences from other educators and gaining insights from their experiences about the pedagogical approaches that have worked best in their contexts. Considering we are going to be virtual again for (at least) the first two months of this course, I hope this will help me understand the teachers I am responsible for in the IB Diploma Programme as coordinator, with a better understanding of the complexities experienced across the whole school as well. 

2.       Compassion Fatigue. While we acknowledged this, it was not yet feeling serious enough to address. We were lucky in the first year to escape most of the crisis due to the country staying relatively protected from COVID directly. But now, with Delta variant sweeping through, I think our community will now experience what most people in the US experienced. I am grateful the book for the course has this as the first module. 

Intentions/Goals for my learning in this course:

1.       Use the effective online learning statements as a model for the IB DP teachers in our first two weeks preparing for online learning.

2.       Glean experiences from other teachers experiences with Compassion Fatigue and use this to better understand teachers in our context.

3.       Revise several lessons for my AP Seminar course for a better virtual experience. I would like to build in more asynchronous elements for the skills, focus on the formative feedback and regular summative (every 2 weeks). While it only requires one lesson, I hope to use the self-assessment of online teaching to consider how I might create a routine lesson or approach that will give the students a sense of regularity.

4.       I like the idea of exploring the “Building a virtual community” for the choice module. I am not sure what that means yet, but I might like to focus on the virtual community of teachers for PD or providing space for educators in our community to connect. Or I might apply it directly to the courses I teach.