Ms. Becca Morgan is a Certified Permanent Teacher in Ontario Canada. She is currently teaching 7th Grade children during the Coronavirus Pandemic. We talk about how online education in the COVID times has made a significant shift in the way that students are able to learn their material. She has noticed that students are not fully engaging and completing their assignments compared to when they were in the classroom. Learn all about Ms. Morgan’s experience with teaching during these troubled times.
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EPISODE NOTES
We talk about with Ms. Becca Morgan about her postponed wedding due to the coronavirus pandemic.
What it was like when the pandemic first hit for teachers and students
Ms. Morgan talks about how she was cleaning her room when the fear of the virus started to increase.
It started to get more serious when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told all Canadian citizens to return home from abroad, due to Coronavirus concerns.
The school district notified the teachers that THEY were going to start teaching remotely after the Spring break.
She had already had experience with the online platform so it was an easier transition for her to move to remote learning or online teaching
One of the biggest issues was that a lot of kids did not have the proper technology available to them in order to do their work access the learning portals.
The schools in the area all got together and loaned out their computers to the kids that didn’t have access to one at home.
The teachers in her school all got together and created the teaching plan for all of their students.
In Canada, the students go from Kindergarten to Grade 8 in Elementary School and then go on to high school in grade 9.
Becca teaches 7th grade and still has to teach multiple subjects to her class.
A lot of kids are struggling because they aren’t used to not having someone in front of them teach them the material.
Do grades matter right now if they are just submitting their material online.
Every class is having trouble with encouraging some students to submit all of their work because the students are smart enough to know that these grades are not going to matter.
Ms. Morgan talks about the major differences between online learning and teaching in a classroom.
The kids with learning conditions or with ADHD had the worst time with online learning.
How some students had more of a hard time with being at home trying to learn because of the toxic environment at their household. Being in school was a way for some of these kids with troubled home life experiences to escape from that abusive household.
Becca talks about introducing her students to a lot of Personal Development based ideas that she has learned from Tony Robbins and other motivational leaders. She mentions how she teaches the Triad to her students right away at the beginning of the school year. The Triad in a nutshell is Focus, Physiology, and Language. If you change one of these three things, you can change your state of mind.
Mental Health became a priority for Ms. Morgan during the latter part of the school year for her students. She set up regular calls with her students, in a safe and secure manner with their parent’s home phones, to discuss anything that was on their mind.
She talks about how she had a conversation with her students about the Black Lives Matter movement.
Ms. Morgan talks about how she believes that having a blended learning program instituted at all the schools would be the most ideal way of teaching right now. This means that some days out of the week will be online and some days in the school. If the class has 30 students then possibly 15 of them come in on Mondays and Wednesdays and the other 15 come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays would be online for all as well as the other days that the students are not in the classroom.
We also discussed how the teacher’s mental health can suffer during these times as well. Becca would go out on walks with her dogs or made sure that she took some time to take care of herself while being away from her students.
She would also reach out to her students to stay connected.
Her tips for students:
Ask Questions
Stay Focused
Do things that make you happy
Practice Gratitude Everyday
“Change your expectations for appreciation”
“There’s always somebody to care about you”
For the parents:
Encourage the students more and keep their kids accountable for their work.
Be easy on yourself
You are appreciated.