Something from Nothing

Throughout the last 9 months, I’ve been racking my brain to find ways to integrate experiential, real world learning into a remote learning setting. How can we get our students to experience the complexities and beauty of the world while keeping their safety and health at the top of our priority list. How can we make something from a situation that sometimes feels worse than nothing?

Although my school has done an exceptional job of keeping our learning community alive and engaged through a difficult period, there’s something still missing when learning takes place exclusively through a screen rather than in person. And now, as I begin to plan to return to in person learning sometime in the new year, I continue to wonder how we can get children engaged in their communities to experience learning first hand.

Although teaching it out is my preference, and the way that I think learning resonates most with children, we have had to make some accommodations during remote learning to ensure that students are able to access the world around them while keeping their physical safety at the top of our priority list.

In the next few posts, I’ll be highlighting some past field visits and experiences that have worked for my class, both when we were learning in person and since we’ve “gone remote.” These will hopefully all be experiences and strategies that you’ll find can be transferable to your own teaching in the new year.