Ghostbusters! - Dealing with ghosting students in lockdown (and the classroom).

We are back in lockdown thanks to COVID and the delta variant. As the days pass while teaching remotely, it becomes increasingly apparent that some students struggle to engage in lockdown more than others. And some of them try their best to ghost you. As always, it is often these disengaged students that are the most vulnerable and at risk. So how do we get them engaged again? 

What became overwhelmingly clear as I sifted through the research, teacher, and student feedback is that good practice is good practice - regardless of whether you are teaching in person or remotely. All of the recommended practices, strategies, tools, etc. reflect the key messages from the OECD's The Nature of Learning report. (If you haven't read this yet, do so urgently. It provides a really great summary of research to inspire good teaching practice.)

Of particular relevance are the 8 basics of student motivation that this report summarises:

This post is a list of ideas, recommendations, and best practices compiled from teacher feedback on Twitter, reports from ERO (New Zealand Education Review Office), the Education Hub, as well as a student survey done at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. 

How do you know if you have a ghost?

The Responding to the Covid-19 crisis: Supporting Auckland NCEA students report clearly identifies that the longer a student is disengaged, the harder it is to reengage them. Hence, it is important to reach out to disengaged students as early as possible. Additionally, focussing on the relationship first appears to be a key aspect of getting our ghosts engaged, and keeping them engaged

• Setting up tasks that 'self mark' so that it is easy to track disengagement with minimal effort eg. Google Quiz through Google Classroom, Quizizz, Playposit, Education Perfect, Pear Deck. 
• Using the assignment function through Google Classroom to make it easy to see when students have turned in work or turned work in late. 
• Using the grade book function in learning management systems (eg. Google Classroom) to track overall engagement. 
• Doing a roll in synchronous video calls. 

How do you stop them from being ghosts in the first place?

As with so many other things in education, relationships are at the heart of the matter. Hence, we need to think about how we might maintain our focus on relationships, with students and between students. This is also great for helping students to manage their well-being in lockdown as the absence of their peers can have a detrimental effect on their mental health.  Some ways to do this include:

• Smaller group asynchronous video calls rather than large group calls.
• Personal emails to check in with students. 
• Collaborative tasks that require students to reach out to their peers. 
• Pastoral group meetups for fun. eg. quiz, pictionary, etc. 
• Private comments through Google Classroom as reminders.
• Email telling them I am thinking about them and miss them in class will often do the trick, especially with higher year levels. 
• Email whanau. Call whanau if still nothing. 
• Organising a one on one video call to check in and help problem solve any issues acting as obstacles in proceeding with learning. 
• Organising small group synchronous video calls specifically for students who are struggling. 
• Connecting students who need extra support with a counsellor, teacher aide to help as appropriate.
• Support students with building self-regulating skills. Eg. helping them to fill in a daily planner, teaching them productivity tools eg. single-tasking, quick writes, kanban, etc. 
• Don't give up. Keep emailing and calling, keep getting in touch to check how the student is doing. 

How do you set ghost busting tasks?

During a lockdown, it is much easier for students to opt-out of tasks that are boring, busy work, too hard, etc. Hence, the quality of the work tends to have a much bigger impact on student engagement than when we are in their faces at school actively nagging them. The research and student voice is really clear about the kinds of tasks that help to keep students engaged and as a result, motivated. As a result, we should focus on designing tasks that are:

• Set tasks that are clearly linked and matched to the intended learning outcomes that students know and value - aka. moving beyond low-level tasks and “busy work” to tasks that students feel are important and meaningful. 
• Scaffold. Scaffold. Scaffold. Students don't have access to the teacher or peers in the same way as at school so making sure that the tasks is broken down in a way that is easy for them to make sense of is key. 
• Shorter instructions, which broke tasks into chunks, tended to be more effective in scaffolding students through the learning.
• Ramping up the difficulty level in tasks as you go along to ensure that all students feel a measure of success when completing tasks. (SOLO works really well for this - see example)
• Using Universal Design for Learning practices eg. 
• Supplementing written instructions for tasks with short video explanations.
• Offering personal 60 second video lessons for question messaged in the private chats.
• Mixing up the type of tasks eg. hands-on.
• Reduce the fear of failure such as by using gamification eg. Kahoot.
• Providing students with a degree of choice over how they completed a task typically led to greater engagement in the learning and a higher probability of the task being completed. 

How do you help the students manage themselves in order to avoid ghosting?

