Building Relationships During Virtual Learing

Welcome, teachers. I am so excited to be here with you today as we talk about how you can build relationships with your language learners while we are participating in a virtual learning session this school year. Now, as we jump into today’s topic, I always want to encourage you to reflect on your “wins” for the week, even though it’s in the middle of the summer, you have some wins for this week that you can celebrate. I know a lot of you all are creating your Bitmoji classrooms.

I know you are working on those routines and procedures for virtual learning. We were just talking about how we can have logical consequences in our virtual learning classroom. So I know that you have some “wins” that you can celebrate for the week. Now, I also have a reflection question this week. My question to you is, what was the best moment last school year and how can you create more moments like it?

 I know my best moment last school year was taking my students to the National Civil Rights Museum here in Memphis and building with them an extremely strong connection on that field trip. This school year

I know that I want to create more moments like the ones I’ve experienced with my students when we went to the National Civil Rights Museum. Now for me this week, I want to celebrate your wins. I want to highlight those wins for the week, big or small, a win is a win. And we will celebrate our wins together right here on this podcast.So if you have a win you want to share, email me at millie@myadventuresinesl.com, or you can always join our Facebook community, My Adventures in ESL.  Join the community so you can be a part and share those “wins”. 

Now, this week’s wins come from Annette. Annette is a member of my program, the ESL Teacher Master Plan.  Over this past month, she has been working extremely hard, preparing for her language learners. She has been attending professional development and lesson planning, while getting her masters degree. So Annette, keep up the great work and we are here to celebrate your wins with you. Continue to be an inspiration to us and your students. 

Now, in this week’s Reflection, I mentioned a relationship building strategy that I did with my students. It’s basically an in-person field trip. Now, this school year, of course, we have a huge obstacle in our way when it comes to building relationships with our language learners, which is a pandemic. So we are going to have to be extra intentional in how we’re doing this school year. Now, many of us may be teaching virtually or with a hybrid model, meaning half in person – half virtually, and some of us are going back to school full time. Either way, it’s going to present a barrier when we are trying to build relationships with our students. If we’re trying to take field trips or if we are practicing social distancing, all of those are going to present a barrier for us as we’re building relationships.

Leading up to this school year has been at the forefront of my mind and in the minds of many educators across this country. We all know that it’s crucial to build relationships with our language learners at the beginning of the school year and we plan for weeks on  just building relationships. If you’re like me, you’re probably worried about how you can do it this school year.  Building relationships virtually is a challenge within itself it’s something I just can’t sugarcoat. It is going to be a challenge, but one thing that I can do is prepare for it and be intentional about it. 

I believe in the power of mindset. So I know that this is going to be a challenge and I’m ready for it and I will tackle it head on with a positive mindset. 

I went into work thinking for this upcoming school year, how can I personalize my relationship building with my language learners this school year while participating in virtual learning the first half of the year?

Listening in on my husband’s office meetings with his team helped me out a lot.

I noticed that every Monday, his manager has them to say a goal for the week, what they did over the weekend and what they need as a team to succeed.  I love that!! I love dropping in on his meetings and hearing the answers of his teammates, what they need from the other team members to succeed,  what they did over the weekend and goals.

And I was like, wow!! As I was eavesdropping, I started to think, maybe I can adapt this for my classroom.   I needed some more strategies. So I started to do a brain dump and I came up with virtual buddies. So a virtual buddy is a buddy that they can team up with virtually to get homework that they may have missed or if they missed school/ session that day. So with this brain dump, I came up with virtual buddies for my language learners, virtual field trips, virtual volunteer activities and any and everything that I can think of to connect with my students for this upcoming school year. And as I’m thinking, I’m also going to have them create a bitmoji suitcase and pretend that we’re traveling all over the world and have them pack their bitmoji suitcases with their favorite things throughout their virtual journeys.

So, in all, I realize that I need to be extra intentional about planning for relationship building this school year with my students. I want to encourage you to reflect on the previous school year and the successes you had with building relationships with your students. Write down all of those “wins” you had last school year and then strategize on how you can take those relationship successes and make them virtual. If you’re going virtual, how you can make that a hybrid experience for your students. If you’re doing half and half or in school, think about how you can do those same activities while having to social distance yourselves. So think about all of those things and just strategize and be intentional. 

Now, I as mentioned in the story I shared earlier, I am going to take virtual field trips with my language learners this school year because the in-person field trips with my students was such a huge success.

I saw so many “wins” from those “in person” field trips. It’s just something about going on a trip with people, you just have an immediate connection afterwards.

I also took the time, as you saw me, to do a brain dump. It  helped me get all of those activities out of my head and on paper. It also provided me with a clear vision on the activities that I can use in my virtual classroom. So what I would like for you to do is reflect on your school year successes with relationship building and strategize how you can transfer those to your virtual classroom, a  hybrid model or to an in-person model. And do a brain-dump of all of those virtual relationship building activities that come to mind. Write it on paper and  plan on how you’re going to be intentional with the school year, with your language learners. 

 I want to know, how are you planning on building relationships this upcoming school year.  Remember, we have a special community on Facebook, My Adventures in ESL. I would love for you to join the community and share with us your planning strategies. 

Once again, I am excited to be here, I’m happy you dropped by and I hope you have a fantastic school year!! I will see you in our Facebook community – My Adventures in ESL.

You have a great day!!