Caitlin Broton – F2F to iEducator

Peer Review

I love visiting other teachers’ online classrooms. It is such a good resource to gather ideas and to also double check that I am doing everything possible to help my students learn. One of the ideas that I absolutely loved was that the instructor created weekly reviews of the information that the students should be learning or doing each week. After completing the content for that week, students could go read the weekly review to double check that they have understood all of the concepts. This instructor’s reviews included pictures and just a bit of text to explain the concepts again. What a great idea! My goal is to create review pages over the summer to start preparing for next year.

When I first heard we were looking at other classes, I froze. As a perfectionist, I am always second guessing myself. Would the other teachers look at my classroom and find all the flaws? Will they think that I’m doing a terrible job?

As we got started with the activity, I realized that a fellow ELA colleague whom I know does a fantastic job with his classroom, was going to be the person perusing through my classroom. Oh, great.

To my surprise, my colleague had nothing but great things to say about my classroom. Even saying that my classroom was a nice reminder for him of things that he needs to be doing that he has forgotten about. While browsing, he was constantly agreeing with things that I posted and pointing out things that I had done that he loved.

I am not a bragger by any means, but I felt the need to share this because it was interesting how this activity affected me in more ways than one. Yes, it gave me some great ideas, but it was amazing to hear a respected colleague who has been teaching online for years praising me for a job well done. As a new online instructor who is plagued with “perfectionism”, it really boosted my confidence to have my colleague compliment my classroom. To me, that is one of the nicest compliments I could have received!

The Wonderful World of MACUL

I’ve been to MACUL in the past and while I enjoyed going, the outcome was also a bit of a bummer. The school I was teaching for at the time had very little technology, so I was given these great ideas but couldn’t implement many of them.

Now that I am teaching online, I could not only gather ideas, but I could use them! YAY!

When I walked into the conference on the first day, I had plans of finding ideas that I could use in my classroom for remediation or maybe get to know the students better. Something that popped out to me in the session “Making Thinking Digitally Visible” was the CSI activity. This is an introductory activity for students to complete where they can make a Google Slide based on their life. They pick a color, symbol, and image that represents them and write one sentence for each item to explain why they chose what they did. I think this could be fun for the students to do at the beginning of the semester. While the introduction discussion board post goes into more detail, students might enjoy creating something to match their personality, as well as possibly sharing an image from their life. I am hoping to give it a go this summer!

Something else that I noted in this session was Nearpod. Nearpod is a website that has various interactive lessons that have been created for teachers. If you are feeling ambitious, you can also create your own lessons or tweak one that is already made. I have not yet had the chance to look at the lessons in detail, but during the little bit of exploring I have done, I found some free lessons! This might be an excellent resource for supplementary materials!

A different session that I attended called “No More Red Pens” had a few interesting programs as well. However, these programs would be trickier for me to directly implement into my classroom. Peergrade.io was a website that I thought would be something to consider for our Composition courses. The students can anonymously read and comment on their peers’ work. I think peer edit is a valuable resource but is often hard to hold students accountable and make them take it seriously. This program may help with that!

Checkmark by the EdTechTeam was also discussed rather quickly. This is a tool that may come in handy for a feedback repository, however, it is meant for Google Docs.

The session “Digital Citizenship: Teaching Students to Suceed in the Digital World” was rather eye-opening. While I did gather a few resources to use directly in my classroom, this panel session was also rather inspirational. The four librarian speakers discussed the importance of digital citizenship and how they incorporated it into their local schools. They supplied some great ideas and resources that I could share with my students to help them realize the importance of their digital citizenship or to simply practice identifying “fake news”. For instance, have you ever heard of the blue tree octopus? Hannah and I discussed even doing a digital citizenship corner in our weekly announcements. Again, something I am planning for the summer!

