“At first I was a little worried because I just didn’t know what converting the classroom environment to online was going to be like. As educators, we have to be adaptable, and I think it was just taking it as it came, one step at a time. I decided early to keep as much of my pedagogical style from the in-person classroom as I possibly could so that we could keep the virtual classroom as much like the on-ground class experience. Over spring break, I ended up playing with different online meeting tools with my family, which was great because I ended up seeing my mom and my dad and my brother and my friends. My style is really out of the tradition where we work with questions. My roots in teacher training are all steeped in question-asking without pre-determined answers— both the students creating their own questions and me giving them questions to think out. We ended up settling on Zoom, because it was what was easiest for everybody. Because my students took the on-ground course on purpose, my students weren’t all that familiar with online learning. Right before we left for spring break, I was thinking we might not come back. So I told them all not to worry, we would all work it out together as a team … I was amazingly impressed with how adaptable my students were, with how they were willing to roll with it. I really expected that I might lose a couple of them, but I didn’t. In the end I only lost one student, and it sounded like she was having issues with dependable internet access.”
~ Marci Eannarino, Faculty for English, Speech, and Reading
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