Five days from today (03/12/2021) will mark one year since I have been in a physical classroom with my students. One. Year. It is so hard to believe! During this time of required distance learning, the expectations of students have remained the same: engaging lessons that are relevant to not only skill-building, but to life after high school. In an English class this can pose obstacles; however, there are many ways in creating an engaging experience for our virtual students by widening our vision to invite experts into the classroom experience.
ISTE Standard 7 Global Collaborator; especially the first guiding concept of allowing students to use digital tools to connect with learners from a variety of backgrounds and cultures to broaden mutual understanding and learning is the focus of this writing. I am attempting to answer the question, “How can students use technology to interact with experts in literature to enhance their understanding of the significance of culture and context in a given unit of study?”
My quest took me to many sites that outlined guidelines on how to interact with diverse “stakeholders” in literature; including, but not limited to, authors/poets, museums, community, members, other educators, etc. The first webpage I visited was Edutopia and their article, “Inspire Students with an Author Visit” by Jorgensen and Jorgensen (2020). The first subheading, “Consider the Possibilities” is what held my attention throughout their ideas. While pandemic learning has not been ideal for most educators and students, the ingenuity of some people have given me my best ideas. I appreciate that this article lists out the steps to create a successful visit from a literary expert from sending the request to following up (Jorgensen & Jorgensen).
Another helpful website was a blog by Jill Pavich entitled Ed Pioneer. In this entry, “Teaching ELA Remotely: 10 Inspiring Ideas for Digital Instruction” (Pavich 2020) she offers some helpful ways to interact with students within the virtual classroom. The list has many ideas I have tried and have been successful in creating opportunities for students to do their own web searching on finding significant cultural context information. The one that has worked best for me is “6| Brainstorming via Google Slides” (Pavich 2020) as it allows students to interact in small groups, input their ideas, and see other’s insights without the barrier of feeling uncomfortable talking on screen. With the help of the other resources, I hope to try “3|Mystery Meet-ups” which give the students a chance to meet a guest speaker that relates the unit of study (Pavich 2020).
The last of the procedural-type websites that I visited was another blog called “The Open Book Blog.” This entry is entitled “How to a Host a Successful Virtual Author Visit” by Hannah Ehrlich from June 11, 2020. Once again, this entry instructs the “green horn” on how to successfully set up a visit from an author so that it is meaningful, well-planned, and beneficial for everyone involved. I appreciate that this writer includes a section on preparing the students for the visit. Even though it is designed for younger learners, it is still important to create an atmosphere of anticipation so that the students are excited to interact with the guest (Ehrlich 2020).
Other ways to create experiences that students can learn the context of their literature is to visit places through virtual field trips. In Moran and Rice’s upcoming work Virtual and Augmented Reality in English Language Arts Education, they promise to look at how to utilize curriculum that will engage learners through Chromebook Apps, virtual environments, etc. (Moran and Rice 2021). Using their ideas, but without the work’s guidance, I am using virtual museum tours to help both my juniors and seniors create contexts for their current work. My juniors are about to read excerpts from Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter and to help them understand the Japanese Interment a bit more, a couple of my jigsaw groups are visiting virtual exhibits from the Northwest Nikkei Museum. My seniors are reading The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, and even though they had extensive instruction regarding World War II during their sophomore year, I am having them visit the virtual United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to view exhibits that will remind and reinforce the atrocities of the German genocide of Jews.
While I hope that I can arrange virtual author visits for works my students are reading in the Spring; even if I am unable to, I appreciate the ideas that these writers provide. I believe that the Covid-19 Pandemic has awarded educators the freedom to be as creative as necessary to create engaging learning environments for our students. With this freedom we are forced to look outside the “canned” Scope and Sequence information to explore what our fellow educators have found useful in their classrooms and field of expertise.
References:
Ehrlich, H. (2020, July 21). How to host a successful virtual author visit. Retrieved March 08, 2021, from https://blog.leeandlow.com/2020/06/11/how-to-host-a-successful-virtual-author-visit/
Jorgensen, E., & Jorgensen, N. (2020, February 06). Inspire students with an author visit. Retrieved March 08, 2021, from https://www.edutopia.org/article/inspire-students-author-visit
Moran, C. M., & Rice, M. (2021). Virtual and augmented reality in English language arts education. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Pavich, J. (2021, February 12). Teaching ELA remotely: 10 inspiring ideas for digital instruction. Retrieved March 08, 2021, from https://edpioneer.com/10-inspiring-ideas-digital-instruction/
