Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/1278320
T H E WO R L D I S YO U R S T U D E N T S ' L A B O RAT O RY STEPHEN GORGONE Santa Ana Educators Association Santa Ana High School " We can have students investigate problems in their environments and develop ways of solving them without the need of the laboratory." S I N C E E N G A G I N G S T U D E N T S with in-class labs, investigations and dissections is not pos- sible in this environment, we are forced to find other ways. We could have students ask and investigate questions about phenomena in their surroundings while learning about themselves and their environments. Students can be asked to go on walks and observe phenomena or organisms from nature they did not notice before. We can have them investigate problems in their envi- ronments and develop ways of solving them without the need of the laboratory. We can help students design experiments they can run on their own with resources available to try and answer questions and solve problems in their environments. We can also use Zoom or Google Meets to create community discussions and breakout rooms of small groups where students talk like scientists about what they are learning while they collaborate on their investigations and problem-solving. This allows the students to act, think and behave like scientists without the normal four-walled classroom we are so familiar with. Shannon Ladwig Stephen Gorgone SHANNON LADWIG Hacienda La Puente Teachers Association Newton Middle School W H E N M A R C H 13 happened and suddenly my stu- dents were not returning to the classroom, I was not returning to the classroom, I was at a loss on what to do. But I knew I could not under any circumstances lose my connections, my relationships, with these kids. So before I started to create online lessons, I stuck with what I knew — connect and stay con- nected. Staying connected to students and families, providing strong online programs, recording lessons, and bringing in fun activities worked for my students. C O N N E C T My distance learning began with making sure all my students replied to Google Classroom. Getting them to do the work would become a challenge, but having them reply with a simple "I'm here" or "I'm connected" worked wonders. I made my first post like this on March 14 and sent home a Remind to parents. A few weeks after the shutdown, I noticed attendance drop- ping and incomplete assignments rising, so I posted a meme about how I felt regarding the pandemic and asked students to reply with a meme of their own using a free meme generator such as Imgflip, and guess what? Over 75 percent of my 140 students responded. Why? I think for the same reasons that students typically do well in class — they felt con- nected, interested, and it challenged them. L E T S T U D E N T S L E A D Finding online sites/programs was not the challenge. Learning how to use and teach them was another thing. One takeaway is that many students at the middle school level need little direct instruction — they want to dive in and on more than one occasion they taught the teacher. Of course, Authentic Connections Still the Core of Teaching 21 A U G U S T / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 0