Distance learning has been taken to a whole new level in the past year, with many schools going completely remote in the spring, while some in the fall have been virtual or offering some sort of hybrid. Although I have been out of the classroom for the past few years, I have been teaching a lot of online classes, some with students all the way from China. I am even teaching some synchronous classes for gifted students who are participating in our virtual learning academy. The dilemma I find myself in is whether to require students to have their cameras on or not. I have heard arguments from both sides, some good, some bad.

Here are the arguments for and against this practice and then my thoughts on which is best for kids.

Against:

1. Zoom fatigue – like most of us, students have been staring at a screen for entirely too long lately. By the end of the workday, I walk outside, and it takes my eyes a good couple of minutes to refocus and see normally. I get it, and I would be lying if I said on my fourth Zoom meeting of the day that I didn’t turn the camera off so that I could put my head down and not look at the screen. Wouldn’t it be OK at the end of a long day or during a two-hour lecture, for students to turn their camera off so that they can rest their eyes?

2. Anxiety – in a regular classroom setting, the teacher and students are not staring at each other all of the time. In an online meeting, everyone is staring at everyone, and this can be unsettling. Some students like to fade into the background and thus feel uncomfortable being put in the spotlight. There is a feeling that everyone is watching you, and because the image is large, students may be worried about how they appear to others. School can be tough enough with people judging you, being blown up on a computer screen just makes this worse.

3. Home life distractions – it is difficult to find a space in your home where you are not going to be bothered by the everyday goings-on in a household. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had to stop class to yell at our dog barking at the Amazon driver delivering his umpteenth package. It could be anything from pets, brothers or sisters, to nosy parents and televisions in the background. These distractions could bring your classroom to a grinding halt. Try getting a class of 2nd graders back on task after a cat walks by someone’s camera. Wouldn’t it just be better to turn the camera off and not have these potential distractions playing in the background?

4. Technology not supported – some virtual platforms have bandwidth requirements for video sharing. You might think a student is being obstinate when you ask them to turn their camera on, but they simply might not have the Wi-Fi power to do so. Imagine a family of three children all doing virtual learning. You have three people, plus probably the parents, pulling from the same source, making it difficult to get reliable service. Or they might be using a device that does not have a camera. Make sure you figure out the situation before chastising a student for leaving their camera off.

5. Socio-economic reasons: some students might be embarrassed about what their home looks like. While at school, students have equal access to their teacher, the playground, and the cafeteria. However, once students go home, the equity ceases to be as some go back to a house that might look very different than someone else’s. While you are in school, you can cover this up, but with everyone looking into your home, it would be difficult to hide. Students might be worried they will be judged by other classmates.

These are all legitimate concerns as to why students should be able to leave their cameras off. However, there are arguments for leaving them on as well.

For:

1. Replacing one screen for another – there are times when students are not showing themselves because they have become bored and are playing on their phones or iPad. If the student is claiming to have Zoom fatigue, they should not be shutting the camera down only to give their attention to another screen. If a student truly has issues from staring at the screen all day long, they should be resting their eyes.

2. Compliance – raise your hand if you have been in a meeting at school and have checked your email, looked at your Facebook or Twitter page, or been shopping for shoes on Amazon?

Every year, teachers and schools across the world pay millions of dollars for curriculum in order to challenge their students, in the form of textbooks, computer programs, prescribed lessons, modules, projects, etc. We use these programs to promote rigor in the classroom and higher level thinking in our students. We want to challenge all of our students, from the gifted and high-achieving students to the lower achievers, and will pay top dollar to do so. Of course, what the makers of these products are not going to tell you is that you do not have to purchase these wares, nor do you have to spend all that money, in order to challenge your students. Just like Dorothy and her red slippers, you have had the power the entire time—and it does not cost anything.

What is this magical superpower that lies within you? Do you have to come across an alien spacecraft, be exposed to gamma rays, or be bitten by a radioactive spider in order to access it? No. This power is actually something teachers do every single day with their students; it is the power of questioning. How you can challenge your students day in and day out, raising the rigor of your classroom to meet the needs of all of your students, comes down to one factor: What questions are you asking?

