Over the last few months of sharing the stories women face in pursuing a leadership role as part of the Women Who Lead project for Eduro Learning, several men have reached out to ask me what they can do to more actively support women in this journey.

Given the current state of leadership, particularly in the international school circuit where only around 28-33% of Heads of School are women, the biggest change must come from our male leaders, in particular our white, CIS, male leaders.

Although men have shared with me that they feel they face some similar challenges to women, the reality is that there are so many more layers to being a woman in leadership, that even when the “old boys club” doesn’t welcome you, it’s just one of the many facets women face. As challenging as that may feel, layering on all of the other stereotypes and biases that women must contend with just compounds the issue, over and over again.

So, if you are looking for ways to take action to promote equity in your organization, to support the women you work with, and to change this dynamic, here are a few concrete steps you can start with:

1: Don’t Center Yourself

This is not about how you feel, or what you need, or what you want to do. It’s about listening, providing space for others, and doing the work internally to shift your own mindset and deal with your internal biases. That may make it hard to be “visible” as a white-CIS-male supporting women and people of color. You will do that through your amplification of their voices, and the actions you take, rather than raising your own.

2: Amplify the Voice of Others

As an individual, you can start by amplifying the voices of those that are often unheard. Create space for others who may not have a forum to speak out, or an established audience to listen. Maybe this is giving space in your leaders newsletter to someone who doesn’t normally get an audience, featuring work in a staff meeting, or providing an opportunity for community stakeholders to hear an alternate perspective.

3: Speak Out

Along those lines, when you hear racist or sexist behavior, speak out. Among groups of men, during hiring practices, in meetings, whenever you see this behavior, call it out and clarify that it’s wrong. When men label racist and sexist behavior to other men, it makes a bigger impact that you might imagine. When women share their experiences with you, believe women. Find ways to amplify those voices to a level where action can be taken. Rationally state, again and again, what needs to change to create a more equitable environment.

4: Identify Aspiring Leaders

If there are women you see as potential leaders, give them a metaphorical “tap on the shoulder” to encourage them into leadership. That support from others is what prompted many of the Women Who Lead to start down a leadership pathway. Naming and sharing individual traits that tend towards leadership can be a huge eye opener, especially for women. When you take the time to notice, identify and articulate these traits you are helping women build the confidence they need to take that next step.

5: Do the Work

As a school leader, you can make it a priority to do equity work. You can start by learning on your own, to build your capacity for doing this work with others. You can provide opportunities for professional learning for your staff, your leaders, your extended school community. You can spend time building committees to create policies that are anti bias and antiracist. You can do this work with your board, and the parent community. You may want to hire an expert in this area to facilitate conversations, or you may have members of staff who can lead this work. Make time for it and make it available to everyone.

6: Put Policies in Place

As you build your understanding, and school wide capacity, set up practices that ensure unconscious bias doesn’t play a role in hiring (like blind CVs). Make it a point to hire people from a wider variety of backgrounds. If you look at the school’s website and the leadership team is exclusively white men, let that be a prompt for your thinking about the unconscious bias in your hiring practices. Overall, normalize seeing women, more people of color, more non-native English speakers, more LGBTQI people in leadership positions. Give them a seat at the table.

Final Thoughts

This is nowhere near an exhaustive list, and I am by no means an expert, but all of these solutions were raised time and time again in the Women Who Lead interviews, yet many schools and school leaders are not yet embracing these steps. It is likely that you have someone on your staff right now that has concrete ideas for how your school can move towards equity. Engage with them and take whatever the right first step is for your organization. If you need a community to reach out to, explore our members of Women Who Lead. They have all had to confront these challenges to get to where they are.

Learn More

Watch our FREE 1-hour self-paced workshop highlighting over 20 stories from the Women Who Lead interviews. Available right now.

Access the Workshop Here

These are outstanding, engaged and passionate educators who have chosen to spend extensive time (and often their own funds) on long term, deep and meaningful professional learning, beyond what is provided by their school. These are educators who are always working towards improving their craft, and who have demonstrated leadership capacity in many ways: from their own classroom, to their coaching, to their sharing learning in professional forums and events. But these women all felt like they need “more” to be able to really take that next step in their professional journey.

Those conversations sparked a question for me, “why do so many articulate, professional, experienced female educators think they aren’t ready for leadership?” That wondering ultimately snowballed into a series of follow-up conversations with women around the world about their leadership journeys, and I realized this feeling of “not being ready” is much more common than I thought. You’ve probably heard of “impostor syndrome“, maybe you feel it yourself in certain situations, I know I do.

As I started thinking about this struggle, and having conversations with the Eduro team about this common message I was hearing, an idea began to form. What is it about leadership that is so intimidating? And when we see successful leaders doing their job, why do so many women feel that’s not attainable for them? Maybe if we could shed some light on the personal journey, and personal stories of successful leaders, we could inspire and empower other women to take the leap into leadership themselves.

That became the beginning of the Women Who Lead project. I thought I would interview, maybe 10-12 successful women leaders in education and pull together those conversations into an online course for aspiring leaders. I reached out within my network, and started with the amazing Kathleen Naglee, Head of School at the International School Helsinki. At the end of each call, I asked for the name of another inspiring woman leader who might be interested in sharing their story. Every conversation ended up with more than just one name.

I had no idea that I would end up interviewing over 70 women, over six months, during the COVID-19 pandemic when so many of us were trapped at home, figuring out Zoom and learning that we can, in fact, having meaningful conversations over video chat. One connection led to another, and by the time I was on to my 50th call, I was starting to reach well beyond my own personal network. In addition to established leaders within the international school circuit, I was able to connect with successful female leaders in local and private schools around the world, women I would likely not have crossed paths with, and who had amazing and inspiring stories to share.

One foundational element of this project was to ensure that these conversations were intentionally inclusive. I purposefully reached out to women of color, non-native English speakers, and LGBTQI+ educators. Hearing the stories of non-white, non-heteronormative, educators was one of the most valuable aspects of this experience for me. Taking the time to better understand intersectionality in a leadership journey is not only beneficial for aspiring leaders, but for those who are currently leading.

From these conversations emerged a number of trends, highlights and key takeaways that I knew would be highly valuable and relevant for other aspiring leaders. And because I now had so much more content than I was originally expecting, I knew I had to do something powerful with it. There was so much learning in these calls, I feel like I’ve been given a masterclass in leadership and I absolutely want to share that with others.

