Virtual Teaching Interview

Virtual teaching became something almost every teacher had to start doing
overnight due to the pandemic. There are many challenges and learning opportunities
that come along with new way of teaching. I interviewed a teacher, Mrs. S. about her
experiences with this new teaching format that teachers were thrown into without much
warning or preparation, and both students and teachers did not receive any training on
how to teach and learn virtually.
We discussed the both the challenges she experienced as a teacher and the
challenges of her students with virtual learning. Mrs. S. stated, “the biggest challenge
I've found so far is getting students to participate, and that students have such varying
levels of participation.” She talked about how in every class, several students, and
sometimes parents, say that there is too much work and they are overwhelmed, while
several other students say they finish the work in no time. In both the amount of work
and the rigor of the work, it is extremely difficult for her to meet everyone's needs.
While differentiation is definitely the answer here, it takes time to differentiate well, and
being thrown into online learning with no preparation for either herself or her students
beforehand means it is a lot of work just to get full class assignments created well and
posted. The second biggest challenge she mentioned is helping struggling students.
However, she did say that “Google Meet is a big help with that, and in this limited
amount of time we've had so far, it's been a lifesaver for differentiation—I can do a
Meet with individual students, and show them my screen, or view theirs, and talk them
through their difficulties.”
The next thing we discussed was challenges the for the students. Students at her
school have all different home situations that either facilitate or prevent online learning,
or some combination of the two. There are many things that can present challenges for
the students. Parents may have very younger children to care for, might have to work
from home, might be essential workers and cannot be home to help, they could be
extremely stressed due to unemployment or other financial hardship, they might be ill
or caring for or worried about someone who is, the family may have no device or
internet or must share these between multiple students, or are not very tech savvy,
“any of these challenges will negatively affect students' work, and we have students
struggling with each of these, and multiple, challenges.”
We also discussed what she has learned during this time and what is working.
Mrs. S. said that cooperating and collaborating with other teachers helps a lot in getting
the participation rate up. She has learned that making things more visual and easier to
work with also helps increase participation. She stated, “I've been app-smashing Google
Slides and Seesaw: The Learning Journal to make interesting and inviting lessons that
are easy and fun for students to complete. For example, my best participation rates by
far are in the classes for which students' other teachers are also using Seesaw, so they
are both using an engaging and easy to learn platform AND they're going to the same
place for multiple teachers.” The resources she is drawing upon during this time include
her fellow teachers, Google Apps, Seesaw: The Learning Journal, and Screencastify (for
recording explanatory videos), plus Class Dojo for messaging parents. She has used
some of these before in her physical classroom, but now she is using all them in her
virtual teaching.
The new reality of virtual classrooms has been a trying time to make it work, but
also a good time because teaching virtually is something that can be done. However, if
it is to be used to its fullest potential it needs to be planned for not only by the teachers
to set up their virtual classrooms and to tailor their lessons, but also by the school’s
technology team. As it is incredibly difficult when there are technology difficulties,
whether it's beyond the teacher's control, or from the teacher just needing to know the
technology better, because it is hard to help students and to maintain their interest
when they are not easily able to use the technology to engage with the instruction.
Teachers and students need to be trained on the necessary technology for virtual
teaching and learning.