Despite 'managing self' being one of the key competencies of our New Zealand curriculum, lockdown really highlights our short fall in helping students develop self-regulation skills. There are a number of ways that we can help students improve their self-management, and as a result, improve their engagement and motivation during lockdown and at school. Additionally, maintaining high expectations and holding students accountable for meeting these expectations is also critical for maintaining students’ motivation and engagement and facilitating learning. 

• Ensuring flexibility in when students can do work. Too many set times reduces engagement and opportunities for self-management. 
• Setting realistic amounts of work. Don't fall into the planning fallacy (a prediction phenomenon, all too familiar to many, wherein people underestimate the time it will take to complete a future task, despite knowledge that previous tasks have generally taken longer than planned.)
• Set work at the start of the week so that students can plan out how they will do their learning for the week. 
• Setting tasks that are truly independent as parents and caregivers are not always able to support.
• Don't overload students with too much information or communication - keep it simple and concise with a clear and easy option for following up if they have questions.
• Make videos for students to watch in their own time. 
• Must do/Should do/Could do tasks to ensure that workload can match student context, but also to provide a sense of agency. 
• Setting deadlines and time limits of tasks, and following up with students who have not met these. 
• Supporting students to complete a daily planner to help them identify deadlines and prioritise their efforts (see student example from Hobsonville Point Secondary). 
• Providing regular formative assessment and feedback that was connected to the expectations set by the teacher was crucial for motivation and engagement as well as for ongoing learning.
• Students who established some form of routine or daily structure were more likely to stay up-to-date with work and to maintain their engagement. eg. daily small group check-in, daily planner. 
• Use coaching conversations (eg GROW coaching) to help students problem solve and self determine their next steps. 

Hopefully, there are some helpful ideas in here to help with your ghosts. If you have more ideas of things that have worked for you. Please leave them in the comments too!

Further reading

• Responding to the Covid-19 crisis: Supporting Auckland NCEA students (ERO)
• Learning from lockdown (Education Hub)
• The Nature of Learning (OECD)

A day in the life of a quarantined teacher

2020. What a year! As we sat planning our courses and curriculums at the end of 2019, could any of us have predicted how much of it would be delivered in lockdown, from home? I started this blog as a provisionally registered teacher in 2012 and have kept it up ever since. It has been a wonderful resource to show the development of my thinking, professional practice and knowledge over the years. I thought it was only right to capture some of the this latest development in practice too, that is, teaching while in quarantine.

9:30am - 10am Live Google Meet with Learning Hub in pyjamas

Every morning I have a live session with my Learning Hub. At our school, Learning Hubs have replaced form classes and tutor groups in favour of an advisory model. In a nutshell, this means I take more of a 'life coach' role than just monitoring student attendance. 

These daily hub sessions involve having a quick conversation with each of my 17 hublings (an HPSS term that has evolved to refer to the students in our Learning Hub) to check how they are doing, pass on any messages from the school or other teachers, help them set goals for the day/week and keep them accountable. We also go over their daily planner. 

The daily planner is a key piece of the puzzle for HPSS students. This helps students to manage their learning while off-site by helping them identify the learning tasks that should be completed for the day. As the hub coach, it also helps me identify when a student is not regularly checking in with what learning needs to be done. For students who do not yet have great self-managing skills, our morning check-ins involve me helping them to complete their planners for the day to ensure that the students know what they should be doing. It is important to remember that students don't all come to us with self-managing skills - we have to teach them how!

It's also worth pointing out that we tend not to turn our cameras on for this morning meeting. It's perfectly acceptable to plan your day while in your pyjamas you see...

10am - 11:30am Get dressed, check emails, schedule jobs, have coffee in the sun

After our daily hub check-in, I tend to get dressed in my lockdown work clothes. This involves some variation on my onesie, track pants, and sometimes a slightly tidier looking shirt if I have meetings where I have to be on camera. I then make a cup of coffee and sit in the sun (or under a blanket if no sun) to check my email. Email, despite being the bane of my existence, is also a key part of what helps schools function these days, whether we are together or apart. 

This part of the day also involves tending to various leadership responsibilities. For me, this involves dealing with various NCEA queries in my role as Principal's Nominee and updating my own to-do list accordingly. I also check in with my various Across School Lead tasks for our Kāhui Ako and follow up on any aspects of this work that need my attention.