One of the last sessions that I attended while at the conference was also the most inspirational. The speaker was Eric Sheninger. Throughout his presentation, he stressed the idea of making your school a positive, fun place for not only students but the staff. He discussed how he accomplished this at a school where he was superintendent. He trusted the teachers to make a great environment for the students. Once he gave them the reins, magical things happened. He then used social media to help spread the positive events that were occurring at the school and essentially, created a “brand” for his school. It really made me take a step back and think of what I could to do inspire my students and share their stories. In fact, I was so intrigued by Eric’s message, I bought his book BrandED. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet as I am in the middle of an excellent series, but I am hoping to read more about his process and ideas.

Leaving Eric’s session and walking into the last keynote speaker of the day, Joe Sanfelippo, was a perfect transition. Joe seemed to have worked with Eric’s presentation and build upon the ideas that he had just shared. Joe stressed the use of social media to make sure that the community knew about what was occurring in the school, to boost them up, and to give them confidence within the school district. The stories and examples he shared were not only hilarious but again, quite inspirational! It reenergized me to want to do more for my students, whether it was academically or emotionally.

That first day of the conference, I managed to gather a few ideas to incorporate into my classroom, however, that second day made me excited to grow and improve myself as a teacher. I feel like these new weapons and plans from MACUL has helped direct me on the right path to improve myself as an online teacher. Instead of leaving MACUL disappointed with the limitations to my teaching, I left with ideas that I can actually use and messages that inspired! It was a fantastic change to the MACUL Conference!

Now I just need to hope that I remember my long “to do” list for the summer semester…

Flexibility: The Key to Accommodations and Modifications

Becoming a teacher means that you have to be flexible. If a lesson plan goes array, you need to be able to adjust quickly. Maybe you are suddenly sick and you take a sick day; put your lesson plans on hold and make changes to the schedule. Whoops, there is an unexpected assembly today! More changes. And that two-hour delay from last week means that your 1^st hour is now behind your 4^th hour. However, teachers don’t have to be flexible with just their schedule, but their students as well.

There will always be special needs students who have a disability requiring more attention from the teacher. Often times, special needs students have accommodations that the teacher is required to follow in hopes of helping the student be successful in the classroom without getting frustrated or overwhelmed. It doesn’t mean that the student doesn’t have to study different content, but there are extra steps to make things easier for the student. For example, maybe there is extended testing time or it is required that the students receive copies of all of the notes.

Often times, accommodations can be confused with modifications. Modifications are when the content itself is changed so that the student isn’t studying the original or required content. For instance, if students are writing a narrative where they are to focusing on imagery, dialogue, and plot, but one student’s assignment is changed because he is struggling. Instead of focusing on the three previous items, the teacher wants him to focus on just dialogue. By doing this, the teacher has changed the learning outcomes for the student, thus creating a modification. Once the student masters one element, he will not only have more confidence, but he can build off of this new knowledge to learn a new concept, such as imagery, and improve his narrative writing skills. He needs to be proficient at his current learning level before moving on.

When thinking of accommodations and modifications, I instantly think of two students that I taught face-to-face.

One student was not diagnosed with a disability, but as a freshman was reading at a fourth-grade level. Was it fair for me to ask him to read ninth grade level text on his own and comprehend it? Certainly not! If I did, I would be setting that student up for failure. He already had a habit of not doing his work out confusion and frustration. Why would I want to encourage that behavior?

I ended up working with this student after school a few days each week. During this time, I would modify his assignments. He might read a text that had the same elements as the one from class but was at his reading level. I also modified the history tests for him, so that they were not as complex as the other students’. By making modifications, I was working towards building the student’s confidence and filling in the holes of his learning. I needed to help him build up his knowledge so he could scaffold off of what he knew to understand these high school level concepts. In my eyes, this is just as important as accommodating a student’s needs.

The other student I think of was in my American History class. I had asked the students to write a paragraph using the typical structured paragraph format. This particular student struggled with writing, so the idea of writing an eleven sentence paragraph made him extremely anxious. I knew it would result in a lot of frustration for the student, so I accommodated him and asked him to write one claim, support, and explain, instead of three of each. This meant that he had to write only a five sentence paragraph.

