As we enter the final full week of remote teaching and learning, I am thinking about the best ways to keep records in this virtual sphere. At school we have a few record keeping systems in place including attendance, student academic records, and a few others. In our role as educators, it is important that we keep records we can refer to as we assess programs and student performance. How can this become part of the remote teaching/learning efforts in efficient and useful ways?
Attendance
When we began remote teaching and learning, we didn't know what to expect. As time went on, we realized that attendance is important for student growth and success. In general, students who were not attending remote teaching meetings were not keeping up with the learning as well as those who were showing up. Yet we did not have an official attendance policy or record keeping system. Looking forward, I believe it is important to create some kind of online attendance register and to take attendance at the start of each meeting.
Parent/Teacher Meeting Records
We had some teacher meeting records in place that we continued. For example, we take notes about our PLC meetings and we have records of those notes. I think it's important to have a brief record about every meeting, and perhaps some kind of record file could be created and completed so that we can refer back to these records if needed.
Student Achievement Records
We have some record keeping systems in place, and we did give some assessments virtually, however, we have to think about the ways we assess and record student growth in the remote teaching and learning world. I'm sure we'll work as a team in this regard.
As a school committee person recently mentioned, in the past we would spend months talking as a system about what now seem like simple changes, and with our quick switch to remote teaching we simply moved into a brand new world of teaching and learning without the planning or preparing for all the details that included. Of course this was the right thing to do given the situation, but to note this brings focus on the work left to do. Onward.