So, over the past 3 months, I’ve been building the Women Who Lead online course program. Inside the course content is curated into the 8 key themes I interviewed the women about, including:

• Welcome: Beginning Your Journey
• Recognizing Your Potential as a Leader
• Exploring the Unique Challenges Women Face in Pursuing a Leadership Position
• Interviewing for a Leadership Position
• Handling Confrontation as a Leader Who Identifies as a Woman
• Finding a Sense of Balance
• Finding Focus and Priorities as a Busy Leader
• Emerging Skills for Leaders Who Identify as Women

For each theme, I’ve included:

• an introductory video from me, highlighting my key learnings and the key content for each theme based on all of the content within the program.
• all 70+ interviews, edited so that you can hear the responses from each woman, one after another, to the questions I asked, allowing you to get a variety of perspectives on the same topic. Each curated list is organized by the role of the interviewee – meet them here and hear their Journey to Leadership: Head of School, Principal, K12 Director, Consultant. You could choose to watch just one strand, or watch them all. I promise, they’re all fascinating!
• highly curated content that I researched and compiled based on the conversations I had (and quite a few recommendations from the women themselves, including an extensive reading list).
• a practical (but not overwhelming) reflective task to help you move forward on your journey to leadership, many also inspired by strategies these amazing women have shared.

What I love about this program is that we are sharing the personal journeys of women who lead – from their perspective, with their words, and from a personal viewpoint. When we see successful women leaders, we often put them up on a pedestal and can’t imagine any challenge or struggle in their pathway. These conversations demonstrate that we are all always learning, and that now is the time to identify and start your journey to leadership.

It took 7 months to conduct and edit interviews with over 70 amazing women leaders in education from around the world; research and curate content aligned with the stories these women shared; and to design the online course to create a reflective personal learning journey for each participant to be informed by the advice and experience of the women interviewed.

Four (of many) key messages emerged in these conversations:

1. Many women were “tapped on the shoulder” for leadership opportunities when they may not have seen leadership within themselves (yet).
2. Despite their varied experience and backgrounds, there are many common strategies and practices, shared by these leaders, that you can learn and apply to make your pathway as purposeful as possible.
3. Understanding the additional elements (often barriers) added by intersectionality is essential for all aspiring (and current) leaders.
4. We all need to do more to support aspiring leaders within our organizations.

Women Who Lead is also supporting two scholarship applicants dedicated to diversity equity and inclusion in their leadership practice.

The Women Who Lead program is now open for registration – and for a limited time, offered at an introductory rate.

Is this the year that YOU take the next step in your leadership journey? Or is this a chance to support an aspiring leader within your organization? What are you waiting for?

In both private, and public  (recorded for our #coachbetter podcast) conversations, I have had a realtime window into the stresses and challenges of starting distance learning when teachers and students haven’t yet returned from holidays, or the realities of trying to get back to your current home during travel restrictions, and generally just figuring everything out in this new world order often before the rest of the world even realized what was happening. If you want to hear some of those stories, please check out the conversations on our Eduro Learning Remote Learning Curated Resources page.

It’s been a challenging time for those of us living outside of our home countries, but I’ve also come to realize that friends and family who have never left their home country are approaching this pandemic with a slightly different approach. After a lot of conversations, I started to wonder if the people in my international school network were able to cope with this pandemic in a unique way. I thought I would share my thoughts about that here, to help others who might be looking for new ways to cope with these unprecedented levels of stress.

All of these ideas came up because we’re living overseas, but they don’t depend on location at all. They work wherever you are, it all depends on your perspective, and they can be applied to your life, no matter where you are.

It’s hard to believe that Alex (my husband) and I have been working in international schools for 20 years already. I can still remember our first year in Germany and how much I cried, adjusting to a new life in a new country, away from my family and my home. But now, 20 years later, I’m realizing that teaching internationally has prepared us for much more than we ever could have expected. In fact, over the past few weeks, I’m starting to recognize that all of us that do this kind of work have been pretty well prepared for the pandemic.

Three Ways Teaching Internationally Prepared Me for the Pandemic

1. New Job = New Life

Every time we decide to move on to a new school, it means packing up every single aspect of your life and starting anew. When we change jobs, we change countries so that means we have to move everything we own, complete the process of becoming a legal resident of an entirely new country, find a new place to live and settle yourself into a new culture (and usually, language). And, of course, on top of that, you’re starting a new job in a new school with new colleagues, new expectations, and new norms.  For most international school teachers, we do this every 3-5 years, so you get pretty good at adapting to a new environment pretty quickly.

2. Everyday Uncertainty

Living in a foreign country means anything can happen when you step outside your door. You might not understand the language or the cultural perspective on how to handle daily interactions. Likely you probably will take a while to understand local dynamics, you might not ever really understand the local news unless you make a concerted effort. If you’re anything like me, you’re making cultural mistakes all the time because things are done in a way that might be the total opposite of the mindset you grew up with. All of this means you have to adjust yourself, your mindset, your attitude, and your small habits to suit your local culture. You have to become a new “you” every time you move. Granted, some countries require more adapting than others, but you also become better at adapting every time you move.

3. Overcoming a Crisis Abroad

Crises happen all over the world all the time. If you stay in your home country, you see them in the news. When you’re moving from country to country, you end up living through some of them first hand. In our 20 years, we’ve been very lucky, and haven’t had too many serious challenges, but we have lived through: The Great East Japan Earthquake (and then the tsunami & Fukushima meltdown), riots, floods and protests that forced us to move from our apartment in Bangkok into temporary housing during the last time we lived here. After just one of these experiences, you realize that if you can get through something crazy and scary like that, in a foreign country (where you don’t know the language, you don’t hold a passport, you don’t have a social safety net, etc), you really can get through anything.

And then, the Pandemic

Even though we’ve lived through some interesting times in the places we’ve lived, those situations only ever affected us and our local community. Friends and family living in other parts of the world heard about it on the news but we always got through it on our own (always with an amazing school community). This is the first time the emergency we’re facing is the same for everyone around the world – at the same moment in time.

All the conversations I’ve been having lately with colleagues, friends and family have made me realize that teaching internationally have helped us develop skills to cope with unexpected challenges in unique ways.

