If COVID-19 has a silver lining, is it definitely the learning opportunities this shock-event has provided us with as ELT teachers and teacher educators, even in 2021. This year most of us started with more awareness and knowledge about online education and teaching live online, but personally, I feel I’ve come out with more knowledge, skills, new beliefs, and confidence that I would have never developed without this ‘forced’ transition. So as the year-end nears it only seems logical to reflect on what we have learned from another year of teaching and training online.
So what lessons have I learned in 2021?
Managing your own wellbeing is key
If you do not give yourself the chance to disconnect and step away from the online world it can be challenging to recharge. Turn your out of office on for the weekend and allow yourself some time. I know it can be mentally tricky, but the world will not fall apart when you reply on Monday afternoon! If you don’t take care of your own wellbeing, how could you take care of your learners’ wellbeing?
Tip: write in your sign-off message that your working hours might be different from theirs and that you will reply during your working hours and that you are happy if they do the same.
Learning never stops
Change is here now and change will continue to stay with us for as long as we live. Nothing stays the same. So instead of seeing change as a challenge, try to regard it as a learning opportunity to explore. Often we learn most when we are outside our comfort zone and you might even find that you are starting to enjoy new approaches after all when you are becoming more confident! The same for our learners, healthy struggles are equivalent to learning, if it’s all easy in class they aren’t learning much!
Tip: you are not alone and you are certainly not the only one having to adapt faster than Buzz Lightyear! So find yourself a community of others who are experiencing similar changes. We all feel better when we know who we can reach out to for support and give support to as needed.
Normal doesn’t exist.
Do you keep on waiting to start a new project, course or teaching approach until ‘life is back to normal’? Well, maybe it is time to question what ‘’normal’ means to you. I’ve come to the conclusion that normal for me means ‘what I was used to’. This ‘normal’ is no longer true. However, it might have never been true for others living under different circumstances in different contexts! And they could cope!
Tip: Focus on the here and now. Figure out what you can control within your context. Just remember, unexpected events will always happen and it is perfectly fine if your teaching or learning is not going 100% according to plan, imperfect learning or teaching is often good enough!
Be mindful of how you spend your time online
Working-life and home life have blended into one, particular now we are working online most of our days. But be aware of how long it actually takes if you are ‘quickly’ looking online for a different activity for your class tomorrow or to ‘quickly’ read up on the grammar you are working on. 30 minutes have passed before you know it! Be aware of your ‘clicking’ when you work your devices online, because even just ‘writing something up in Word ©’ can take you off to fascinating online research, articles and blog posts that need to be read….
Tip: Block time to work on one major task and solely focus on that before you start your next task for example online research. If possible even give your brain a wee break, 5 minutes in between two tasks!