11:30am - 1pm Planning time

Next, I like to spend a bit of time checking how my students are progressing in the tasks that have been set for them. To do this I use the Google Classroom grade book function to help me do this quickly or other websites that let me track student engagement. I tend to set at least one activity each week that 'self marks' so that it is really quick and easy to see who is engaging with the activities in the Google Classroom, but also who might be struggling with the basic language, concepts or skills we are dealing with. Tools I use for this include the auto mark Google Form Quiz, Quizizz and Playposit. During this planning time, I will also notify other hub coaches if their hublings are not keeping up with classwork so that they can notify their parents. 

As well as a quiz type activity, I also set an additional set that requires students to keep working on it for a more sustained period of time. This task is usually based on a SOLO Taxonomy scaffold to ensure that all students will be able to complete at least some of the task (see example task). Instructions are communicated to students in the same format on Google Classroom that I use when we are at school. I have found that using really consistent practice when in school and out of school sets my students up to be more successful for when I am not there to support them. 

Student voice that we collected during our previous lockdown indicated the students liked having:

• Tasks set at the start of the week that they can work on for the whole week.
• Must do, Should do, Could do tasks
• Video instructions

Hence, I make sure to include the student requests in my planning too. 

1pm - 1:30pm Lunchtime

Since we can't travel the world right now, I am using my meals to reminisce about vacations past. Crepes have been a lockdown favourite as they remind me of the wonderful time I had exploring the streets of Paris this December just past. So much has changed in the world since then and I am incredibly grateful that we got to have one last holiday before the pandemic. Other travel food favourites include homemade pizza from scratch (because you have time to make the dough from scratch when you are home all day) and fancy European cheeses and bread. 

Of course, 1pm is also when we watch the 1pm Daily Update show - you can read the reviews on IMDB! The storyline on IMDB reads:

"Set in a dystopian world where autocratic and populist leaders are in charge of the USA, China, UK, Brazil and many other nations. 1pm Daily Update takes place in the imaginary island nation of New Zealand, a utopian society where science, facts, strong leadership and a genuine care for its people and environment take precedence over money and big business."

 

 

1:30pm - 3pm Teaching time

During this time of the day, I like to actively engage with my students online. This has involved everything from running Kahoots and running a 3 minute Art History Challenge. Most of the time, however, live teaching time is reserved for one of two things:

• Drop-in question and answer sessions: During the regular class time, I let my students know that I will be online if they have any questions or if they need any help. Attendance is not compulsory and essentially this is just a chance for a face to face conversation if a student needs it. 
  
  
• One on one sessions: One on one slots are usually reserved for my senior students working on assessments. Students are asked to book in a one on one session for us to check in on how they are going with their assessment. This can help the student overcome any obstacles they might be encountering and help keep the student accountable. Additionally, it has the added benefit of helping me to feel confident about the authenticity of any student work done at home as I can hear students talk to their work. We use a Google Sheet for students to make their appointment times.

 

3pm to 4pm Feedback and marking

As well as the usual marking of NCEA work, I spend quite a lot of time giving feedback to my students. Before beginning an assessment, I give my students a practice task. For the practice tasks, I give them an abundance of feedback that I ask them to address before beginning the assessment. This means that rather than just resolving my comment, they actually have to 'fix' things to ensure that they really take the feedback on board. Google Classroom makes giving feedback a whole lot easier these days. I love the comment bank which lets me upload common statements that I use again and again so that it is faster and easier to get through big classes. Sometimes I will come back to marking after dinner too. Usually with a hot toddy for motivation! 

4pm onwards

From 4pm I have device free time. So much of the day is online at the moment in in reality, I'm finding this quite difficult. Hence, I make sure that when I finish the workday, I try to get off my computer for a few hours. During the many weeks of lockdown this year, non-screen time activities have included flexibility training, circus training and conditioning, drawing, reading, sewing facemasks and cooking.

What about the next day?

I'm not really a creature of routine. So while the above might be one day's schedule, it is definitely NOT every day's schedule. Our daily 9:30am hub meeting happens every day (to help our whole hub get out of bed and get to work at a reasonable time), the other things shift around in the day based on meetings, my motivation levels and when the sun is out to go for a walk. 

Rediscovering student agency

I realised with a shock yesterday how little I've blogged this year! So, I have set a personal challenge for myself, 10 posts in 10 days. It shouldn't be too hard to turn all of my draft posts into complete ones, right? Or post a quick vlog reflecting of my day? Or share a strategy that I have tried? Maybe you're keen to try too?