3 Simple Strategies to Cope With Life-Altering Change

1. Find the familiar

When you’re in a foreign country and everything feels so different, I often find myself looking for any connection to my home country, or a previous home. It might be an environment (like a park) that reminds you of a place you used to enjoy, or a taste (a certain kind of food or drink), or even a product in a shop. When you’re in an entirely unfamiliar situation, looking for any connection to your previous life experience can be very comforting. You’re seeking out something that still feels familiar, even if it’s a “new” familiar thing. Even when everything seems different, what is the one simple thing that can be consistently there for you, providing a bright spot of comfort in your day.

During this pandemic, some of my familiar things are:

• still being able to take a walk outside so that I can take pictures and appreciate the interestingness of my surroundings here in Bangkok.
• continuing my powerlifting training (I am very fortunate to have the space and finances to set up a home gym in our second bedroom).
• finding little things in my day that make me happy (I say “hello” to my #bestfrond on our daily walks, I’ve been waiting for a lotus to bloom, I love the meals I’ve been making, I appreciate the digital connections I have on a daily basis with colleagues, friends and family around the world).

2. Know Your Limits

When you move to a new place, there’s only so much information you can absorb at once. You’re trying to learn the culture, the language, the location, the school, your new routines, etc. It’s so much change all at once, it’s overwhelming. Some people prefer to go with the flow and find out what they need to know once they need to know. Some people like to do a deep dive and find every single grocery store within a 5 mile radius the first weekend (ahem, that’s me). Know your level of information needs and stick with it. You don’t need to know everything immediately, and it’s ok not to know it all right away.

3. Make (or Connect With) Friends

Usually a life-altering change is very isolating. Even if we know others are going through the same situation, we can feel all alone, like we are the only one that feels this way. When we move to a new place, we always start by finding our connections to people who are already there (or who have previously lived there). Those friends can help us build a new social support system in country.

However, this doesn’t mean that you will make friends immediately, or that you’ll have the same kind of connection that you do with your longer term friends, so don’t forget about your support system in previous homes. When we first moved to Germany I had to get a special phone plan to call the US (on a landline), now we’re so lucky to have FaceTime and Skype and Zoom or whatever you use to chat with your friends around the world. Reach out to everyone and see how they’re doing. Build your social support network in person and online.

Final Thoughts

Of course this doesn’t mean that all of the international school teachers I know are handling the pandemic any better than anyone else (and certainly not that I think I’m handling it better than anyone else). We all have to find what works best for us in this unprecedented time, and it’s totally fine if your version of “coping” looks totally different from mine, or anyone else’s. There’s no one right way to manage your life during a pandemic, but I hope some of these strategies from a life lived in a nearly constant state of change might be helpful for others who are looking for ways to make daily life in quarantine a little more bearable.

I especially appreciate all of the ways that my international school friends are sharing their perspective on coping with this change, from Keri-Lee’s Letting Go of Perfect, to Nici Foote’s instagram lives on quarantine in China, to Will Kirkwood’s Teaching & Parenting in a Distance Learning World, and Adam Clark’s counseling advice on YouTube. I’m pretty sure that I can speak for all of us, and say that we certainly don’t have all the answers, but we’d love to connect and share and support in any way we can.

How are you coping? What aspects of your unique life experience have helped you adapt to the new normal?

Images:

• wing 6 by Tim Caynes, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Amazing #coachbetter convo, by superkimbo, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Red Shirt Army by Nate Robert, CC Licensed on Flickr
• My #bestfrond, by superkimbo, CC Licensed on Flickr

When I look back on all these coaching experiences, it never felt like something unusual to me – especially because the people I coach are everywhere (from Germany, to Kuwait, to Korea, to the US, and beyond), remote coaching is the only way to support them. But, in the last few weeks, I’ve started seeing many questions in various groups and forums about what coaches can be doing during to support teachers during remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic. Since I’ve been doing it for a while, I thought I’d share some of my top tips here.

Of course, none of these are unique to me. In fact I asked the coaches who have been part of our #coachbetter panel discussions about school closures to share their top tips for coaching during this difficult time, and they all shared ideas that are right in line with what I’ve been doing. Which then inspired me to create a 5 Min Fri video featuring all of these awesome educators,  publishing this Friday (3 April), so if you want to see their examples in action, subscribe to our YT channel here!

Before I share all the tips, though, I do want to point out that although I have been coaching remotely for several years, what’s going on in the world right now is unprecedented. It’s not the same situation as when I started five years ago, or even five months ago. So, before jumping into some in-depth coaching work, please consider the excess stress and trauma that most people are feeling right now. One thing all coaches can do, regardless of circumstance, is be a human connection, personalized social support, a caring listener, and help educators focus on their overall wellbeing, mental health and ability to cope with the world right now.

Even if you have tons of ideas for what might be a great coaching opportunity for your colleagues, you might want to consider ways to collect data about what they need, want and can actually handle right now. For some teachers, just the thought of even having to have another virtual conversation might be putting them over the edge. Some of the examples below might be perfect in one school context, and might create feelings of anxiety in others. You know your colleagues best: ask about their needs, listen carefully, prioritize what you hear, and pace your support appropriately.

Ok, with that said, here they are:

6 Coaches And Their Top Tips for Remote Coaching

1. Inspire & Share

Even when we’re working face-to-face in a normal school setting, it can be hard to know what’s happening in other teacher’s classrooms. Now that we’re all working from home, unless there are specific structures in place to co-teach in a colleague’s virtual classroom, it’s even more unlikely that teachers will have an idea of what learning looks like on a day-to-day basis beyond their own subject area.

Jordan Benedict, at Shanghai American School, has been sharing Distance Learning Walks with the middle school teachers on the Pudong campus via YouTube for the last few weeks. He visits their virtual classrooms for specific key elements in remote teaching and then creates video walkthroughs for the whole division. Recently he’s done them on formative assessment, the use of videos and screencasts and feedback.

2. Be a Thought Partner

It’s just as easy to have a remote coaching conversation as it is to teach using Zoom or Hangouts or whatever tool your school has access to. This is what I do on a daily basis, working with educators from around the world. If you want to see a template for these kinds of conversations, check out our Eduro Learning free digital download & customizable Google Docs template here.

Amy Garrett at Hong Kong International School has been personalizing the coaching experience for her teachers since school closed in January. Each teacher will need something a little different, and remote coaching makes it super easy to not only keep track of all of these conversations, but also to ensure the process is completely personalized to each teacher.

