Covid-19 has restricted everyone to the confines of their homes, especially kids. In such a stressful period in their lives, students are bound to feel pressure and isolation may cause anxiety among students. As a teacher, you need to make sure that you ensure student well-being through virtual classrooms.
Below are a few tips that you can incorporate into your virtual classroom:
These days, students are mostly surrounded by just their families. So, the involvement of parents is beneficial. You may convey to the parents if the child is feeling anxious and ask the parents about the student’s behavior in class. Further, try to counsel the parents on how they can create a more positive environment for their child.
Develop channels of communication to foster engagement with your students. You may create a group on an online messaging platform. However, it is important to make sure that students are actively participating. If time and school policy allows, follow up personally with those who aren’t to ensure that no student is feeling isolated. You may even offer to help with tutoring, additional help with the coursework, etc.
Instead of adhering to traditional assignments topics, to help ease the tension among students, it may be time to make your assignments unique. Try to think of it in terms of how you can improve engagement among your students.
For instance, you can ask your students to make a video blog entailing their daily routine, or a creative photograph assignment of their surroundings.
Staying home may have adverse effects on the productivity of the students. They can get easily distracted by the internet, social media platforms, etc., and the piling coursework may cause some anxiety. So, try to teach a few time management skills for studying at home and help students with a few tools they can use to do their work.
Your students may feel overwhelmed with too much classwork and not being able to step outside may cause some irritable behavior. Work with other teachers in your school, as well as your administrator, to find new and engaging methods of teaching, game play, and lesson reinforcement.
Not everyone can have access to the internet. Try to record your lessons so that your students can download it and watch it whenever they wish to.
In such a stressful time, students may feel unequipped to pay constant attention to the lecture. So, avoid planning long lectures for an improved learning retention rate.
To conclude, here are a few takeaways:
Above all, give yourself some grace. These are unchartered waters. Remind yourself that you are doing the best you can, with the resources given you. And that is what you are the very definition of “essential worker.”
