My name is Barbara. I am a primary school teacher in Rome, Italy, at the Institute Padre Semeria– Principe di Piemonte, one of the few public schools set within a park. This location allows us to do a lot of outdoor teaching. I teach Italian, history, technology, psychomotricity, music and civic education. My students are 10 years old (grade 5).
My experience in distance teaching began in 2010 with video lessons, live from my class, for children being treated for cancer at the IFO Hospital in Rome. I also use computers and mobile phones with my students at school.
I even have my own TV space on RAI1 during a show called "Uno mattina in famiglia" (“A morning with family”), where I talk about how I teach, which I am now using to explain distance learning.
The news of Covid-19 was so sudden that it had us stunned at first. Nevertheless, we immediately started activating various platforms to be ready to provide distance learning. As soon as I received the authorization from the Ministry of Education, my school manager and consent from my students’ families, I started distance teaching with my class.
The process was not a smooth one though. To organize connections from home with pupils we use several platforms: ZOOM, the online class register AXIOS, EDMODO, Hub class and Google classroom. We luckily were able to get help from a digitally skilled father for some of the platforms set-ups!
The Ministry also allocated funds for teacher training and my school manager organized the various activities together with the "digital animator" to connect with our students and start teaching.
A first platform meeting was organized with our students’ parents where everyone was encouraged to share their doubts, concerns and problems in order to create an internal functional organization for families on the management of spaces and IT tools.
The sharing and cooperation with every teacher was fundamental in constructing the organizational plan, even more so in adapting it to each and everyone’s personal ability as well considering the students’ emotional well-being.
We try to maintain a sense of schedule. The whole class participates in video sessions in the morning at the same time 10.30 / 13. Teachers are always present to make the video lessons as similar as possible to those in the classroom. We write the timetable of the different subjects ourselves to be more organized. And when it comes to children with learning difficulties, the support teacher is also still present to assign and follow personalized tasks to the students even now that we are distance learning. We also have the possibility to connect to the platforms whenever we want.
My teacher team worked on the AXIOS online registry and the EDMODO platform where the homework assigned to the class are posted and where the students upload their homework. The work is based on the topics already covered in the classroom, reviewing concepts with the use of downloadable online materials such as worksheets, adapted from textbooks made available by the publishing houses and special Apps offering interactive exercises and quizzes.
The children use the platforms autonomously to exchange information, study, play, or work on creative projects together. For example, they made cards for Father's Day and shot a video to welcome the first day of spring.
We also try to maintain extra-curricular activities for our students. We created virtual Cineforum meetings and one afternoon a week we watch themed films all together and then work on writing narrative texts. We also do virtual tours inside Museums. We have connect to play and sing the arias of the opera L'Elisir d'Amore for the Opera Theater Project.
The work is carried out respecting the children’s well-being. Most of them were immediately at ease with using computers, tablets and cellphones. We have even seen that children with learning difficulties seem more motivated and confident in their work.
I have noted that children with video lessons are more involved, motivated and ready every morning for lessons and we are happy by recreating the same environment and activities as in the classroom. Even virtually, the community aspect of our learning method is highlighted, where everyone helps everyone.
We have seen that daily training produces great results in terms of autonomy, self-regulation, self-assessment and problem solving by the children. This will also be useful when we return to school. However, as far as the evaluation and assessments of students goes, we teachers are following the indications received from the Minister of Education.
It has been a challenge but I feel it is producing good results.
We have also started studying the impact of distance learning on students. This research is conducted by Prof. Margherita Orsolini from the Faculty of Psychology and Developmental Pedagogy of La Sapienza University. We use the APISMELA, a training package of activities stimulating attention, cognitive control and flexibility, verbal working memory she designed.
As this constitutes a new way of virtual group training, and is the first time the method is used with a whole classroom, the lessons are recorded and will be studied and analyzed to see what implications this method has on students’ learning outcomes, especially students with learning difficulties.