3. Keep Learning

As I mentioned in my previous post, the skills and tools that teachers need at the start of a remote teaching experience will evolve over time. At the beginning schools and teachers are overwhelmed with exactly how everything will work, and what tools to use. Those issues will be resolved rather quickly, because they have to be. Then it becomes about building community, staying connected, and creating experiences that go beyond a “short term” online learning experience.

As a coach, you can evolve with these needs by providing virtual PD through real-time conversations, screencasts, tutorials, newsletters, podcasts, or whatever works for your school community. Sandra Chow at Keystone Academy in Beijing has been doing an amazing job of connecting her teachers through virtual professional learning – and the parent community as well!

4. Curate Resources

If you’re not teaching your own classes, it’s likely that you’re doing a significant amount of “background work” to make virtual school successful and accessible for all of the teachers and students in your community. This means that you’re probably an expert on exactly what is possible with the tools your community is using. Being able to curate tips, tricks and strategies for making the most of this virtual environment is a huge help – as long as you are truly curating, not inundating (I think we’ve all seen the massive lists of tools swirling around Twitter).

Tim Bray at Cheongna Dalton School in Korea has been doing just that – making sure that his teachers have access to continued strategies to take learning deeper as they get more and more comfortable with the online learning platforms the school has adopted.

5. Create Experiences

As remote learning continues, it’s likely that students will miss out on important life experiences: sporting events, concerts, recitals, even field trips (and then, of course there are all the social events they will miss as well: dances, graduation, etc). As a coach, you’re likely more connected with what other schools are doing, and unique ways to create these kinds of experiences for (and with) students.

Pana Asavavatana at Taipei American School is working with the Early Years team to create a virtual field trip to the zoo with Kindergarten to re-create the trip they may miss if schools close again.

6. Give the Gift of Time

I’ve had a few of the coaches that I work with tell me that their teachers likely can’t handle any of the above. It’s just too much right now, and that’s ok. Is there a way you can support them by taking even just one thing off their plate? Can you give them a break in the middle of a day with no prep periods by working with their students for a section of class? Could you create content in their subject area for their students based on your previous work with this teacher? Can you edit a video announcement from your school leader, so all they have to do is record and you take the editing work for them?

This is an idea from me (so no video featuring another coach for this one), and I think it’s one concrete way you can demonstrate that you value and prioritize the self-care and mental wellbeing of your colleagues. Not everyone will deal with this crisis in the same way, and when we can support our colleagues in the way that’s most meaningful to them, we are truly coaching.

Final Thoughts

As coaches, we’re often in a very fortunate position not only to work with a wide variety of teachers, and therefore have a good pulse on the learning that’s happening, but also often to be privy to large scale conversations on how schools are handling these challenging times. This gives us a great opportunity to not only support our colleagues in the ways that are most relevant and useful to them, but also advocate for their needs with our school leadership team.

I have had more conversations than I can count with coaches, school leaders and teachers all around the world over the last 8 weeks about how different schools (and countries) are reacting to this global pandemic. Take the time to leverage those kinds of conversations to share a variety of perspectives within your school community. Many of the coaches I work with in the “West” were personally much more prepared for the coming crisis because they had the advantage of knowing what was happening in Asia. And now that schools are shut around the world, remember that Asia-based international schools still have 6 weeks of remote learning under their belt longer than almost any other city / country in the world. What we’re dealing with here is the future for those who have just started.

Spend some of your learning time as a coach to see what these schools are doing, and how the challenges (and opportunities) evolve over time. You might be able to see the future and help your school prepare for it!

And of course, if you have tips for how to coach during remote teaching, please share them! As always, this is just a start!

Images

• Across the Ice Bridge by Mitch Barrie, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Private Mentoring with Debra, by superkimbo, CC Licensed on Flickr

Over the past six weeks, I have been facilitating conversations with (and curating relevant resources from) educators, parents and school leaders who have been dealing with this emergency for many weeks, as part of our Eduro Learning #coachbetter podcast. And as I’ve been chatting with family, friends and colleagues around the world over the past week, I am realizing that we have compiled some really essential information that is becoming more and more relevant every day.

Since I facilitated all these conversations (huge thank you to everyone that contributed their time and expertise, find them all listed on our Emergency School Closures page), I wanted to share my key takeaways in one consolidated post. If your school is about to close (or has just closed), please save yourself some stress by learning from the real-life experience of the others who have gone before you.

6 Tips from 6 Weeks of Online Learning

1. The First Step: Tools & Structure

Of course, as soon as we realize we need to start distance learning, the stress of figuring out how it will work, what tools we will use, and when we will teach begins. Initially all of these conversations center around tools and structure: what can we use to video conference, how can I get my students to share their learning, when are we going to expect them to be online? All important questions, but the interesting thing is that these will be solved quickly. They have to be. These are all things that get figured out almost immediately because there is no choice.

Instead of stressing too much about finding the perfect tool, use the tools you and your students are already familiar with. Don’t start anything new on the first day. The simplest solution is probably best. Be flexible and adaptable as new resources become available that may suit your needs better, but don’t be in a rush. The whole situation is confusing enough, adding too many new tools at once is just too much.

And of course, there are tons of educators sharing on exactly this topic: from this huge Facebook group, to this guide, to our resource page. If you have questions about tools and the “how to”, the answers are available in many places, these are just a few where you can get started. So, while this first stage is understandably stressful, the interesting thing is that it gets much more complex and challenging beyond this first step.

2. Campus is Closed; Learning Continues

While your school building may be physically shut without access for students and parents (and also sometimes for teachers), school isn’t closed. This terminology may seem trivial initially, but it’s an important distinction. Your community may no longer be congregating in a physical space, but they’re still connecting in a virtual space. Instead of using the term closed, many schools are framing it in a more positive and proactive light, for example, continuous learning, elearning, virtual learning, distance learning, and online learning. My previous post has 8 tips to keep learning going during a campus closure, check it out here.

3. Distance Learning is Different

This is not about just putting your content online and determining a structure for the school day. Yes, that is a foundational element that probably should be dealt with at the start of your journey. But, the reality of day-in-day-out online learning is not going to be blended learning taken fully online. (And it definitely can’t be face-to-face instruction delivered digitally). It needs to be an entirely different model, allowing students to engage with content, deepen their learning and demonstrate their understanding in an environment that is completely new to them, isolated at home.

