Hybrid teaching requires you to be two teachers at once: one for your in-person students and one for your Zoom students. After three days of hybrid teaching, I've learned a few tricks and am still looking for advice with this balancing act.
Category: Distance Learning
HYBRID TEACHING: DAY 1
When quarantine started over a year ago, I naïvely thought we'd be teaching remotely for two weeks. Little did I know distance learning would continue over a year and that we'd have an intermediate stage to distance vs. in-person teaching: the "hybrid" teaching scenario. Today was day one back at school for me. It was [...]
WHY YOU NEED A WACOM FOR ZOOM TEACHING
I LOVE me a good doc cam. Considering I started my teaching career with only a blackboard - no projector, no whiteboard (and this was 2014!!) - I've been on the path to find the perfect, cheap classroom tech that works best for me and my students. For in-person teaching there is seriously nothing better than a doc cam. But that's not what this blog post is about. This is about my new love: my Wacom drawing tablet.
“NEW” YEAR: JANUARY 2021
Most people are in the thick of setting new year resolutions. As a teacher, you're probably soaking up those last sacred days of winter break. You made your resolutions and updated your goals and habits in August or September - the true "new" year. However, it's actually good to jump on the "New Year New Me" train and update your plan for school.
PROGRAMMING, REPL.IT, GRAPHICS
As you know, programming has quickly become one of my favorite classes to teach. This year I'm reusing many of my materials from last year, so I actually have the time and mental space to fix things, change assignments, and tackle more intense projects. One of those projects is teaching the students some basic graphics with the Zelle textbook's graphics.py package. Last year we just used Turtle, so this year I had to tinker around with Repl.it to get graphics.py to work.
TIPS FOR VIRTUAL PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES
We hosted our virtual parent-teacher conferences two weeks ago. Luckily, our conferences in the spring were also virtual, so I knew what to expect. But I have some general tips and some new ones for you this time around! 1. Have an agenda. This doesn't have to be a formally written agenda, like you might [...]
WHY OCTOBER IS THE LONGEST MONTH OF THE YEAR
During my first year teaching, I thought that October was rough because I was still going through the growing pains of being a brand new teacher. But then my mom told me that October is always the roughest month for my dad, a newly-retired teacher of 30 years. That first year, I didn't fully understand [...]
PLAN WITH ME: PYTHON PROGRAMMING
This summer I talked a big talk about creating a scope and sequence, developing your curriculum, and making creative warm-up's. Now it's time to show you how I walk the walk. I want to share this with you to illustrate one main thing: I used to have to spend a LOT of time prepping outside of school hours, but now, in my 7th year of teaching, it doesn't take me as long AND I get to re-use materials I've previously created. PHEW!
Google Forms Must-Do’s
Google Forms have worked well for my distance learning classes. I used them almost daily in my Algebra 1 and Physics classes in the spring and now I use them daily for every class, for my warm-up at least.
A NEW TEACHER NIGHTMARE
In the spooky spirit of October, I want to share a scary story with you. Remember those school nightmares you used to have growing up? You forgot your locker combo. You had a final but didn't study. Well, teachers also have school nightmares. One of my nightmares was often a reality: we had one printer/copier for the entire school and it broke. But now I have a new nightmare: I'm teaching remotely and my internet crashes.
Julia Ziac 