Teachers at the Crookston School District and across the state are busy planning how distance learning could look. Different age groups will have different sets of challenges and obstacles to overcome both during the planning process and in the implementation of programs, if those are needed after March 27.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION/HEALTH WITH JOSH HARDY
Crookston High School Physical Education Instructor Josh Hardy has been working hard creating a plan while working with other teachers. “It’s been an interesting week, to say the least,” said Hardy. “We’re changing the way we’re delivering education to our kids in a matter of days here. It’s been exciting to bounce ideas off of each other. We had a meeting with our elective classes like band, tech, art, PE, just figuring out what we’re going to do. We have a lot of practice-based stuff where we’re active. It’s very difficult. Not everybody has a basketball at home or a basketball hoop. We were doing a basketball unit in PE, so how do we change what we were going to do. It’s been interesting. I think the creativity level has been great, and I’m blown away by what some of my colleagues have been doing. For PE, our thing is we have kids cooped up in the house, and I’m sure their parents want them to be active and not just on their phones or playing video games. We’re going to try providing some things they can do, get the wiggles out for some of our kids, get them moving, and active. I think that’s going to help everybody out.”
If distance-learning goes into effect, Hardy said he plans to use Google Classroom and has been looking at trying to teach skills over video in addition to learning some new dances moves to share. “We’re going to use Google Classroom in PE, so I’ll have my 7th-8th grade PE, fitness and weights, and health on Google Classroom,” said Hardy. “Health will be a little bit different because that’s a more traditional class we can teach online. For PE or fitness and weights, whether its videos of me showing what I want you to try to do today. I looked at juggling socks the other day, trying to teach some of these skills via video. Unfortunately, I told the 7th-8th graders that I would try to learn some Tik Tok dances, which they are obsessed with right now. Hopefully, those videos only go to our 7th and 8th graders and don’t get out in the public embarrassing me.”
Hardy shared a video he created going over a lesson plan for fitness and weights. He added that while, hopefully, things will return to normal, having electronic teaching prepared is exciting and should make teaching more efficient. “Another idea, we do a warmup every day, and one of the ideas was you have to teach your mom, dad, brother, or sister what we do in PE for a warmup,” said Hardy. “I’m going to go home today and videotape me trying to teach my three-year-old how to do the warmup to be sent out to the kids. You have to get creative. I don’t think this is a situation anybody planned for, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do with my classes for a long time, and it’s the push I needed. The message from all the teachers around here has been we’re going to be okay. But I’m excited for when everything is hopefully back to normal and now, we have everything in place with this Google Classroom. Things are going to be a lot more efficient and there is some really cool stuff that you can do, so we’re excited.”
We have a video that Hardy created for the first day at the bottom of the story.
MATH WITH WAYNE FOLKERS-
Math would seem like a unique class to teach via distance learning, but Wayne Folkers thinks there are a lot of resources available that will give an advantage to teaching and learning math. “Math is unique, but I think we have an advantage actually,” said Folkers. “I’m going to use Google Classroom as the main vehicle to get information to the kids. I also told the kids if you need something, email me for sure. And then, I’m also going to use Remind App to remind them to look at Google Classroom today. Those things are just to get a hold of them. We’re going to be using Google Hangouts, where they can see me doing a problem or whatever it is we need. Google Classroom works very nicely with putting out instructions, notes, and we can add links to videos like Khan Academy showing somebody doing that problem in case they don’t want to do it through Hangouts. As far as math goes, we have a lot of ideas and just have to put it together. We’ll go week by week and see how that goes.”
Folkers said that video would be an important teaching tool if the schools go to distance learning, adding that there would be a quick learning curve to figuring out what works and what doesn’t. “Video is going to have to be huge,” said Folkers. “We’ll make videos of ourselves too, and I’m not sure how to do that yet. If we’re in the school building, then I can set it up over on the table and go to my SMART Board to go through stuff. Knowing how fast to go is going to be one of the keys when making my video. A lot of the videos I think will be telling them this is what’s happening this week. Make sure you do this, check out this stuff, and make sure they are going through the steps correctly the way I have it set up. It’s a huge learning curve, so we’re going to find out quickly what’s working and what’s not.”
Hopefully, the teachers won’t have to worry about distance learning, but it looks like distance learning will take place in April.