Above and beyond that, you have to expect everything your students will do is “open book”. Now is not the time to be giving “googleable” quizzes and exams. How can you take advantage of all of the resources your students have access to on the internet and design learning experiences and assessments that require them to think critically and creatively – instead of just regurgitating content?

4. Time Moves Fast & Slow All at Once

In every conversation teachers shared stories of students (and parents) feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work being assigned. We tend to assume that the duration of our class in a face-to-face setting means that we need to assign or expect a similar duration of work in a virtual setting, but often that’s much too much. Generally speaking it’s better to err on the side of less is more, allowing students to engage with the content at their own pace, rather than trying to “fill up time”.

Having to learn and demonstrate understanding in totally new ways will take much more time than we might initially expect, finding answers to questions about assignments might take longer (especially if there are time zone differences between teachers and students), and making sure all the resources are working / accessible can all result in tasks taking much longer than expected.

5. Keep Social & Emotional Wellness at the Forefront

At first it might seem exciting, and even fun, to be able to work from home. There’s a perception that there might be all sorts of extra time to get things done, and a freedom to chose when and how you will accomplish those tasks. In reality, it becomes a 24/7 experience, especially if students and educators are spread out across the globe (likely to happen if families travel during a break before school closes).

Parents may struggle with having their children home all day – especially if they have children of different ages that all have different types of learning expectations. Students may struggle to manage their time, and feel disconnected and isolated from their teachers and friends. Teachers may feel overwhelmed and overextended by trying to support so many needs on an individual basis (because that’s what happens when everyone is learning in their own home).

It’s easy to think this is normal work, just transferred, but it’s not. It’s an entirely new way of working and it’s not what any members of the school community signed up for. Initially, the transition from a structured day to an unstructured day can be exciting, but over time it can just end up feeling like you’re working all the time. As the weeks go by, having very limited social interactions, mostly in an online setting, becomes very isolating. The stress that was focused on tools and structure at the start becomes focused on all the things you’re missing – particularly all the socialization you would get at school.

6. Ultimately It’s About CREATING Community (Virtually)

This is the biggest piece that I hope schools who are just starting out online pay attention to. Learning (and working) from home is isolating in ways that you can’t imagine until you start. Students are not just missing the social connections of seeing their friends, they’re missing field trips, band concerts, sports, important exams and milestones in their academic career, and events they may have been looking forward to for years (prom, graduation, a last game).

Ideally, these emergency school closures won’t last more than a few weeks, but what if they do? How can you create that community environment from the start, so that your students, families and teachers feel connected – even if they’re physically separated. Some strategies from our conversations have been:

• include video as much and as often as you can. Even if it’s just a short hello and intro every single day from the teacher to the class, they need to see you and hear your voice.
• find ways to check in with your students. It can be an advisory time, or homeroom time, a daily opportunity to make sure they’re doing ok is essential.
• give teachers time and space to chat in a more relaxed atmosphere. Coffee mornings, or casual “teachers’ lounge” zoom sessions give teachers a chance to debrief and decompress with colleagues that are going through the same thing, and some breathing room from constant stress and the work of teaching online.
• listen to your students. How would they like to recreate some of their favorite events in a virtual setting? What strategies do they have to connect? Empower them to work together on assignments.
• help parents understand what learning looks like in this environment. This is perhaps the most challenging for parents who are now managing their changing work situation, as well as their children at home. How can you help them understand what this will look like, and how they can best support their children?

Final Thoughts

Although things are operating relatively as normal here in Bangkok (we’ll see how long that lasts), I made the transition to working from home 5 years ago when we moved here and I committed 100% to my company, Eduro Learning, and I know from first-hand experience that it’s not exactly what I expected. And that was my choice, it happened on my timeline, and was my own preference. I can certainly understand how stressful and challenging this experience has been for all of our amazing teachers, leaders, students and parents who have not had any choice in these decisions. It may not be exactly what we expect, but I hope that these experiences provide us with new ideas and inspirations for what school can be – now that we truly understand the potential of the tools we have at our disposal.

I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to chat with so many exceptional educators and school leaders willing to share their experiences and advice with the world. I tried to summarize the key items that stood out to me here, but please take the time to listen to all three of the conversations we’ve had so far (find them all here). There is so much to learn, and you don’t have to do it on your own. It’s unlikely that this will be ending any time soon, so there will be more conversations on the way. You can keep up with everything we’re sharing on our Emergency School Closures page.

Photos:

• Who Needs Sleep? by Eric, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Shift in Focus During Long Term Online Learning, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Open by Artem Beliaikin, CC Licensed on Flickr
• The Celestial Equator by Luis Argerich, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Jump byAlejandro Sanchez Ramirez, CC Licensed on Flickr

Blended Learning: Not Just for Emergencies

Like many of my techie enthusiast colleagues around the world, I’ve been teaching in a blended learning environment (for students, teachers and parents) since the time when I had to create all my classroom websites with Dreamweaver (so glad those sites are looooong gone). Online learning isn’t new, but the scale of its implementation in schools consistently seems to be a struggle.

Most of the year, we’re content with posting assignments and resources on a learning management system and calling that “blended learning.” As long as parents and students have access to assignments and the resources to get them done, we feel like we’re doing our job. However, when we have big emergencies like this, schools begin to recognize that blended learning should be a part of everyday learning, so that when we need to go into online learning mode, it’s not totally new (and totally confusing for everyone).

As a teacher, I’ve been through this many times, most recently during the Great East Japan Earthquake that closed schools all around Japan for several weeks. As the CEO of Eduro Learning, I’m working in an online learning environment every single day. From the actual internal structure of our team meetings (since we are physically located in 4 separate countries across multiple contents and a distance of 15 hours by time zone), to the products we offer, online learning is in our DNA.

At Eduro, we have been developing, refining and improving the online learning experience for our participants for over 10 years. We create a personalized learning experience for each participant while still developing shared understandings and providing a variety of options to truly engage with and demonstrate learning. From COETAIL, to The Coach, to our shorter-duration online courses and MastermindEd, our goal is to create the best possible learning experience for our participants.

As teachers and school leaders who are now in crisis mode, I know you want the same for your students. So, I thought it would be worth sharing some key tips and strategies that make our online learning experiences so successful with our participants.

