The Virtual Teacher

The Virtual Teacher

I remember that one time I rode on the EPCOT’s Spaceship Earth and got to the future part where they have a teacher, teaching students from different places of the world through a screen, and I asked myself: “Man, will we ever get to that?” Little did I know that would be our current reality!

I myself have always been a “paper teacher”. I love having students manipulating objects in class and working on an accountability piece I can keep; something to evaluate and offer concrete feedback. I love centers and concrete objects. 

I am the type of person who loves the feel of a good book rather than downloading an electronic version, even though they are much more accessible. Still, the real concrete one gives me a sense of accomplishment. However, it has been my experience and it is my believe that education is evolutionary, it is in constant change, and us teacher have to evolve with it!

I would’ve never in a million years, believe that I would become a virtual teacher! Let alone to di it within a week!! Yes, one week!! Having never done anything remotely similar, I had to learn how do teacher over an online platform. I am sure many teachers can now relate! The entire world has had to learn to Zoom in order to stay in contact with one another! I had to learn how to navigate prepare lessons, upload materials and resources and guide students through the platform in order for our lessons to be engaging an effective! 

Yes1, the past several weeks in which we have become virtual teachers to our students have been tough! Still, it has been a huge learning process for both teachers and students. Through this experience, we have been able to stay in contact with our students either thorough applications such as Zoom, Google Meet, or many others use in collaboration with educational platforms such as google classroom, seesaw, canvas, Flipgrig, Edpuzzle, or others. 

We get to see them, to teach them, to guide them, to help them, to encourage them and we get to see them grow.

As for myself, I can’t wait to get back into my classroom, but unfortunately that will have to wait for now.   In the meantime, I will continue to learn new ways, new strategies, new applications,  and of course I will continue developing all sorts of wonderful ideas for this upcoming school year!!

Until next time, 

Love,