Keep in mind that not all questions are created equally. There are questions that are well asked and promote critical thinking. Then, there are questions that accomplish nothing other than canned or yes-or-no responses that do not elicit deep thinking from the respondent. People always are saying, “I know this is a stupid question, but . . .” and the obligatory response is that there are no “stupid” questions. I am here to tell you that there is such a thing—especially in a classroom where you are trying to build the thinkers of tomorrow. As a matter of fact, all sorts of “stupid” questions can actually do much more harm than good. And, unfortunately, these questions are asked daily in classrooms all across the world.

At this point you are probably starting to get a little anxious, wondering whether you are a teacher who is asking “stupid” questions. The good news is that every teacher is guilty of asking a “stupid” question from time to time, but the bigger picture question is: Do you recognize when ineffective questions are asked?…

After eighteen years in the classroom, I had the opportunity to move over to the administration side of education and have been the gifted coordinator for the last five years. I am part of our central office staff, assigned to the teaching and learning department, which oversees the curriculum and direction of the educational philosophy for the district.

I tell you this to provide context that I have been on both sides of things. I have been the teacher complaining about the decisions the central office has made and how it will make my job of teaching kids that much more difficult. And I have been on the side of the central office who is trying to make wholesale changes to a humongous system that would benefit students, but who cannot seem to get teachers on board.

There seems to be an us versus them dynamic going on between these two groups of people who seemingly should be moving toward the same goal. Take, for example, the sound educational practice of personalized learning. This suggestion goes to teachers, and their mindset is, “I cannot possibly do one more thing,” when in reality, the central office is not suggesting adding this practice; it is suggesting that it take the place of a more traditional strategy that probably sucks up more time. The argument on the other side of things is that teachers who want to personalize their learning and not make one size fit all get told by the central office that we need to consider equity. What we do for one student at one building should be available for all. Both groups are moving toward the same goal but getting in each other’s way.

As a result, the stereotype each entity has created for the other is that teachers are lazy and want to do what is best for themselves, while the district office is concerned more with dollars than students. Neither of which is true, but it becomes easier to blame someone else by creating this stereotype. This creates a rift between the two where nothing gets done because the other is preventing it. This then creates mistrust between the two.

We have been dealing with a lot of change lately. Most schools were shut down in the spring due to COVID and now that the school year is starting back up, there is much uncertainty. Some schools are having students back full-time, others are doing a hybrid where kids come a couple of days a week, and some are virtual only. What exactly this school year will look like is unknown and that is part of the problem; teachers don’t like the unknown. There is a routine to the school day and a way of doing things and that is being tampered with, causing a lot of anxiety and stress. As I talk to teachers from around the state, most seem very uneasy about how to navigate this uncharted waters. They need inspiration.

When you need inspiration, look no further than the poets who always know how to express what we’re feeling. I will turn to the greatest poet of the 21st century, a bard on par with Shakespeare himself, the voice of her generation and one of the most influential people on the planet. Yes, I’m talking about Taylor Swift. Here are five lyrics from various songs of Taylor Swift that can guide us through these turbulent times.

The first and most obvious piece of advice comes from her album Lover:

“You need to calm down” from You Need to Calm Down

There is certainly a lot of anxiety for teachers, but this goes for the students as well. For better or worse teachers have to be that rock for them, so calming down and showing them that everything is going to be OK is crucial to their social and emotional health. Teachers are like the flight attendants of the classroom. On a plane, no matter how rocky the ride, you simply need to look to the flight attendants to know whether you are in real trouble or not. If they are going about their business like usual, you know they have seen this a million times and are not concerned. But if I were ever on a plane and the flight attendants were panicking, I would have good reason to be concerned. We need to be that steadying force in the classroom and schools, we need to be their flight attendants.

“All I know since yesterday is everything has changed” from Everything Has Changed

From the Red album, the lesson is very apparent which is that change can be very difficult. Especially when that change is forced on you, but know that change is not a bad thing. It is the mindset you have about it. I try to see change for the positives it can bring. Sometimes I need to have my thinking and processes challenged. If you see change as a bad thing, that transition is going to be very difficult for you. Instead, embrace the change because it is going to be this way for a while. Take advantage of it to try new things, things that you would not ever have known about if you hadn’t been forced to do something different. Keep in mind that we are a profession built on the skillset of pivoting and adjustment. Use those super powers now to roll with the punches. Flexibility is the watch word for 2020.

“All eyes on us, you make everyone disappear” from So It Goes

A song on her Reputation album, the focus of this lyric is obviously meant for two people romantically involved, but it applies to the relationship you have with your students as well.