8 Ways to Make Online Learning Successful (Emergency or Not)

Here are a few things we always think about when we’re designing our online learning opportunities (and these are the always the areas that get positive feedback from our participants):

1. Provide a variety of access points for the content you need to share

We like to use videos we create ourselves to pull together big themes and then link external resources (articles, websites, images, videos, podcasts, books, etc) that help enhance that content and allow participants to dig deeper. The key here is that not every student is going to prefer to access the content the same way, so the more avenues as you can provide “in” to the learning, the more likely they will connect with it. The video provides the personal connection, the pathway through the content, and the context that students need to make sense of what’s shared.

2. Offer many opportunities to demonstrate learning

For every module of learning, we provide a variety of challenges and action tasks for participants to engage in their learning, and then demonstrate what they’ve learned. When we’re asking students to work “on their own time” (which I understand is likely technically during the normal school day, but it’s also competing with all their other, possibly more fun, interests right there in the home with them), the more opportunities they have to find a task that resonates with them, and the more likely they’ll take it seriously.

3. Create Community

The hardest missing piece to recreate in an online learning environment is that feeling of being part of a learning community. When we’re in the classroom we can see everyone else, watch the reactions on their faces, and hear the murmur of students working. When students are sitting at home, alone, not only is it isolating, but they no longer have a yardstick to be able to measure their effort, attitude and attention to the task at hand. In our courses, we make sure to identify opportunities for participants to connect with each other, by expectations to responding to other participants work, or creating a shared hashtag for public posts, or holding real-time conversations so we can all check in and see each other.

4. Take Advantage of Unusual Opportunities

When students are learning from home, we have the benefit of being “outside” the classroom. In some cases (particularly right now, for those who might be quarantined at home) they might not be able to actually leave the home, but many families might be traveling in an area that provides them lots of external interest. How can you create opportunities for (depending on age level) parents and their children to take advantage of this time together?

5. Connect Beyond Your Classroom

Given the state of the situation right now, your students are not the only ones going through this challenging time. Instead of keeping the audience for student work in a digital space that only others in this particular class will see, maybe now is a great time to connect with another class and build opportunities for some authentic virtual collaboration and sharing of learning over time.

6. Set Office Hours

Particularly for older students (and possibly for parents of younger students), make sure to have a specifically outlined time of day when you will be available online for any questions or concerns. If your school sets standardized office hours, that’s even better. The important part is that your learners know when they can get your support (and so do their parents).

7. Think Different

The key is to think differently about how you teach, and what you now have access to. It’s likely a 45m video lecture is not going to be super successful (and even less promising would be an expectation that students sit at home watching teachers lecture in real time as if the school day were still in session). Now is the time to take advantage of everything that technology has to offer, to think about how you can create an engaging and empowering learning opportunity with all the tools your students have access to, right there in their homes. Check this ongoing list compiled by teachers in the region for great tools you can use!

8. Questions To Ask Yourself

If you’re still looking for more ideas, here are some other things to think about:

• How can parents be engaged (to an appropriate level) in the learning opportunities for students?
• What are some social media tools you (or your students) use on a regular basis that you can connect with to allow them to demonstrate learning in new ways? (I’m thinking Instagram stories could be a great way to document some learning journeys, especially if you ensure the archived stories are being stored so they can pull it all together, even after they expire in 24 hours)
• If we know we can’t “deliver” the content exactly the way we would inside the classroom, what needs to change? Are there pieces we can replace with better options for home learning?

You’re Not Alone

Even though this is a stressful time for many teachers in the Asia region, you’re not alone in learning how to engage students in an online environment. I know there are educators connecting on social media and sharing strategies. We’re hosting a #coachbetter podcast this week with a roundtable of teachers and coaches. And of course, there are educators around the world who have been doing this with their classes for a long time. Maybe now is a great time to reach out and connect with others. What a great way to demonstrate growth mindedness for your students and other colleagues, and take this as an opportunity for growth (rather than just a frustrating obstacle).

What opportunity do you see to turn this obstacle into a dynamic blended learning experience for your students?

Images:

• Wuhan New Corona Virus, public domain on Flickr
• Students Using Devices, by Govn’t of Prince Edward Island, Creative Commons Licensed on Flickr
• Less than a week until The Coach registration opens, by superkimbo, Creative Commons Licensed on Flickr
• Spring Jump by kodomut, Creative Commons Licensed on Flickr

No matter what field you’re in, or how experienced you are, we all have room to grow.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I started powerlifting about 3 years ago. In powerlifting our goal is to build maximum strength for the squat, bench and deadlift. I compete about two or three times a year to test how much I can lift for one repetition of each of those lifts (we get three attempts for each lift, for a total of 9 lifts on competition day).

If you’re interested, it looks like this:

If you’re *really* interested, I reflect on my powerlifting journey on my other blog: Learning2Lift (and of course, on Instagram).

The reason I’m sharing this is because in my pursuit of this entirely new hobby over the last few years, I am continually reminded of how much I need a coach. And not just for the first day, week, month or even the first year. Working with a coach over time is what allows you to grow the most – and if you open yourself up to being a learner, not only does your coach learn how to coach you better, but you become better at being coached.

I know it’s easy to see the reasons for having a coach for a sport, but what has really resonated with me as an educator, is just how valuable this coaching relationship – and growth over time – is for learning. Learning about myself, learning about my interest, learning about how to work with others.

The Value of Coaching

I recently competed in my 7th powerlifting meet, and had another opportunity to reflect:

Although I:

• set 2 personal records (in squat and deadlift),
• won 2 gold medals: in the open and Masters 1 age categories for my weight class (63kg),
• put 17.5kg on my total,
• retained all the national records for my age and weight,
• made the qualifying total to be on the national team to represent Thailand at world events,
• and made it to the top 10 of female powerlifters in Thailand,

this was actually one of my worst meets ever. And it wasn’t about my strength or my performance. It was about coaching.

I have an amazing powerlifting coach, Ryan Gleason, but he’s based in my home state of Connecticut. So, as you might expect, one drawback of online coaching is that when you’re a 24 hour flight apart, meet day handling isn’t part of the package. So, sometimes, even with the best laid plans, I (as the lifter, without a handler) can mess up my attempts. One minute immediately after a lift is not a lot of time to make a decision when things don’t quite go as expected.

