This is the equivalent of finding an email stuck in your drafts folder…below are my thoughts reflecting on Season 9!
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This year, it really felt like my action plan interests from Season 8 were the entire focus of my teaching. Well-being and cognitive load are inextricably linked, and during this pandemic, we have all grappled with how to best navigate finding this balance. The pandemic created a sense of urgency surrounding the well-being of our students, and although we have celebrated teens and their resilience, it’s important to remember that many of them continue to struggle despite being seemingly “ok”.
I was grateful that all teachers in my school community were focusing on the same goal: that well-being was paramount, and approaches to learning goals needed to be actively adapted, revised, and reconsidered. It pushed us to think creatively in the ways that we approach and support student learning, and how we can ensure students with IEPs and diverse social-emotional needs were being seen, assisted, and felt valued given a hybrid, or fully virtual setting.
My greatest takeaway was to always take time at the start of the class to check in with students, have a bit of a “coffee chat” to build community and talk about the goals for the day. I would use this time to evaluate how we were progressing through the course and how students were managing their course load.
One method that was particularly useful was starting the conversation with a mood meter. Using a mood meter helped me gauge how students were feeling. I would use anonymous polls where students could select their colour, and would then use the colour spectrum to talk to them about our goals for the day and how we can collectively adapt the plan to meet their needs (ex: low energy, spectrum of pleasantness would usually call for a few more brain breaks, or an opportunity for a social breakout room at the end of the day during part of the work period. As students became more comfortable with one another, I would ask them (optional) to share the colour they felt in the chat OR the specific terms that they were feeling. Whenever I would ask them to share the terms that they felt that day, I emphasized that this is an important way to reflect on our mental health and we can become more aware of how to manage our mental health if we can specifically identify how and what we are feeling. This flexibility in personalizing the plan to each class, or sometimes individually for each student, was positively received by students. They felt they had a voice in their learning, and could engage in the class in a way that suited their needs that day.