Barbara Riccardi
Barbara Riccardi was one of the finalists of the Varkey Foundation's Global Teacher Prize.
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This piece is part of the Teacher Task Force’s #TeachersVoices campaign, created to bring forward the experiences of teachers working every day to ensure their students continue to benefit from a quality education despite the COVID-19 pandemic. To participate, go to our dedicated webpage.
I'm Hannah Grieves and I’ve been teaching spoken and written English to first- and second-year University students at the Shandong University of Business and Technology in Yantai, China for the past 8 years.
We’d heard about the virus in Wuhan, but it wasn’t until shortly before Spring Festival that we realised the enormity of the situation. Initially people in Yantai were cautious, but not especially concerned. We’re pretty far from Wuhan, we reasoned, so we’ll probably be okay. Let’s buy a few more jars of peanut butter just in case. Then we heard the news about lockdowns across the country, and soon we saw guards at the entrance to our community. Our temperatures were taken when we entered the supermarket and, before long, we were told we would have to register to even leave our community. It was so unlike anything we’d ever experienced before. China is usually busy, full of life, and above all noisy. Suddenly the streets were empty, there were no children playing out and it was quiet. Eerily quiet. We started to feel anxious and uncertain about what to do next.
Our school didn’t have much time to make plans. A week before we were due to start classes, we got a message telling us that we would have to teach our students online for the next couple of weeks. A friend at a bigger university in Shanghai told us that they had been instructed to prepare for four weeks. We thought there was no chance it would be that long, but we got ready just in case.
It’s now week 5 and our students don’t think they’ll be back until the end of April at the earliest, and that’s assuming China isn’t hit by a second wave of the virus. Most of the Chinese staff are using platforms such as Tencent and QQ to run their courses, but most of the foreigners offering speaking classes opted to use Zoom. A huge part of my course focuses on pronunciation of individual sounds and it’s crucial that I not only hear my students but can see them too, so that I can see where in their mouths they’re making the sound and help them make any adjustments.
Just like many other teachers, I hadn’t taught online before and had never tried to chat with a whole class on video call, but to my great surprise it works pretty well. In many ways, it’s been exciting getting to know my students in their home environments – it’s opened up many conversations that might not have happened under normal circumstances. Students can show me their homes, tell me about the foods they’re eating, and discuss how their communities are dealing with the virus. We’re getting to know each other in new ways.
As teachers, I think we often feel like we should know exactly what we’re doing, but when faced with something so new I felt completely out of my depth – how would I cope with any technical issues? How would I make sure my students still feel like they’re learning? How could I make my classes engaging without really being able to read the room? Like many others, I reached out online and thankfully stumbled across the Facebook group “Educator Temporary School Closure for Online Learning” set up by Kirsten Durward. I had found help! So did countless others. It grew and grew and is still growing. There are breakout groups for just about every subject, location, age group, and interest, as well as units to teach people how to use different platforms like Zoom, Seesaw, Google Classroom and Flipgrid. Despite having spent the last nine weeks at home with just my husband and two small children, I feel like I have more support than ever before.
In some countries the problems caused by the pandemic are only just beginning and I know that the effects will be wide reaching and hard to overcome, but educators should know this: ask for help and it will come.
Your colleagues across the world are ready to support you – to offer you help and hope. You are not alone. In the midst of the unknown one thing is certain: teaching will never be the same again. It will be better. How can it not be when there is a whole community of teachers, educators, counsellors, administrators, and experts in just about every field who are reaching out and offering their help to anyone who needs it?
It’s been a real privilege getting to know my new colleagues across the globe and to see the wonderful things that are happening in their online classrooms. I am proud to be part of such an incredible movement of teachers who care, not only for their students, but for their students’ families, their wider communities and colleagues worldwide.
Hannah Grieves
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This piece is part of the Teacher Task Force’s #TeachersVoices campaign, created to bring forward the experiences of teachers working every day to ensure their students continue to benefit from a quality education despite the COVID-19 pandemic. To participate, go to our dedicated webpage.