Puzzled about Teaching Online?

Along with toilet paper, I understand in the spring of 2020, puzzles were hard to find. People were looking for things to do that would take a while, and I suppose puzzles were it. I have a few pretty neat puzzles on the shelf at home, some cool ones I picked up travelling that I was stoked to do. I didn’t need to rush out and join the line up for puzzles — I was set.

I am JUST starting a puzzle now, and it’s December. The Covid experience is a little different for me. It turns out I didn’t have more time than tasks. I also didn’t have time for all that blogging! But that is for a different story. This one is about puzzles, or at least it will start that way. You see for the past three weeks I have been staying with my parents. Covid season was perfect timing for the medical system to decide that it was my Dad’s turn for a new knee. Since he does most of the “heavy lifting” to keep the parental household going and I live some distance away, the only solution we came up with was for me to move in for a bit while he recovers. And that, is also another story.

I am doing a puzzle now — 1000 pieces. I gave my parents this puzzle a few Christmas’ ago in the ever searching quest to give my Mom something to do. I discovered it was still in shrink-wrap in a closet. While watching my Mom sit and re-read the same books day after day, I resolved to do two things. I went to the library and got her some different books, AND I suggested, “Mom, let’s dump this thing out and try it.” Mom spent about 10 minutes finding the edge pieces and has decided that puzzling isn’t for her. At least she is reading new books.

So the puzzle is strewn all over the dining room table. I can tell you that after sitting in the evening and listening to Dad complain about how long it takes to recover from knee surgery (he’s 84 now and up to this point hasn’t spent a night in the hospital — this recovery thing is a bit new). Mom’s focus is on her books; I have come up with two choices. Work some more (thanks, I did tons of online work during the day) OR do the puzzle. It turns out you can be in the same room as other folks while everyone does their thing, and it’s quite an excellent way to pass the time — an odd but comforting sense of togetherness.

By now, you are wondering — “Where are the nuggets of edTech truths in this article? Tom usually writes about those.” Correct, and we will get there. Patience, puzzling is something that requires TONS of patience (there we are getting started!) My Dad can build model train layouts, but he insists he would have thrown those silly puzzle pieces to the floor by now. Ok, so puzzling takes a certain kind of patience.

Yesterday I held some ‘office hours’ online for teachers I coach. Like those teachers who also hold office hours for their students, I thought I might be staring into the Google MEET abyss for the entire 2 1/2 hours I set aside for it until DIG DONG — someone “rang the door,” and I let them in. We had a great chat about how things were going, and this teacher asked some timely questions, to which I hope I gave her some good advice. We had no fixed agenda; the meeting was relaxed and natural. She left with some concrete ideas to try. I had some excellent ideas about what to focus on in an upcoming webinar for her team! A perfect example of “Office Hours.” There are several reasons why this half-hour interaction was fruitful — let’s unpack a few.

What does this have to do with puzzling? It isn’t about the picture on the box after all. The process of going through and looking for the pieces that fit is the zen of this endeavour. Yes, there is an absolute satisfaction of seeing the picture come to life, and I suppose if you don’t like the picture, you are working so hard to make it happen won’t be as rewarding. To puzzle, you need to put in the time. You need to get to know all the pieces; you need to try things out and be prepared to put them back on the table. You need to have patience and take a break. Stop do something else and come back to the table later on. You won’t finish 1000 pieces in one sitting — if you do I suggest you need more pieces or a 3D puzzle or one with just water!

Mom asked me — “…so how do you puzzle?” That was an interesting question. Beyond giving her the task to find the edge pieces, I wasn’t exactly sure what advice to give. My primary puzzle experience is with preschoolers, and my “strategy” there is pretty straight forward. I was SOOO tempted to GOOGLE “how to do a puzzle?” but I resisted and just started in on it. At first, it was a ton of moving pieces here and there.

Teaching online is like puzzling. It turns out you won’t figure it out in the first, second, third … (4 months later) GOOGLE MEET. To teach kids online, you need the same ingredients that I discovered have worked for ‘office hours’ or the PLC’s I am leading, and it turns out these same strategies are practiced during puzzling.

Puzzling has only been going on for me for the past three nights. It’s been a peaceful activity that I can do in the room with my parents, and everyone is ok just hanging out in the same space. It has given me time to ‘think’ not just about the puzzle but about how to solve other problems. It is teaching me patience and rewarding me with little glimpses of the big picture. (Oh my goodness, I am practicing MINDFULNESS!) It helped me realize that it’s about the journey and not the end, like most things.

Teachers take heart. You are working in an ecosystem for which most of you are not prepared. The government may have well told you ‘teach under water tomorrow.’ Our leaders didn’t have many options, and in the mad scramble to figure it out, they dumped out a box of tech pieces asking you just to push harder to make them fit. STOP doing that! Instead, lay them all out, pick them up and ponder what part of the picture is this. Oh — and they also forgot to give you the box lid; we don’t know what the picture is. Let me help draw that for you — it starts by building (or rebuilding) the relationships online. Doing so is ‘similar’ to the way you do in the classroom, but different enough to mean you need to develop some new strategies. You can GOOGLE “How to teach online,” but that will not replace putting in the time to create your style — that will reveal to you that there are 1000’s of pieces to this picture. It would help if you were a participant in some online learning — watch what works and what doesn’t. It would be best if you lurked in each other’s classes online. STOP trying to replicate the school day and your physical classroom (that’s a different puzzle box and not one for these pieces!) START holding smaller ‘sessions’ where people can pause, take a break and return to the ‘table.’ These are parts of what the puzzle box of online learning would have on the lid. I don’t have the full picture yet, but I am working on sketching it out, so I have a better idea of where the pieces fit.