What a 12 months it’s been: a global pandemic, three lockdowns and a complete shift in how we deliver teaching, learning and assessment. Metaphorically speaking, the past year has been like the hokey cokey; everyone doing the same dance to the same beat but with individual styles, some nervously dipping their toes in and others going hell for leather throwing themselves into it.
Covid and colleges: You put your left arm in…
Through different social media platforms, we read stories of crisis, despair; getting left and right mixed up, not knowing which arm or leg it was… In the teaching world, it was all about knowing which tech tool was the best to use, how to engage learners online and how to communicate with them effectively for their wellbeing.
Teachers were pulled in different directions with each new bit of guidance from government and exam boards. As advanced practitioners, we found ourselves thrown into delivering CPD online, while trying to keep up with the beat known as Boris!
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In out, in out… shake it all about
Students and college staff have been in and out of their settings like yo-yos, adapting wholeheartedly to ensure that sites are safe for all. September 2020 saw us returning and delivering via a multitude of blended learning models, with a whole new vocabulary to describe them: bi-weekly, bubbled, asynchronously, synchronously, hybrid learning. The logistics in the run-up to Christmas were intense.
Despite a new variant, over Christmas we believed on-site education would continue in January, and colleges scrambled to set up the rapid Covid testing required to make it happen. We were back to college on 4 January, only to be told to pack up and stay home the next day. We were thrown back into the same scenario as March 2020, but by now we were dancing to a familiar tune. This time we had more confidence, we had tools, we had online delivery plans and endless hours of CPD. Yes, it was difficult, but it felt so much more manageable - and we succeeded again.
All together now
In all these months of dancing at different paces and styles, there has been a sense of community; the feeling we have all been in this together. Across the country, professionals from all walks of the sector are sharing, collaborating and communicating findings back to their settings for colleagues and students. Technology has brought us together, providing different ways to communicate and blurring the boundaries between class time and home time. Learners can reach out to tutors between face-to-face classes, providing a new continuity to their learning, but it’s not without pitfalls and managing work-life balance has never been more important.
You do the hokey cokey and you turn around
For many of us, the way we think about teaching, learning and assessment has been turned around completely. A recurring theme as we chat to teachers across faculties is “I’m never going back”. We may have been pushed into online teaching against our will, but the resources and practices we’ve adopted - flipped learning, multimedia teaching, online assessment and feedback, to give just a few examples - will live on long past the pandemic.
You put your whole self in
One year on and we are humbled at the strength of the sector and all those who sit within it. We are proud to be here and it is certainly a year we will never forget. We all put our whole selves into it, trying new things, many of which will stay because they have enhanced teaching, learning and assessment, they have developed how meetings can be held and how we travel to them.
We have been up and down the country in the last year; it cost nothing and we gained so much. As advanced practitioners working on a collaborative project with Greater Manchester Colleges, we have developed our podcast series Let’s Get Digital, which would never have happened without the online communities of practice that flourished in lockdown. Students have taught us so much about what they need and vice versa.
And that’s what it’s all about!
It has been hard and testing, but, most importantly, it has not been without its rewards. The more we do the dance, the better we get, we know our lefts from our rights, our arms from our legs, the beat gets familiar… but we keep our own styles throughout!
Well done, FE: that’s what it’s all about!
Stacey Salt and Eve Sheppard are both tutors and advanced practitioners in further education
