online learning at Ensworth

Middle School Faculty Meeting Distance Learning Challenges with Creativity

From Latin to science, Middle School teachers are displaying just how nimble they can be with the perfect combination of technological resources and creative students.
Trey House, Latin teacher for Grades 6 and 7, has long employed fun, interactive projects both inside and outside the classroom. Before Ensworth switched to remote learning, Mr. House, or “Magister Casa,” held a Trojan Horse Shark Tank design contest and a faculty-judged Caesareans vs. Republicans debate. Outside the classroom, Mr. House shared his experience with a local improv comedy group for faculty development.

After classes moved from campus into students’ homes, Trey has used his creative spark to engage students in novel ways. All of Ensworth’s remote learning during the first two weeks was asynchronous, meaning that no assignments or communication would happen in real-time. 

To maintain the facial and social contact so easy to achieve in the classroom, he introduced Flipgrid by Microsoft where a grid of student video submissions acts as a virtual sharing around the room. For homework involving translating a Latin passage, students each read their translations along with any questions or problems they had. And for another less serious assignment, students shared their plans for the long Easter weekend.

Ever in tune with the Middle School brain, he also adapted his teaching methods by introducing screencasting using Loom. 

“Students are getting more emails than ever before,” he explains. “It's a lot more text for them, so I've been adding video messages, using Loom, for week-long lookaheads and walkthroughs for daily assignments.”

New Middle School science teacher, Becky Smith, has also seen how the students can learn in more visual ways during remote learning. She is impressed by how they have started “showing their creative sides by turning in work in the form of videos, drawings, and the like.”

Apart from using tools she already used in her classes, like Tigernet and Google Classroom, she has discovered many other useful tech tools to make learning new and fun. Although she misses seeing her students and colleagues in person, she says remote learning “has been a wonderful journey in new pedagogy.”

“I've had Zoom sessions with the science department, eighth-grade teachers, my new faculty cohort led by Bobby and Trey,” she observes. “We're all really busy but the flexibility of the schedule has allowed me to be part of some really valuable conversations in these Zoom meetings which I am also grateful for.”

None of this would have been possible without the technological resources in place before the global pandemic, especially with the help of Jenny Krzystowczyk, Technology Integration Specialist for the Middle School. “Jenny has helped us learn how to use many of the teaching tools I mentioned above and I email her pretty much every day starting with ‘Can you think of a way I can have my students…?’ and she helps me come up with solutions.”

Becky also sees the parent perspective, with daughters in Middle and High School at Ensworth. “I've gotten to see first hand the work other teachers are doing as well,” she says. “I'm more connected than I ever have been to what my children are learning since we are all working in the same space.”
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