There are a lot of challenges teachers have been dealing with lately, given our current pandemic as many schools are forced to move their classrooms online. Unfortunately, in this virtual setting, there are those students who need to be challenged but whose needs are not being met. A lot of times in a virtual setting, the learning is asynchronous, with the teacher putting up assignments in an online platform designed for all, but with little thought concerning differentiation for the gifted student.

The question is, how do you challenge high ability students in a virtual setting? The answer is the same way you challenge them in a regular classroom, with some modifications, of course. Here are five things teachers can do to challenge their gifted students and other high ability kids in a virtual setting.

Use of PBL

Project-based learning totally lends itself to online learning and high ability students. Typically, projects do not require a ton of direct instruction, and students can self-pace. If there are parts that do require direct instruction, you can either guide students to a video resource online or record your own lesson using a platform such as WeVideo or Flip Grid. The nice thing about projects is that they differentiate quite organically, so if a student enters into the project knowing a good deal about the topic already, he can begin the project from that point. If, however, he only has the barest of knowledge, he could start there. Students may arrive at different places, but they are arriving as far as their ability can take them.

What this would look like in a virtual setting is you would post a project and then offer supports, whether it be skills that need to be taught, an explanation of something, or suggestions for increasing the rigor. You should conference with students every so often during a project to make sure they are on track. This could be an email exchange, a Google Meet, or the sharing of a document. For examples that could be used, go to https://www.thegiftedguy.com/resources, where there are several free projects available.

Giving students options

How much choice do your students have in the learning process? Can they determine for themselves which method is the best way for them to learn, which product will best show mastery, or even better, how they can challenge themselves? We need to provide students with more choices, even in a virtual setting. One example would be how students are assessed. Do students have a choice in how they show their mastery of a learning objective? If a student is a strong writer, she might choose to show what she learned in a journal entry or essay. Another student might be a good speaker and can show what he learned in a presentation or speech. By providing students with choices, they can use skills they already bring to the table and challenge themselves to produce a high-quality product.

Student choice can also be designed to teach students executive functioning skills such as time management and organization. If you give students two weeks to learn something and challenge them to choose any method they want to, how will they prioritize, and do they know their own learning styles well enough to pick the one that is going to best help them to learn? For more on how student choice can raise the rigor, you can watch this video https://youtu.be/JLDeTBHcrLk

Taking the ceiling off of learning

Too many times, we put a finish line for students on an assignment, and once they cross it, the learning is over.

NASA recently announced that it would award $35,000 to anyone who can make a better toilet for its astronauts. NASA is calling it the Lunar Loo Challenge because NASA scientists and engineers, with all of their infinite wisdom, have not really had a good system before. Some of the methods used back when we were regularly taking trips to the moon included astronauts using roll-on cuffs, bags, or space diapers. With the advent of the Artemis program, vowing to put a person on the moon by 2024 for the first time since 1972, NASA is asking for the public’s help with designing a better toilet. However, there are certain constraints that must be followed. According to NASA, the toilet must:

• Function in both microgravity and lunar gravity

• Have a mass of less than 15 Kg in Earth’s gravity

• Occupy a volume no greater than 0.12 m3

• Consume less than 70 Watts of power

• Operate with a noise level less than 60 decibels (no louder than an average bathroom fan).

• Accommodate both female and male users

• Accommodate users ranging from 58 to 77 inches tall and 107 to 290 lbs in weight

What a great authentic learning task for your classroom. Challenge your students to design a space toilet. You could do this with all ages and get all sorts of interesting products. This is problem solving at its finest in that you are given a real-world problem with real-world consequences and asked to develop a solution. If that is not authentic enough, the possibility of $35,000 certainly adds a little validity to it.

Can you imagine how engaged students would be working on a project such as this? This would show them how what they are learning about engineering and science can be applied to the real world rather than to worksheets, homework, and assessments. It gives their work context because they can actually see for themselves how it might be used in their own lives.

You don’t have to wait for NASA to put authentic learning on a silver platter—these sorts of real-world problem-solving opportunities for your students are out there, ready to be discovered. Once, when I was teaching a gifted elementary class that was a one-day-a-week pull-out, we had to hold class in some yurts that were used as science labs by the nearby high school about a 10-minute walk from the school. I had to march a dozen or so third and fourth graders from their school, through the high school, and along a sidewalk that led to these yurts.

