Your Classroom is Your Classroom
Written By: Brie Beane

The 5 Big Plays to Maximize Success in a Virtual, Remote or Hybrid Model

Virtual learning and instruction for classrooms, teachers, educators and students.

Your classroom is your classroom! 

It is our responsibility as educators to reach and teach ALL children we serve, but how do we effectively do that now that we are serving in a virtual, remote and/or hybrid model? 

This is the #1 question we have received from educators all over the country. District administrators, building administrators, support specialists, instructional coaches, counselors, and teachers are worried, fearful, frustrated and discouraged on a daily basis.  The struggle is REAL ya’ll, but there is an answer.  Follow these 5 Big Plays in order to Maximize Success regardless of how you are required to deliver instruction.

The 5 Big Plays

Play 1 | The Pre-Game

Social Emotional Well-Being

“You can’t pour from an empty cup.  You have to look after yourself in order to have something to offer others” – Tarynne West.  Educators all over the county are worried about the social emotional well-being of the students who are not showing up to the schoolhouse, not attending virtual sessions, not submitting work, and not relying to communication attempts from the school or the teacher(s), but in order to give the best of us to our students, we must first reach our best self. Identifying your stressors, establishing consistent routines, developing a self-care plan and staying accountable to that plan will set you up for success. 

Play 2 | The Rulebook

Building Processes, Procedures, Routines and Relationships

Identifying and teaching your expectations for virtual instruction; identify, communicate and teach your procedural routines; and establishing and building positive and lasting relationships are essential in order to maximize success. 

“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel” – Carl W. Buechner.  Teacher-student relationships are one of the most important factors in determining overall positive outcomes for students.  John Hattie’s research indicates that building positive teacher-student relationships yields over one year of growth impact on a child prior to even delivering instruction.  I cannot stress this play enough, Relationships Matter!!  Rita Pearson said it best when she said, “Children don’t learn from people they don’t like.”

 Play 3 | The Huddle

Virtual Professional Learning Community

“Professional learning communities are the lifeblood of school improvement” – Janna Sells. PLCs should never take a back seat to our necessary daily routines as an educational organization.  Whether you meet face-to-face or in a virtual professional learning community, you should maintain a consistent meeting agenda, engage in regularly scheduled rotations, and collaboratively plan and align virtual instruction with your colleagues to ensure equitable delivery of instruction.

Play 4 | Game Time

Virtual Engagement

Best practice doesn’t change because your classroom design changed.  We do not have to go out and learn how to teach in a completely different way, but instead take what we know how to do and tweak it to successfully deliver that same best practice in a virtual, remote, or hybrid setting.  Imagine you are switching cars for a short time.  It still gets you where you’re going, it just looks and feels different.  Maintaining familiar practices – such as taking attendance, student discourse, and eliciting student response are essential best practice strategies that should be continued.  Consistently embedding active participation strategies, to include verbal, written and action responses into your instructional delivery will keep students engaged and participating.  “The people doing the talking, are the people doing the learning” – Dr. Anita Archer.

Play 5 | Post Game Analysis

Feedback, Assessments and Grading

How do you ensure that your students are learning what you are teaching them?  Data!  The data we collect tells us most of what we need to know.  Assessments should be used to measure the learning of our students, not simply for obtaining grades.  In addition to assessments, virtual conferences, written or oral feedback on student work, and virtual student data notebooks are vital components to ensure we are continuously relying on our data to drive our decision making on a daily basis.

Our students need us more than we may ever know.  We are their structure, their security, their teachers.  Following the 5 Big Plays above will help you to Maximize Success in a Virtual Setting.

Check out our Virtual Learning Playbook for downloadable access to templates and a step-by-step guide to these Big Plays.