Supporting Students Outside of Class Time
Over the last few weeks, I’ve gotten the chance to talk with a diverse group of educators as they work to adapt rapidly to our new world of online instruction. I’ve found myself both daunted by the challenges that teachers at all levels are facing and impressed by the commitment and resilience in the face of such a sudden and enormous change.
The conversations I’ve personally found hardest have been with teachers who are concerned that their students won’t be able to join their classes for any number of reasons–because they lack internet or device access, because they don’t have a safe or quiet space to study in, because they are taking on more responsibilities in their household, or because they’re facing personal or mental health challenges that make studying difficult, if not impossible.
How can we continue to support students in these situations? Teachers do a lot more than teach; they are also counselors, role models, and sources of emotional support. These myriad functions rely heavily on an in-person connection and a physical space. What, if anything, can be transferred online?
I don’t have definitive answers to these questions, but I think they’re some of the most important questions I’ve seen teachers asking. I want to share a few thoughts on what I do to support my students outside of class time, in case any of these ideas might be useful.
Provide asynchronous support
If students aren’t able to attend live classes, there are still some good tools and options for providing support that can be accessed outside of class.
- Create short recorded videos to explain concepts or assignments. I do this regularly. I’ll create mini-tutorials on topics we aren’t able to cover in class and will make video responses to student questions. I use Zoom, which allows me to record myself speaking and annotating problems; I can then send students a link to the video. You can do this with a free Zoom account. Other online platforms also have similar functions, and you could even use your phone. If your students can’t be in class in real time, they can still get some of the same human connection in a recording.
- Use Google surveys (or another online survey platform) to check in on how students are doing. Before each class, I send students a short survey asking about what they’ve found challenging in the past week, what has gone well, and what they’d like to get out of class. These surveys give students a private forum to share information on how they’re doing; I learn a lot about both the intellectual and personal challenges students are dealing with and can support them accordingly.
- Email or a similar messaging function. Depending on what is available and appropriate for your student population, written messaging can accomplish a lot. I field lots of student questions over email, and I do a fair amount of writing instruction in this way, sending drafts back and forth with notes.
Give low-tech options for assignments
If students don’t have consistent access to a device, one low-tech option is to have them hand-write assignments and take pictures with their phones. There are some online tools like Nearpod and Padlet that allow you to create shared workspaces students can easily post to from a phone.
Make it clear that it’s okay to be struggling
I’ve been trying to start each of my classes recently by reminding students that it’s okay to be having a hard time getting things done. This is not the time for them to beat themselves up about being hyper-productive (or productive at all) in any given week. I find that I need this reminder as much as they do. And these openings have often led to rich discussions about the work students are doing and how they’re doing it, allowing them to serve as great resources for one another.
Talk openly about mental and emotional health
I recently sat in on a webinar for high school students in which the moderator and guest spoke candidly about their own challenges in managing anxiety and the tools they used to do so. As an adult who struggles with depression and anxiety, I found this enormously helpful. It would have been ten times as helpful when I was in high school. I don’t remember ever hearing adults talk so openly about managing mental and emotional health.
There have been moments in some of my classes when it has been obviously right and appropriate to pause in covering the day’s content and instead talk about the larger issues we’re facing around anxiety, fear, uncertainty, etc.. This was true before there was a pandemic, and it feels even more important now. If it’s something you feel comfortable doing and that you feel would be suitable in your teaching environment, these kinds of conversations can be enormously valuable.
In talking with teachers, I’ve been moved by their obvious care for and investment in their students. This comes across strongly in mere minutes of speaking with them online. If this is obvious to me, a stranger, in a few moments of online interaction, I know it will be apparent to their students in the online classroom, over video recordings, and in email. While the feeling of connection may not be as readily apparent online as in person, care and compassion do still travel through the networks of wires linking us together. Your students likely won’t be bothered if you accidentally screen share the wrong document or talk while you’re muted or make any of the dozens of small mistakes that all of us continue to make in teaching online. But they will be able to tell that you care about how they’re doing as people and as learners, and that is no trivial thing.
Cat Powell is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in New York, NY. She spent her undergraduate years at Harvard studying music and English and completed an MFA in fiction writing at Columbia University. Her affinity for standardized tests led her to a 169Q/170V score on the GRE.