Adapt or Else.
The COVID-19 pandemic taught us a lot. If you are sick, you should take a sick day. You should have plenty of toilet paper and masks stockpiled just in case. But as educators, the biggest lesson we had to learn was how to teach remotely and how to use all the tech-ed needed to manage it.
Moorehouse & Kohnke (2021) described our teaching experience during the pandemic as Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). When the classroom and the in-person teaching environments were deemed unsafe, teachers and instructors moved the classes online. Laptops and tablets with, Zoom, Lesson management systems (LMS) replaced textbooks and paper. As a freelance English instructor who mainly teaches one-on-one, the change was dramatic, but not nearly as chaotic as it was for K-12 teachers or higher education instructors. We all may have had to deal with intermittent internet and hardware failures, but teaching individuals, I didn’t have to worry about classroom management, resource allocations, or equitable teaching methods (Detyna & Dommett, 2024).
While teachers of group online classes had to constantly worry about student motivation and psychological wellbeing (Moorehouse & Kohnke, 2021), my individual lessons were seen as a positive outlet for students. Taking lessons with me allowed students to take a break from the pandemic stresses in other parts of their lives. Having an English instructor to talk to was a social outlet, a person to explain their experiences to, and a neutral party to talk about their fears and anxieties with.
Now 4 years out from the ERT experience, its legacy has changed my teaching in subtle and dramatic ways. Prior to the pandemic, I had never taught lessons online; now, approximately 20% of my lessons are taught online. This led to finding digital textbooks (https://www.linguahouse.com), learning how to use video conferencing software, managing student engagement online, and ensuring that the lesson quality of online lessons is equivalent to in-person ones. The pandemic experience pushed me out of my comfort zone, got me thinking about how and what I teach. The act of problem-solving made me a better teacher (Detyna & Dommett, 2024). The Pandemic has changed teaching forever.
The innovative technology that is changing the nature of teaching is coming out faster than I can keep up with it, but being willing to discover, experiment, and adapt to the changes will help make my lessons relevant and engaging for my current and future students.
Sources:
Moorhouse, B. L., & Kohnke, L. (2021). Thriving or Surviving Emergency Remote Teaching Necessitated by COVID-19: University Teachers’ Perspectives. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 30(3), 279–287. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-021-00567-9
Detyna, M., & Dommett, E. J. (2024). Addressing and resolving issues with hybrid flexible/dual mode teaching and technology in learning spaces: the 2 × n matrix model. Learning Environments Research, 27(3), 727–744. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10984-024-09498-w