It seems that not too long ago, everyone was talking about student agency. Many a tweet talked about self managing students, blog posts were written, and there were probably multiple sessions about it at ULean. I know Claire Amos did a great talk about it, and Steve Mouldey did a great presentation. Lately, however, I have found myself looking at these resources in a new light. I have always believed that student agency is a key ingredient for success as it helps students to become self-managing, life-long learners. I still think this a worthy goal for success in a rapidly changing, fast-paced world. However, student agency has taken on a new sense of urgency and importance in my practice of late. Prompted by my Spiral of Inquiry in 2018, I wondered whether student agency might contribute in restoring some of the power to those students and families for whom colonisation and embedded system bias has led to feeling disempowerment?

In schools, command and control models dominate in so many ways. We tell our students where to be, when to be there, and how to act when they get there. We tell our students what to wear, what not to wear, and in some cases, what their hair can and cannot look like. We tell them when they can eat, when they may use the restroom. We tell our students what they should learn, and how they should learn it. Whether inadvertently or not, we decide what our students should value through deciding how they should spend their time, what we assess, and what qualifies as "justified" reasons for missing school. The trouble is, every decision that we make FOR students rather than WITH students is another instance where we are removing agency and power.

Once I began to notice all the ways that I remove agency from my students, I was alarmed to discover that in my own practice, despite priding myself on a student-centred philosophy’ I was constantly enacting my power over the students. I began feeling uncomfortable that 17 and 18-year-old students felt the need to ask permission to go to the toilet. If we cannot even trust young people with going to the toilet, then what kind of messages were we sending about trusting them with their learning? And while we might argue that some students misbehave and cannot be trusted to go and come back in a timely manner, why is it that we feel justified to mistrust the majority because of the actions of a minority?

Building on my learning from 2018, I started this year with a focus on rediscovering, revisiting, refining and kickstarting student agency in my classroom (again). I am hoping to move from the 'false choice' model (where I give students a choice between tasks I designed) to one where the power is truly shared. In framing this thinking, I found Hart's Ladder of Participation really helpful. Below is the description of one of the experiments I tried in my teaching this year in response.

The students and I started the term by unpacking the rubric that would be used to assess their learning in our module called Star Trek. Together, we identified the skills and knowledge we would need to gain by the end of the unit.

Students then split into small groups to design their own lesson (or a small series of lessons) around a learning objective they had written (I had to teach them how to write these first). They researched their chosen area of focus, designed and made activities, made and found resources, as well as identify success criteria, keywords and ideas. Once students had completed their planning, I worked with each group to 'quality assure' their lesson and to allocated badges for each lesson. From here, each lesson was loaded as a mission on our Starfleet Mission Tracker (see image below) aka. kanban board. If you are not familiar with kanban, it's a super simple project management tool that really helps visualise workflow, prioritisation, etc. I 100% recommend using this with team, students and yourself! I created the video below to help my students understand kanban.

Using Trello, we set up a kanban board where each card serves as a mission. A click on each mission reveals the instructions and resources for each lesson. As students completed the various parts of the lesson, they would mark items as done on the To-Do list also included on the mission card.

Expanded view of a mission.

Over the course of the term, students started each class by selecting from the AVAILABLE MISSIONS what they would complete that day and moving it into the TO DO column on their personal mission tracker. As they were completing the lesson, the mission would be in their DOING column, and finally, when they have completed all items on the checklist, they would move the card into the DONE column.

To help students make selections that would support them gaining all the skills towards the rubric, we also created specialisations using the badges that we allocated. Each student thus played an active role in designing the class' lessons, choosing their specialisation and choosing the lessons to help them achieve their specialisation.

So did it work?
It was great to see that students responded well to this teaching strategy. As the teacher of this class, it was remarkable how easy this class became to manage. Every student knew what they were doing and what their next steps were. My stress levels and planning time was significantly reduced! (This was an added bonus, I hadn't planned on this). Students' reported experience of this approach also showed that students really felt that their learning was personalised.

However, what was particularly interesting about this approach was that out of the five Maori and/or Pasifika students in this class who completed the in-class survey, three out of the five students gave themselves the highest possible score for the three indicators in the survey:

• I feel proud of the work that I did in this class.
• I feel confident that the work I did in this class is good quality.
• I did my best in this class.

Interestingly, the other two students still identified in the survey that the learning was new and free (Student A) and that they linked the learning (Student E). 

All in all, I think this was a pretty successful experiment and next step for my Spiral of Inquiry. This year I am continuing my focus on "How might we develop assessment that enables success for academically ‘at risk’ students?" I look forward to further experiment with this approach in senior classes next...