What My Students Really Thought About the Move to Online Learning
What My Students Really Thought of the 2019-2020 School Year
Feedback is how you know an adventure is complete. Even if it is in stages. I love feedback, specifically, I love critical feedback. I often will immediately scour through my surveys at the end of the year and look for areas that need improvement. I always feel warm and fuzzy from a child’s comment about me being nice, awesome, or their favorite teacher. That is the ultimate compliment. Because that means that I can single-handedly change a student’s day. These comments are on my surveys each year. However, I often find myself looking through the feedback for the points that sting a little or the ways to make my classroom better.
I look for… “It was boring.”
I look for… “I didn’t like when we did…”
I seek out the… “class went so slow when….”
When we stop improving, we stop growing and adapting. Engagement is the ultimate tool for feedback. Because in engagement, resides respect, safety, and compassion. Now, the end of the 2019-2020 school year felt a little different. There were so many variables out of our control as teachers. Just to name a few: Online learning, technology, fear and trauma associated with being quarantined, illness, racial and social disparities, homelessness, students with disabilities and ELLs facing learning from home, and more. Finally, with the protesting in response to the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and more, and the inability to talk about these issues face-to-face, my survey felt superficial. I knew what didn’t go right. But, I knew that the key was to still ask my students what they thought because their opinions matter. I finally got the courage up to look at their responses from the end of the year. This post is a report of my findings of perceptions as to me as a teacher, evaluations of face-to-face learning and online learning, and their overall journeys with their own reading this year. It is important to note that you will see 68 responses to my survey. I had 140 students this year, but the variables of online learning that made connecting with all students difficult, also presented a barrier to administering an end-of-year survey where all voices were heard. This is feedback in and of itself.
Perceptions of the Teacher
This section was a new section that I added this year because I was inspired after reading Pernille Ripp’s end-of-year survey from 2017. I always felt like these questions were sometimes begging for compliments, but I liked how Pernille phrased her questions, particularly the first one: “I feel … knows me as a person.” Particularly with a focus on online learning for the fall, I don’t want identity work and the importance of knowing our students to get lost in the shuffle. It is already difficult to wrap our minds about the idea of returning to classrooms that look nothing like what we knew before, but I want to renew my focus in understanding who my students are-even if I have to get to know them through virtual means when August comes around.
I included the questions, the responses and recommendations, and my final reflections for each section.
I feel Mrs. Hampton knows me as a person.
77.9% of students surveyed feel like I know them as a person. (4 or 5 on a scale of 1-5)
Many students said not having to go into quarantine would have helped me get to know them better (Sixth-graders always impress me with being so wise).
They wanted me to ask more questions and give assignments about who they are as people.
>>There is work to do here. Roughly 3 of 4 students thought I knew them as a person. This tells me that the focus on building rapport and relationship cannot just be innate. We have to be purposeful about knowing who our students are as people. I am immediately doing to look at the first marking period assignments I am planning for and making revisions to those assignments. I also think coming back to this work frequently is how we maintain relationships throughout the year.
How has Mrs. H helped you as a student? How could she have helped you better?
Students wanted help being more creative. I always come back to the power of stories each year even though the curriculum will often drive you to argumentative and expository genres of writing. What a great reminder that even when doing argumentative and expository types of writing that you can include stories. Kids love stories. Finding relatable ways to make all genres of writing personal is a great piece of feedback.
Students wanted help with essays and ACT/SAT Practice. Test-prep is scary. Many of my students felt they did not receive enough help with this in my sixth-grade classroom.
>>Kids wanted help with creativity. This means I need to look at the number of outlets I am providing with creativity. Routine is needed in middle school, but when does it turn boring. Students asking for more creative means to me that they want more fun. I need to insert more fun into my lessons.
What would you change in how Mrs. H teaches?
They wanted me to slow down and give more time for quality work.
They wanted me to switch up my background music in independent reading. (I love Chill Hop stations on YouTube, what can I say?)
They asked for more group work and collaborating with peers.
>>I feel like this bit of feedback goes back to the students’ need to the ones doing the talking in my classroom. Perhaps, there was too much talking on my end. Even when we are reading a book together out loud, how do we infuse the student’s voice? I feel like I want to take a certain number of weeks of the school year and have someone track the number of minutes I am talking in class. This feedback would be indicative of the power of voice in my classroom. I think this piece will be critical as we move forward into online learning when mute buttons are available and often online sessions turn into lecture series.
What advice would you give to a new sixth-grader in Mrs. Hampton's class?
Take notes because if you don’t stuff can get confusing.
Just make sure to write any upcoming assignments in your planner!!!
Don't judge quickly.
Always pay attention and have a little bit of fun
don't stress, it’s not as hard as it's ramped up to be.
Be ready for the long essay assignments
pay attention because if you don’t you'll miss a lot of important things
Favorite Kid Comments:
This part is just fun. They think I am crazy and energetic. They are also aware that I have grumpy days. I look for comments in my surveys to let me know that I was myself around my students because then I did my job. I showed them who I was as a person AND as a teacher.
I love the amount of energy and love Mrs. Hampton gives to her students. Even if she is done.com with people, she still treats her students with dignity and respect no matter what she feels inside.
a teacher who has lots of energy at 7 am because of coffee, nice but can get grumpy and fun
Short, crazy lady with a bun and lots of coffee, energy, and books. I swear she lives in Barnes & Noble.