In March of this year, the entire teaching world found itself needing to pivot quite quickly due to COVID-19 shutting down our schools. This is how quickly it happened in my district. Teachers were told on a Wednesday that the last day with students would be the following Tuesday. Then things kept getting worse and we shuttered our doors by Friday instead. Teachers had just the weekend to figure out how to deliver their lessons without having their students in the room with them. Some did this well, some not so hot. Some of this depended on the infrastructure of the school system and whether the technology was there. Some districts simply called it a school year because students did not have the technology or their teachers lacked the know-how to make this happen.

With so many unknowns in August, there is a high likelihood that students are going to have to be taught on-line. The question becomes, can we get better at doing this? Like most administrators, I monitored what my teachers were doing and how they were using technology to work with students, but I didn’t have to do this myself. Sure, I sat in on what felt like 857,293 Zoom or Google Meet meetings, but only occasionally was I leading these sessions. It was mostly just sitting there and listening, although my daughter, who is taking her college classes on-line, showed me I could turn off my camera and catch a nap here or there. I did have to provide some professional development to districts via technology but recognized its limitations when one woman, who apparently didn’t have a college daughter to tell her about turning the camera off, proceeded to put her feet up at her computer desk and sleep for about 45 minutes of my presentation. I didn’t take offense to this. It informed me that I needed to come up with a better way to engage my audience.

When the summer rolled around, I found myself teaching at two summer camps. One was a local camp that usually involved students attending residentially for a week, but instead, we used Google Meet to hold our classes. Another was teaching children from China through Zoom. Because of the 12-hour difference between China and where I live, this required me to teach from 7 to 9 in the morning.

Now I needed to put my money where my mouth was. For the past few months, I expected the teachers I supervised and the teachers who taught my 7th grade daughter to provide students with not just an adequate education, but a great one. Now I had to figure out a way to do this myself. Not only that, but the classes I was teaching were also normally very interactive in nature, so I had to find a way to replicate that in a virtual setting.

Here are five things I learned from teaching virtually:

Crappy teaching in the classroom is still crappy teaching on-line – If you are just putting worksheets on-line, how effective do you think that would have been if you were only doing that in the classroom? Interestingly enough, though, good teaching does not always equal good on-line learning. You have to get out of the fixed mindset of “I’m just going to take my physical classroom and make an electronic version of it.” Instead, you should adopt a growth mindset of “I’m going to have to make some adjustments to the manner in which I teach.” This might mean you have to take old ideas and adapt them into something new. For one of my classes, which involved a physical scavenger hunt, I had to adapt this to an on-line scavenger hunt, using the world wide web as our playing field.

Technical problems are going to happen

Many schools aim to teach students 21st-century skills. Given that we are 2 decades into the 21st century, many would say it is about time. Why this focus on 21st-century skills? Because, according to Thomas Friedman and his similarly titled book (The World Is Flat), the world is becoming flat. The world is not the gigantic place it once was. I had a friend who went to China right after college nearly 30 years ago. He told me he spent 3 days getting to China and the next 7 days trying to get out. He felt isolated because he had no contact with people beyond where he was. He couldn’t even make a phone call to talk to his friends and family back in the States. I went to China last year and was not only able to talk to my wife and kids who were thousands of miles away, but also able to FaceTime them so that when they opened their Christmas presents it was like I was there. I could practically smell the bacon my wife was cooking for Christmas breakfast.

A lot has changed in the last 30 years in regard to technology and the global community, but how much has changed in the way we teach our students? If someone invented a time machine and traveled back 30 years, how much different would a school look? Sure, you might be surprised at a blackboard instead of the SMART boards that adorn classrooms of today, but the teacher would still be standing at the front giving the students information they would be tested on later. Don’t believe me? Go into any high school and look into the rooms. You will find most of them in this configuration.

Why haven’t we updated our methods of teaching along with everything else that has advanced in the past 30 years? Because it is comfortable to teach in this manner. It is the way we were taught and is the way we have been taught for hundreds of years. As the saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The problem, of course, is that it is broken. By teaching in this manner we are not preparing our children to go out into the world, because the world is very different from this. Rarely in the real world are you required to take a pencil-and-paper test to prove your worth, nor is it common to have to memorize content at great length.

So how do we better prepare our students for this flat world?