Des-blog

Each week, we post a conversation starter in the Desmos Fellows Slack to help us connect, inspire, and grow. Recently we asked, “What is one piece of advice you wish you could go back and give yourself before you started distance teaching?”

The responses were both thoughtful and rich, and we wanted to share some of those thoughts with a larger community of teachers. Maybe readers will find new perspectives here, new ideas, a shared experience, or maybe some combination of these. It is important to remember that these responses are advice these Fellows would give to themselves, are reflective of their learning in their particular circumstances, and that this advice might in fact change in another month’s time. Nonetheless, some themes emerged in the discussion, such as flexibility and attending to classroom culture in this new environment.

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Meet Audrey McLaren, one of our Desmos Fellows. Audrey worked in classrooms like many of you. Four walls and a door. Gum under the desks. Then she joined the non-profit LearnQuebec, which supports the education of students in remote areas of her province in Canada.

In towns and villages with very few students and even fewer teachers, the local school system can’t afford to hire teachers for advanced math and science classes where there might only be one student. So Audrey and a small team of teachers have been teaching for the last 12 years exclusively online. We interviewed her this week hoping to share with you some of the secrets to her success.

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To the math teachers and students in our community:

As the threat of pandemic forces schools and districts to close, the world is realizing in real-time all the vital functions served by schools and teachers: shelter, health care, social-emotional support, food security, community, and of course, education.

Schools and districts are currently making an enormous request of teachers to switch modalities and start developing relationships and ideas virtually. We have reservations about this form of instruction and know it is often least helpful for students who need the most help. But we realize that some help is likely better than none, and we want to use our resources to help you make the best of a very challenging situation.

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