See how faculty in the School of Education are rising to the challenge this semester to provide unique learning opportunities during unconventional times.
Across America, the coronavirus pandemic has rewritten the 2020 syllabus. Faculty in Elon’s School of Education have faced difficult challenges whether educating students in masked face-to-face settings or in virtual classrooms, while teacher candidates were faced with the challenge of creating a virtual classroom overnight for most of their student teaching experience.
In Assistant Professor of Education Dani Lane’s classes, intentionality came in the form of creating time and space for building relationships through icebreakers that allowed each student to express themselves in a creative manner. This small shift from immediately starting class with announcements and content created environments in which her students felt safe and secure in not only being themselves but being human; a lesson we are all learning.
“As I am learning with my students how to be human, I have found that practicing increased grace, flexibility and empathy have made all the difference in the relationships we are building,” Lane said. “Personally, pivoting in a pandemic means prioritizing relationships, focusing on student well-being inside and outside the classroom, and intentionally embracing the small relationship building moments my students say are the highlight of their week.”
For Mark Enfield, an associate professor of education, the pandemic meant starting the semester giving students a new set of expectations. The first one: Each student will care for each other and help make sure their team members are safe, secure and healthy, as well as challenging and supporting each other academically. “I thought this was a good way to reinforce some of the university’s Ready & Resilient ideas,” Enfield said.
He added that since he doesn’t have any “I’ve always done“ for these courses, he was able to do what was needed to pivot. He has focused on his students taking a more active role in how they learn this semester. “I’m expecting them to be bigger participants in our collective work,” Enfield said. “As a class, they need to care for one another and I’m depending on them to help make the semester work. I’m putting them more in charge of some of their learning.”
Lecturer Erin Hone has embraced technology as a window into math and science classrooms by inviting classroom teachers to speak with her students about their practices in both face-to-face and virtual teaching settings. “We have amazing school partners who have welcomed by students as weekly observers and participants in their classrooms,” Hone said.
She added that the most exciting experience of the semester has been the opportunity for her students to conduct a two-day virtual science camp with children in the community. Using the North Carolina science standards to plan activities, and thanks to a grant received from Elon’s CATL, her students packed individual science tubs with all the materials the students would need to engage in the hands-on experience at home. “The excitement I heard watching my own students apply what they have learned this semester to plan this experience has given me enough momentum for the rest of the semester,” Hone said.
Elementary education alumna Rachel Kowalewski ’20 said her biggest student teaching challenge was to ensure that her students still felt loved and supported even through a computer screen. She maintained that classroom community through weekly meetings every Friday, virtual field trips, activities and games. It was important for her classroom community to thrive in a time of such uncertainty.
Due to the pandemic, “I went into my first-year of teaching being very nervous because it had been months since I had actually been in the classroom, teaching,” said Kowalewski. “It’s hard to learn/experience what it’s like to be a classroom teacher without being in the classroom.”
While it was not an easy pivot, Kowalewski believes she managed the change fairly well. She learned what a strong professional learning community is supposed to look like. Her team of third-grade teachers worked well together to ensure their students were safe, supported and learning. Kowalewski’s main take-away from pivoting in the pandemic was that teaching is hard, no matter the classroom setting. “The teachers I worked with, especially my clinical teacher, served as prime examples of the teacher that I strive to be,” she said.