She is the best teacher in the 6th-grade wing and she will help you with anything... ANYTHING and she is very diligent with work if you have things going on
Get ready for a crazy lady skipping around the classroom while she reads a book to the class.. 2nd greatest experience in my life.
Teacher
Face-to-Face Learning
The school year was cut short, and I remember looking back and remembering that the last few months of school are such a great period of transformation each year. Did my students still transform? Yes. I was just upset that I wouldn’t be there to experience everything with them. However, I was interested in the feedback from August-March. Overall. in General English, 68% of my students loved Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes. I am excited to say that this made it into the district curriculum for good for next year. They also liked doing the Biographical Report assignment. I feel like I will tie in a personal piece with this to help with the feedback regarding relationship and rapport for next year.
Advanced English also echoed that they loved Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes and Graphic Novel Book Clubs. I am definitely keeping Graphic Novel Book Clubs for next year. I love the accessibility and immediate engagement that they provide. I even thought about starting them earlier in the year to build a sense of community around images. Something interesting that I would love to hear about from more people is that this is the third year in a row that kids have not liked Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor. They think it is too tedious, contains too much imagery, and is not interesting. This is one of the instances where I have an internal battle over loving a piece of literature and hearing this critical feedback from my students. I am not sure it will be in the curriculum next year, as I can find more current novels that touch on the same themes.
Kids love Friday Free Write. I have to admit, I lost some momentum this year. I think adding in different writing prompts and activities will help bring this routine back to life. I find that my students just want the time to be given to write. They also want to listen to their own music. The most important part of this activity is sharing out story ideas each week. It teaches listening, and it helps to build community as students get a chance to support their peers.
Cue the transition into online learning with the technology question. Even though I gravitated toward Quizizz this year, kids love Kahoot. Hands down. It was interesting because I did not get great feedback about Flipgrid and that platform is one of the main ones in the conversation of platforms to use in the fall to build engagement with online learning. They also didn’t like Padlet. I LOVE Padlet as a resource for a discussion board. The best internal dialogues from these types of surveys come from the students’ critical feedback about something you love. It makes you question what you like about it as a teacher.
Online Learning
Where to begin with online learning.
While I asked them about the individual assignments, I also asked them about how they felt it went and what we can improve if we have to do online learning again. I think moving forward, I need to figure out a way to get student voice back at the center of online learning. It was so hard with 35 children on mute to teach. It felt like a lecture hall where everyone was sleeping. Staring at little circles with initials felt so impersonal. I would opt for scheduling small groups when possible, maintaining family contact, and even be willing to drop care packages off to students. Again, looking at the feedback, the favorite assignment was creative stories at the end with zombies.
I wanted to include this graphic to start a discussion among teachers. I asked them about their level of effort. I got so tired of hearing that kids didn’t want to participate or would just sign in and walk away. Our kids want to be around learning. It is when learning isn’t fun or engaging that they will walk away from our instruction. The difference is that in face-to-face learning, they are forced to sit and participate. When given the option, we have to make our classes the choice. We also need to grade accordingly. I repeatedly said to others, if you are grading anything during this time you are grading privilege. I get those grades to incentivize students. I get that students need the motivation to participate. I get all of this. However, the system is broken. I teach to make learning fun-not to assign grades. It was freeing to me as an educator to have the ability to remind students that as long as they were trying, they are getting credit. And for those students I knew couldn’t access online learning for whatever reason, they got credit anyway. For the fall, I want to review these questions in my mind as we come back to online learning:
How can I incentivize participation and engagement without grades?
How can I call upon students’ voices in whole group sessions? How do I empower student voice in small group sessions?
How do I continue to offer identify work throughout the rest of the year?
Reading/Reading Appreciation
While my blog is called Writing Mindset, reading and reading appreciation is still the most important thing that I do on a daily basis as a teacher. Readers create writers. The move to online learning has been challenging in terms of reading and reading appreciation, to say the least. I am working on another post about how I am going to set up my classroom library and continue to make stories available to all of my students even if we are far away. The top activities that my students connected to the most in terms of reading:
Choice reading
Listening to book talks from me
Going to the library on Thursdays
Graphic novel book clubs
I immediately started thinking about how to sustain these activities moving into the new school year. I am not sure many of them can travel into an online learning format. However, I think I have ideas on how to structure book clubs, book talks, and continuing to work with my school librarian to make materials accessible to students.
Reflections for 2020-2021:
FOCUS ON IDENTITY WORK AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SCHOOL YEAR AND AT THE TOP OF EACH MARKING PERIOD.
STUDENT VOICE NEEDS TO BE HEARD MORE IN MY CLASSROOM-IN PERSON AND ONLINE.
CONTINUE TO MAKE READING AND BOOKS ACCESSIBLE TO MY STUDENTS MOVING INTO THE NEW YEAR.
FOCUS ON INFUSING CREATIVE ELEMENTS INTO AS MANY ASPECTS OF INSTRUCTION AS POSSIBLE.
RENEW MY OWN ENERGY FOR MAKING FRIDAY FREE WRITE FUN.
REVIEW GRADING POLICIES AND SYSTEMS SO THEY CAN ADAPT TO ONLINE LEARNING (EQUITABLE, FAIR, ETC)