Remote schooling: What teachers have learned.
How do a first-grade teacher, an educator of the deaf and a photography instructor make remote learning work?
Reading, writing, arithmetic — remote. ¶ Teachers and students have been faced this month with an abrupt disruption to their academic year in the face of a global pandemic that silenced school bells and emptied out classrooms across the country. ¶ In Colorado, teachers in the Jeffco Public Schools district were among the first to make the unprecedented leap from classroom instruction to teaching students scattered across the county, cooped up in their homes in a bid to slow the spread of the highly contagious new coronavirus.
Many only had one day to prepare for the switch, but they forged on, transforming their homes into makeshift classrooms and inventing lesson plans and procedures they hope will keep their students’ minds nimble.
The transition has been trying, so The Denver Post is spotlighting the efforts of a trio of Jeffco teachers who have been particularly innovative as they go about their duties from a distance.
Kristina Mccombie, first-grade teacher
How does one remotely teach 24 firstgraders who are still figuring out how to read, may not understand online education and don’t have the attention span of their older peers?
Kristina Mccombie never dreamed of having to find out, but the pandemicprompted closure of Wheat Ridge’s Stevens Elementary along with all schools across the state meant the daunting task
was her new reality.
Mccombie took some of the comforts of her classroom — colorful posters reminding students about greater than and less than, and a stuffed toy horse named Linus the kids usually pass around to signify who’s talking — and set them up in her dining room turned learning lab.
Mccombie filmed snow falling outside her window — something her class normally enjoys watching — and sent the video to her kiddos, who watched from their homes.
“I wanted them to feel like we were watching together,” McCombie said.
She held live video chats so the young classmates can still talk to each other, and she recorded herself filming and explaining lessons rather than expecting firstgraders to read directions. Before the school closure, students were learning about birds, so remote lessons have asked students to listen for tweeting and draw the feathered friends they can spot outdoors.
Mccombie sent home work packets to complete, using up her entire copy budget for the year.
“We told the kids before they left that we were promoting them to college,” Mccombie said. “This is first-grade university.”
She admitted that parents play a big role in helping their children complete assignments.
Mccombie holds “office hours” throughout the day and evenings, making herself available to answer questions from exasperated parents, siblings and uncles newly tasked with home schooling. She gave her students a Google Voice number so they can call or text questions about their work — or show off pictures of their bedrooms and toys.
During the first week of remote learning, Mccombie didn’t hear from a few of her students, sparking concern.
Soon, families who haven’t responded will get check-ins from school administration to make sure all is well and that they have the supplies they need.
“I spend more time with them awake than some of their parents do,” Mccombie said. “We go from that five days a week to not having that at all. This is going to work. It will be different, but it is our reality. We will have more resilient students.”
Andrea Albrecht, teacher of the deaf
Thinking through the mechanics of delivering instruction to deaf or hard-of-hearing students — some who are autistic or have developmental disabilities — through a computer screen sent one word looping through Wheat Ridge High School teacher Andrea Albrecht’s mind: “How?”
There have been tears and breakdowns along the way, but Albrecht soldiered through the first week of remote learning for the sake of her students who rely on her.
Albrecht uses sign language to help explain her students’ work in all of their courses, from chemistry to a class on life skills such as doing laundry and going shopping.
Albrecht is accustomed to teaching with support nearby from her co-teacher and other sign language interpreters to try to meet everyone’s needs. Now with everyone scattered across the Denver area, Albrecht is juggling many hats.
Reading a story designed for special needs students over video chat, Albrecht angled the pictures on the page to her camera, put the book down and signed what the page said, flipped the page over and did it again and again and again.
She worked with students individually over video chats because online group discussions with multiple people signing and an inability for the camera to focus on the right person grew confusing.
Albrecht worried about meeting the goals of her students’ Individualized Education Programs, which act as documented learning plans for each public school child eligible for special education in the country.
Last week was spring break for Jeffco teachers, but Albrecht didn’t plan on kicking back. The high school teacher said she wanted to find more tools, resources and technological innovations that would make teaching a differently-abled group in difficult circumstances that much more effective.
“I’m missing the camaraderie we have in our classroom,” Albrecht said.
“It’s been interesting. It’s been fun. But it’s also been heartbreaking, because I can’t just go through the screen and help them and show them.”
Erin Reiner, AP art history and photography teacher
Erin Reiner’s photography students are swapping out sojourns to her Bear Creek High School darkroom with long respites in their respective bedrooms.
Without access to her arsenal of camera equipment and photography tools, Reiner is allowing her students’ imaginations to run wild.
Assignments have sent them on socially distanced adventures throughout their homes and backyards to capture snapshots of life on their cellphone cameras.
Students send their images to Reiner, and the class meets for group chats to talk about their pictures and editing techniques.
Reiner is hoping her creative class serves as a brain break for her students, many of whom said they cherish the time to get up and make art amid their load of other online classes that often leave them staring at a screen for hours.
Because her kids can’t access the darkroom and film photography they were learning about, Reiner pivoted to editing digital images. The first week of remote learning, Reiner’s students were taught how to shoot and edit images to make their photo subjects levitate. In one picture, a student edited in a spaceship emitting a beam of light beckoning their subject — perched on an edited-out step stool — toward the sky.
With no delineation between what’s school and what’s home, Reiner is finding her waking hours are working hours.
“Your day gets really extended,” Reiner said. “Normally, I can answer questions live in my classroom, but now it’s like the questions start coming in at 7 a.m. and continue until midnight. But I love the fact that we can do creative stuff. I like being a bright spot in their days.”