Work struggles during the coronavirus
The struggle is real!!
Going from the average working day, teaching at school, to teaching online from my living room during this pandemic. Something nobody expected would ever happen within our life time for certain. I'd say for people like myself its really impacted the way I work MASSIVELY... Being a dance teacher, the studio/ classroom is your home for creativity and inspiration because of its space. Having that replaced with online teaching and pre-recorded videos from your living room at home is far from satisfying or motivating. Its tiring, boring, demotivating, frustrating, time consuming and sad, but what can anyone do in such a situation? At least I still get to work in my field of profession unlike others who may have lost their jobs, or being told to come to work whenever the world seems to appear to be back to what we'd like to call NORMAL.
Studying my masters which is based on my professional practice has definitely took a different turn. I'm able to look at my experience and learning through the eye of using technology as a substitue for teaching to others. Like most, I'm not able to use the platform called 'ZOOM' which has been the main substitute for online teaching throughout China and persuing worldwide. Personally, it is not very convenient to teach children of young ages in such large groups through an online video.
Reasons for not choosing a live video experience:
- Too many students
- Students levels
- Students ages
- Students concerntration
- Students ability to participate
- Learning how to use the software/ zoom platform
- Having students stay engaged
- Trying to use less screen time
I personally chose not to do live videos because of the above reasons. Although there are others, including the fact myself and learning director agreed that it wouldn't be best suited for my students, I still had to give them a way of still being able to learn whilst at home. My only other option was to pre-record videos and share them with the classes and students. This way students are not disrupted by others, they don't need to figure out the software, the can work on this in their own time and at their own speed. The pre-recordd videos consist of recording, editing ect. I include an introduction for all grades, explaining what they will be learning from the videos, a warm up as we all know the importance of this, a tutorial video that breaks down all the movements they will be learning in order to be able to dance and finally the full dance video! Also music!! I use a software called 'BAIDU DISK' which is like dropbox, but is more advanced for the people of China. I'm able to upload all of the above into seperate folders, and share the links to the class groups so each individual student can open and save the videos to watch and follow along to at their own speed but during the scheduled class time period.
This has been positive, but like all things, there are quite a few negatives from this teaching method.
- Not being able to see students doing the work
- Not being able to see progression or improvements
- Sharing their own ideas
- Being able to work with others
- Being able to instantly correct student
These are the key points that show how this method of teaching can accumilate struggles. Although it is suitable for some, I manage to use homework as a way for the students to be able to share their practices with me so I can give them feedback. This does not seem to work with all students, as majority take this option to not participate because they feel it is optional. Although some students are striving from this and are really improving from sending over their work and receiving personal feedback so it is great to see it has two sides to my experience from using this method of teaching.
Aside from my discussion of methods 'I' use in order to teach in my situation, It would be great to see and hear how others are dealing with teaching if doing so and what their take on having to look at their own learning from a different perspective.
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