When Roxanne Veck heard she would be teaching online again this school year, she headed for Hogwarts, the legendary school for witches and wizards featured in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter children’s novels.
“I spent the school year at Hogwarts,” said Vecks, a lower secondary school English teacher at the International School of Port of Spain.
Veck found the Hogwarts virtual background created an upbeat atmosphere for her classroom, now confined to a computer.
As the year progressed, there seemed to be almost a magical transformation to teaching online.
“There definitely were some benefits to teaching online,” said the British-born Veck, a teacher for the past 15 years. If you had asked her this time last year, she said, “I would have been hard-pressed to find positive points, but we became more confident over time.”
Some instruction seemed to work better online. Breakout rooms on Zoom provided quiet, reflective spaces and individualised attention for students. This focus proved impossible in a classroom filled with students.
“Some of my best interactions were one to one or in small groups in breakout rooms,” said Veck. “Students were much more willing to talk about what they were struggling with when they were placed in smaller groups.”
Online teaching, she said, “forced me to grow as a teacher and learn new technology that I will use back in the classroom. There is software where teachers can show videos and keep track of the students watching the videos, which helps monitor their involvement more.”
Veck also said Zoom helped with parent/teacher conferences.
“In school, I often only saw one parent at these meetings. Some parents found it difficult to get away from work to attend. They had to wait in line when they reached the meetings. On Zoom, I often saw both parents at meetings. They could schedule conferences to suit their schedules. The meetings were confidential.”
She plans to transfer many of the lessons learned from online classrooms into the physical one.
“Zoom teaching has opened our eyes to focusing on what is important in teaching. We focused on skill-building and rethought what is really necessary.”
Marvin Libert, a Standard Four and Five teacher at St Joseph Boys’ RC, found online teaching facilitated differentiated learning. “It’s easier to choose different sites online to facilitate student’s needs on different levels,” he said.
Home-based classes also meant parents were more involved in children’s learning.
“I found there was more parental support because parents saw the children’s classes and their behaviour in class right in front of them. We had more parents involved in Zoom meetings.”
Libert said colleagues took note of children’s behaviour in online classes.
“Teachers talked about children with discipline issues in school, and said that many of these children with discipline problems did better at home because they didn’t have the distractions and the bad behaviour around them.”
But Zoom classes had their downside too.
“Some children’s home situation is so d