When I missed my first squat attempt at my last meet for a technicality (jumping the rack command), I knew it was not necessarily wise to go up for my second, but I did it anyway. It ended up being the only squat I got that day. For my third, I *obviously* should have played it safe, smashed the open national record and taken the smallest jump possible, but my second felt solid, and I had hit my planned third (a 7.5kg comp PR) in training, so in that one minute, I just yolo’d and went for it. Failed. Missed my chance at the open record and cost myself at least 2.5kg on my total. Mistake made, lesson learned.

But now I know what to do in that exact situation which I never would have predicted in the first place. So what happens next time when something else unexpected happens? I will try to do better, of course, but that one minute countdown is brain frying, so who knows what I’ll actually end up doing?

Coaching = Growth Over Time

All of this is to say, sure you can be prepared, you can be experienced, you can even be an “expert” (not that I am, by a loooong shot), but there is huge value in having a coach, an outside pair of eyes, an objective partner who is on your side, who wants you to do your best, but also knows your limits.

I’m a powerlifter, but I’m also a teacher, an entrepreneur, and an instructional coach. I need a coach for all of those things. Yet I know many educators continue to have such a negative mindset about professional coaching. I believe all educators want to be their best. If that’s the case, why resist an opportunity to grow?

I know I’m not alone in struggling with this, and I love trying to figure it out together with the participants in our Eduro Learning The Coach Microcredential, because I think the reason can be different for every teacher. Ultimately, it’s our job, as coaches, to figure it out.

Are You Worth Investing In?

So, if you’re a coach, isn’t it’s worth investing in yourself enough to get a coach? Not only will you be modeling the growth mindset you expect from your teachers, but you will truly understand for yourself exactly what it means to be coached.

What do you think? Do you want to become a #relentlesslearner?

I love facilitating learning with parents, especially when they are able to bring their children with them. This session was no exception. We had lots of great conversations about the skills and values that are so important today, particularly highlighting the connections between face-to-face behavior choices and digital interactions.

The Power of Tech Breaks

But one of the most interesting conversations we had was about the concept of a “tech break”. This is always a hot topic with parents because when you hear the term you think it must be about taking time away from technology, but in fact it’s the opposite. I first heard about the research being done on this topic at an ASB Unplugged conference in 2008 and I’ve been sharing the strategy with parents since then. Read more about it here.

Often times our adult preconception about the use of devices is that if it’s not related to work or learning, than what they’re doing online is a waste of time. And if it’s just “playing” on a device, that means we should make sure to put those devices away and spend time doing pretty much anything else. We’re very concerned about screentime – but not always paying attention to the quality, because we’re so focused on the quantity. And that leads us to making all or nothing choices about how we allow our children (and our students) to use their devices. Either it’s “on” and we’re being “productive” or it’s “off” and we’re being “balanced” and somewhere in there a little time is usually allowed for “free time” (but generally that’s not seen as valuable or worthwhile).

In this session, I shared my own personal example of how technology isn’t an all or nothing choice, and in fact, there are many ways we can use our technology tools when we’re actually doing something we traditionally consider “offline”.

Offline and Online

I’m sure this will be no surprise, but my example story is about my experience with powerlifting. I spend about two hours in the gym five days a week and do a shorter session each day on the weekend. When thinking about training, lifting weights, and generally pushing your body hard, the last thing on most people’s minds is using a device. But, actually that’s exactly what I do, and each moment I’m using my device it’s serving an important purpose.

Here’s how I use my device (in this case an iPhone) when I’m spending time offline, focusing on physical performance:

• I track my walk to and from the gym for LISS cardio.
• I track my training session to see how long it takes.
• I use my watch to see (and record) my heart-rate as I’m training. Some parts of my training are dictated by heart-rate, so I’m at those times, I’m actively using my watch to see where it’s at.
• I’m listening to a podcast (I like to learn while I lift) – often about powerlifting, but not always.
• I’m recording my lifts to send to my coach for form feedback and accountability.
• I watch my lifts after each set to make sure I’m implementing the feedback and working on my technique.
• If I need to, I watch a tutorial video about a new lift to make sure I’m getting it right.
• I’m tracking the weight I’m lifting for each set in my shared Google Spreadsheet with my coach, and leaving notes about how each set felt, so he can see what I accomplished.
• I’m staying in touch with my Eduro Learning team. The reality of owning a small business is that you need to be available.

Here’s what I’m not doing:

• Checking my notifications on social media sites.
• Chatting online (unless it’s a specifically urget work-related question for Eduro.)
• Watching unrelated videos.
• Checking my email, responding to email.
• Posting or sharing videos as I make them – I save this for later when I’m home and I can reflect on the quality of the session.

Managing Offline Time With Devices

We often think about balance in very black and white terms, meaning you’re on a device or you’re off, but the reality is actually much more gray. When I shared this story during the family session, one of the students shared his story about playing Pokemon Go, meeting up with friends in person to have an online battle physically out in the world.

These are just two examples of how we can use technology to support us in our offline lives, here are a few more:

• Google calendar to organize and prioritize homework tasks within a time structure.
• A to-do list with reminders based on dates or locations.
• A fitbit or other step counter to help motivate you to move during the day.
• A calorie tracker to ensure that you’re meeting your nutrition goals.
• A meditation app to help learn how to meditate.
• Students using a dictionary to look up definitions of words while reading.
• Students researching content during class, in the moment, so they can build their own understanding at their own pace.
• Students using a chat app to help each other with homework or assignments.
• Setting alarms or reminders on a particularly busy day.
• Just taking a break and playing a game or checking notifications for five minutes so that students can come back re-focused (that’s the definition of a “tech break”)
• Using a short chunk of gaming to help reset your brain (here’s an example about curbing cravings, and a longer podcast that goes more in depth).

These tools can allow us to organize our time offline, so that we can make the most of that time in the way that’s most meaningful for us. Having an all or nothing approach means that we can’t take advantage of the different ways that technology can enable us to be more efficient, more organized, and to help us become better versions of ourselves.

Of course it’s important to have times when we’re present in the moment, when we’re exploring the world, or just connecting with another human being. But this doesn’t mean that “balance” is an all or nothing option. We can find balance for ourselves with (and without) our devices in the ways that work best for us. As parents, and teachers, it’s worth remembering that the ways that our children and students use devices might not be the way we would think about using them, but it doesn’t mean what they’re doing is a waste of time – or that they should put the device away simply because our pre-conception of using technology is different than theirs.

What are your tech breaks?

How do you use your device to interact with your world?

