Read on Twitter
Things my 4th- & 5th-grade students have achieved this school year:
-typing, navigating thru different technologies & platforms & multiple online virtual meetings, mute/unmuting themselves with sonic awareness of backgrounds, entered most assignments on google classroom 1/
-typing, navigating thru different technologies & platforms & multiple online virtual meetings, mute/unmuting themselves with sonic awareness of backgrounds, entered most assignments on google classroom 1/
Most according to F&P reading levels, have improved reading since the fall, esp. now that they need to read/write so much to navigate online platforms; one even used "cyan" to describe a color in a chromatography lesson; they learned the word from Among Us character making; 2/
Because we can use digital games, videos, audio technologies, students have multimodal means of learning that they wouldn't have had access to in the regular classroom since public schools didn't provide 1-1 tech to students before the pandemic; been great for all subjects; 3/
Because assignments are due at the end of the day now rather than a rushed fixed amount of time in-person, a lot of students report they're more relaxed about submitting assignments; they also can text, chat, message me for help in ways that weren't possible in the classroom 4/
There's a lot more ways to give/get feedback: e.g. rather than rely on me to check/review each problem, students can re/play my video reading aloud math problems, get immediate feedback w/ Google Forms, resubmit 5-6 times independently til they get the math problems right! 
5/
5/
Students can try and try again: this teaches them that it's OKAY TO MAKE MISTAKES, & we can use tech alongside teacher support to get timely helpful feedback to em. Like in real life, you have resources & time to grow. Super impt lesson, esp, for my students with disabilities. 6/
So much I still have to learn about remote teaching ( @NYCSchools has given NO TRAINING to staff, of focused everything on in-person learning even tho 90% of students across NYC were remote today): a good portion of my students prefer remote learning to last year's in-person. 7/
And, we can play more inclusive games, where even students who are more quiet or reserved, students who can't read, can participate, because there's more ways than just speaking up in an in-person setting to participate. Chat boxes, drawings, emojis, etc. 8/
Remote learning is not perfect by any means, esp. for our youngest students: but we were never given the time, resources, staffing, funding, attention to make it good. Virtual schooling existed before the pandemic and we had every opportunity to make remote better this year. 9/
My students who are fully remote have had more consistent instruction in 2021 than the in-person students cuz our school has been closed for cases more days than open. The truth? Staffing & instructional time is more consistent when my students are fully remote cuz of cases. 10/
"Learning loss" is bull. Yes, if you measure based on what we considered learning before the pandemic, by those standards sure, but we made up those standards. Those standards, as you can tell on Twitter based on how much EVERYONE'S suffering/struggling, should be adjusted. 11/
Students ARE learning. They're learning to navigate technology. They're learning that their government won't provide support or leadership during a pandemic. They're learning to adapt and shift as are all of us.
I wish students were learning in the US to put lives first. 12/
I wish students were learning in the US to put lives first. 12/
But nope, we refuse to shift. We refuse to fund schools & society. We refuse to look at how sexist our society (almost all the job losses during this pandemic have been women) & how racist our society is (COVID deaths have been disproportionately POC). Refuse to be equitable. 13/
I've been w/ my students for months: we've made our classroom community work cuz of a small class size, paraprofessional support, school staff support, mutual aid support, and family support. That's because of community we have. Students are learning: it takes a village. 14/14
