There’s a song by Shakira called Try Everything that ended up becoming my theme song while teaching through the pandemic.

One of the lines is ”Nobody learns without getting it wrong” - words that were highly apt for the remote teaching experience.

Having taught in many international and private schools over the past 11 years, I have always worked hard to provide the best for my students.

I have learned many best practices and believed I provided my students with the best researched-based learning environment possible.

In fact, I was at a point in my career where I was feeling the most confident (probably too confident) about my teaching when Covid-19 entered and blew my highly capable teaching to the wind - or so I thought.

In came change, fear and one of the most humbling experiences of my education career.

Coronavirus: The challenge of teaching online

I teach Grade 1 in a private international school. I am fortunate in my setting because I had access to many technology resources while teaching through the pandemic.

Despite this, the past few months have unquestionably been the most challenging period of my career.

Not least because it required a total mindset change of: “Six-year-olds can learn online and there are so many opportunities for them to learn well.”

I just needed to humble myself and learn the tools available to me. The timing was certainly relevant as just before news of the pandemic, I had read a book called Stratosphere by Michael Fullan.

He writes that pedagogy is behind technology and we need to change our practices to catch up with the technology available. Covid-19 certainly pushed me to catch up.

And despite the challenges of change, I was able to provide for students. There is certainly room for improvement but, as I have progressed, the possibilities of the world of online teaching seem to offer huge possibilities for the future.

As I reflect on this period, I have come to see four words as encapsulating my time working through the pandemic.

1. Exposure

One of the most uncomfortable aspects of online teaching was the feeling of being exposed and vulnerable to criticism.

Other teachers, parents and administrators were looking at your teaching videos, timetables and lessons, daily. I was provided frequent feedback in some way from a parent or an administrator.

Often in education, you share once you feel fully comfortable with what you are doing. You may give a professional development session or tweet about a practice to share with others.

But if you’re not skilled or are developing a practice, it takes time to want to share it. In this circumstance, we were fully exposed while learning and we understood that almost everything we did would be critiqued, before we even felt comfortable with our practice.

The exposure and constant state of critique brought about a lot of feelings of insecurity and often I found myself overworking to avoid the criticism. This I am still working to change and be OK with.

2. Growth

In three months I went from being what I would say was a non-tech user to creating videos, using online tools fluently and feeling like I have the tool kit to provide learning online.

The growth was exponential.

Focusing on small wins was key to my growth as an educator and being excited for all that I was learning.

3. Collaboration

In the past, I have worked with many Grade level teams. In a regular school setting, you often have differing opinions or teaching values and too often instead of fully collaborating you get through your day by being collegial. 

Now, your team needs to work together to be consistent for families and parents and if you don’t believe in someone else’s pedagogy, you need to get to the root of your difference.

The conversations we began having as a team were more rich and collaborative than ever before. 

4. Humility

So many things can go wrong in the classroom and not go as planned, and it is the same for teaching online. 

There are “new” behaviour problems you need to learn how to manage, parts of lessons you forget to include in your video, and basic technology problems such as a Google Meet not working and 21 parents waiting to get on and feeling frustrated on their end. 

A day was never smooth, and the constant state of failure was inevitable.

I needed to understand that my faults did not define me but it is what I did with these faults and how I can overcome them that makes me a better teacher.

Teaching online was - and remains - hard. But I believe going through the experience is something I will always value in my career.

It allowed me to learn the tools I needed to elevate learning for 21st-century learners and to provide for learners in a way we should have been doing for the past decade.

Getting past my own issues and frustrations has only made me a stronger educator. I love my job. I always have and I continue to love teaching students in the best way possible.

I think if we all accept the exposure, enjoy the growth, continue to collaborate and stay humble, we will all grow from this challenge and elevate our teaching and learning to the next level.

Abby Longmire is a Grade 1 teacher at Mulgrave School in Canada.  She has been teaching in international schools for 13 years