Image Credits

• off by Elio García, CC licensed on Flickr
  

As usual, I couldn’t help but start with my own powerlifting journey, and the enthusiasm I feel when training, competing, judging, coaching and even helping to build our brand new drug-free federation here in Thailand. I know that all of us have something we are equally as passionate about (unrelated to school / work), and when we remember how we feel when we’re participating in those passions, that’s the environment we want to create for our students.

Unfortunately, a lot of the time in schools, students feel more like this:

I believe that happens when we are missing that passion. And we can find it when we provide …

authentic audience, agency, and purpose.

Here’s what I mean:

Audience

When we’re asking students to demonstrate their learning, we can ask ourselves:

• who is the audience for this work?
• who will be able to interact with, comment on, share or provide feedback for this work?

While of course there are many valuable learning tasks which might still stay within the walls of the classroom, if the only person who really ever sees an important student project is the teacher, it might be a good opportunity to reflect on ways to add a more authentic audience.

Agency

When we’re facilitating learning experiences for students, how often do they:

• have ownership over how they demonstrate their learning?
• have ownership over what they learn about?
• have ownership over how, when, and what they are doing, both during class time and for “homework”?

If students are told precisely what to do and how to do it at every step of a project, it might be great for meeting the learning outcomes and producing uniform work, but it might not be engaging for students – this might be a chance to consider whether there are places where more choice might make things a bit more interesting.

Purpose

When we’re assessing student understanding, do we think about:

• why would we be doing this?
• who in the “real world” does this as part of their career?
• why is it important to know or experience this?
• how does this connect to today’s world?

If we struggle to answer this question, it’s likely that our students will struggle to see the purpose or relevance as well. Sometimes it’s just a matter of seeing how the content we’re teaching relates to a bigger concept or context visible in today’s society. Other times, it might be an opportunity to question the value of the content we’re teaching or the way we’re asking students to learn.

Making the Connection

I think it’s easy to see these connections for ourselves when we think about our own passions and interests, and how we feel when we’re learning about those. Especially when we compare them to how we feel when we’re asked to do by our family or colleagues, like: washing the dishes, document curriculum, or being “voluntold” to serve on a committee.

If we can find opportunities to look for authentic audience, purpose and agency in the learning experiences we design for students, perhaps we can help them also find the spark they might have for our subject area (or at least for learning, in general).

What’s your spark? How do you find the connection between the way you feel when engaging in your hobby as compared to what you consider work? How do you make the connection to help you design authentic, purposeful learning experiences for students?

Image Credits

Sparks by Don Ayer, CC licensed on Flickr

Most schools do a thorough job communicating with parents via email. Many have a variety of management systems to keep parents informed about events, assignments, and reporting. But not many schools use modern communication tools to tell the everyday story of their school. And to be honest, if they do, it’s usually a few specific teachers or tech leaders in the school that are doing the majority of the posting. It can be hard for school leaders to understand the value of using social media tools to share an inside look into learning, daily life, and the people who make up our school community. That’s what this session was all about.

I originally designed a similar session for school leaders as part of our Eduro Learning long term contract with Marysville School District in Washington State a few years ago, then adapted the concepts for the senior leadership at NIST here in Bangkok a few years later, and have run similar sessions at conferences in the Asia region since then. Every time I facilitate a session with school leaders on this topic, the same question comes up: “Why would anyone use anything but our school website to find out about our school?”

And this time I had a response that really made sense (at least to me): When you are going on a trip, you’re definitely going to check out the hotel website. Maybe you’re even going to book your stay on the website directly. But, for sure you’re going to ask some friends that have been there before, check out a reviews site like Trip Advisor, and maybe (if you’re as geeky as me), you might do some image searching on various photo sharing platforms to see “real hotel guest” pictures of the place you’re planning on staying. Because we all know what’s presented on the hotel’s website is the hotel’s idealized version of their property, and there’s likely a lot more to the story.

Well, whether we like it or not, the same is true about our schools. Parents, students and teachers all know that there’s more to a school’s story than what’s listed on the website. Sure, the website might still be the best place to come to find out about events, deadlines or school location. But, if parents are considering where to send their children, or teachers are considering where to accept a job offer, we can all be certain that their research will not stop at the school website.

This is where using modern communication tools, like social media, to tell the day-to-day life stories of our schools can be so powerful. Plus, the reality is that if we’re not doing it as representatives of the school, then someone else is: maybe it’s students, maybe it’s teachers, maybe it’s parents. But if we’re not making an effort to both review what’s being posted already, and adding our own stories into the mix, then the someone else is telling your school’s story.

In this session we talked a lot about what makes RCHK special. Every school has something unique, a specific perspective or objective that makes them stand out from the crowd. This team of school leaders had a very clear vision for the aspects of their school that they want to help both their current and future community members understand (but I don’t want to steal their thunder by posting it here). Once we had that vision, we could start to strategize how the entire school community could work together to start sharing that story to a wider audience.

Of course, the story the school leaders, communication team, and even teachers tell about learning isn’t going to be the only story shared in social media spaces. But there’s no reason why schools can’t use the same tools their community members are using to better connect, to highlight and reflect what they value, and even to build understanding about aspects of the school community that may not be evident in traditional communications.

What school doesn’t want to help their community members better understand, for example:

• that grades are just one metric we use to assess learning,
• it’s not about the name of the university, it’s about the best fit university for the child,
• students are actively making a difference in the world through service learning,
• learning looks different than when the adults in our community were in school, and
• success looks different to everyone.

There are many schools working towards telling (and owning) their school story. As a result of a similar session Ben Sheridan and I facilitated with the NIST school leadership team, they launched the hashtag #nistis (thanks Philip for your brilliance in coming up with that in the moment!).

When I ran a similar session at the EARCOS Leadership Conference a few years ago, the Communications Director at International Community School Singapore shared their Instagram account (entirely run by students) and today’s post was a perfect example of telling their story:

Here’s a long list of school hashtags that we collected at the beginning of this academic year when we started our current COETAIL cohort. I know these aren’t the only examples though! What other schools do you know that are doing a great job of truly, collaboratively sharing their school’s story in social media spaces? What do you like about it? What don’t you like? Does this kind of sharing help you feel more informed or connected to the school community?

Image Credits:

• Megafonchor Esso Häuser 007 by Rasande Tyskar, CC licensed on Flickr