Roosevelt’s famous quote ‘People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care’ carries possibly more weight than ever. The unexpected events of the last months required us and our students to change and adapt quickly, for some overnight, to a new learning and teaching environment. For many, this might have been an overwhelming experience. And we all know, that our brains can only learn, process new information, when we feel safe and when we are not in a fight or flight mode. The more we create an environment where learners know we care about them, the more of a positive impact we can make on their general well-being.
Connect– build a relationship with your learners. Maybe you’ve known your learners for weeks or months but how much do we actually know about their home situation, the things they care about in life, the dreams and ambitions that drive them? Before jumping into learning tomorrow, make the effort to connect. Communicate; tell them how you are experiencing the present, ask them to share what’s on their minds or what they hope to do once their English course is over, what their dreams are? A need’s analysis that incorporates learners’ needs and wants is paramount in order to provide learner and learning-centred teaching. Developing an understanding of who our learners are and letting that inform our topic/ material choices as well as what to focus on in your lessons will help to create connections. Inserting collaborative learning opportunities, on and offline, will also enable learners to communicate and connect with each other which is essential if you want to establish a learning community where students feel a sense of connectedness.
Accessibility – make sure all your students can join in. Accessibility online means that we need to think about task design; do all learners have access to this on their devices? Not all learners have got access to an Android device and the same goes for IOS devices, nor do all learners have access to a mobile, a tablet and a laptop! Think about the loading time of Apps or websites you want to use; do they take up a lot of bandwidth or is it easy to access with mobile data? And the most important of all, check if the task is accessible for all learners in class; is the task of the right level and is it achievable for all or do you need to differentiate the task in some way to allow all learners to succeed? The last thing we need in an already stressful context is learners who feel they are not good enough to keep up with other learners or our lessons. Record your instructions, record clarification stages so learners can revisit these and watch at their own speed. Cater for inclusivity and wherever you can create a sense of belonging as for some learners our classroom might well be the only community they have to lean on in these challenging times.
Responsiveness – teach with your learners and their context in mind. Consider their culture, so you can be culturally responsive, which might mean that cameras will be off in certain contexts. Ensure you provide an appropriate level of challenge to make your lessons, not too easy and not too hard. Be learner-focused; be responsive to their learning preferences and wants and be learning-focused; plan according to identified needs. When selecting practice tasks, ensure you focus on what matters the most. Mostly these are the concepts that are not their strongest (yet…) and provide appropriate Apps/ tools for scaffolding. When giving feedback, ensure student-friendly language (so they can understand it…) and if possible make it timely as that will have more impact. Google docs, Kaizena, Whatsapp messages or Speakpipe provide ways of getting various forms of feedback to learners. In case learners email you with questions, ensure you respond in a timely manner so they know you are there for them and that you care.
Enable them – there is little more frustrating than being asked to complete a task but you’ve got no idea where to start and what it should look like! Enable your learners, in particular if you expect them to complete tasks offline. You can provide a model and talk them through the expected learning outcomes in a short recording. Loom, screen-o-matic or screencastify scaffold their learning process. We might be teaching a generation of learners that have grown up with technology or for whom technology is their life, however, that doesn’t mean that they know how to use technology and/or the internet well for educational purposes!