Was he still practicing an introduction and conclusion? Yup. Did he still have to find evidence to support this claim? Yup. Did he still have to explain the evidence? You got it. The student was held to all of the same standards as the other students, just on a smaller level. I didn’t modify the assignment, rather I made accommodations to meet that student’s needs.

It seems that the accommodations that I have had to make for students in the past were usually the same and quite basic. Of the accommodations that I am familiar with, I can’t think of any that would be difficult in an online setting. I could see where if a student had a seeing impairment, it might be difficult to meet required accommodations, but other than that, I am drawing a blank. Oral directions can be given, notes and content are always available, courses are self-paced so students get extra time, teachers can create videos or audio, examples are provided, and the list goes on and on. I feel that online learning has so much to offer to students so many accommodations are already met.

I must admit, the flexibility of the online courses has made accommodations from my perspective much easier. Part of this could be because of my new freedom to be able to focus on students instead of lesson plans. I can now concentrate on being flexible with students and accommodating all of my students, not just those with disabilities- every teacher’s dream!

Evolving Classroom Organization Semester to Semester

I knew my classroom would constantly be evolving this first year, but wow! Already, my classrooms have looked drastically different as my time here at Michigan Virtual has expanded!

At the beginning of the fall semester, I had the basics for my classroom (the announcements, an extra resource/lesson sprinkled in, etc.), but I still felt like my classroom wasn’t complete. Even though I had detailed announcements, my class was just so…blah. Over the first semester, my goal was to investigate and listen. The webinars and Collaboration of the Minds were great resources for me to fill up my mental file cabinet with notes on how to make my classroom better for next semester.

The biggest idea that I filed away was that I need to make my classroom more inviting and informative. I wanted my students to look forward to opening the classroom to see my announcements and what I had posted. I saw great ideas for Padlets and polls, but the biggest thing that stuck with me is the way that I could create supplemental materials. I kept thinking about how boring handouts in a f2f classroom could be and I had flashbacks to students complaining “another handout?!” How could I provide supplemental materials without it being “just another handout”?

After viewing some examples and hearing some ideas, I realized that my handouts didn’t have to just be regurgitated written out information. This is probably one of the few professions where I am encouraged to use memes and cartoons. Thankfully, there are other English nerds out there that enjoy puns and other silly English jokes as much as I do. The number of English memes and cartoons are unlimited.

My response when I first heard the suggestion of using videos in my announcements to help teach was DUH! I always used short videos in my f2f class, but while thinking of how to create announcements, I didn’t think of using videos in my “handouts”. I mean, how can you put a video on paper?! This adds a whole different element to my supplementary materials!

The idea of adding folders in the left-hand main menu was mentioned in one of the webinars by another instructor. I loved this idea, so thought I would give it a shot this semester to help organize the extra materials that I am creating. While students can scroll back through the announcements to find information, I figured that some students may prefer more organization of the materials in a folder. Since there was already a “Grammar Guides” folder, I have begun to create a “Writing Guide” as well. Later this semester, I would like to make a survey to get students’ viewpoint on this new folder to see how often they used it and if they had any suggestions.

I enjoy creating these fun supplementary materials (maybe a little too much sometimes!). As a result, I have begun to post more resources in my classrooms as it not only teaches them (obviously), but I am able to also build my online persona. Killing two birds with one stone! Since semester one has finally ended and I have been able to focus more on redecorating my classroom, I have already had a few students comment about how my announcements helped them or simply that they enjoyed them. I feel like I’m moving on up!

This is my most recent supplementary material post.

Feedback: Bitter or better?

Within the realms of education, I have come to realize that there are many different layers of feedback. There are state scores which provide feedback to the school districts on their performance, feedback from the principals on those excruciating observations, feedback from a colleague who you went to for advice, and the kind teachers seem to get the most of, feedback from students and their parents. All of these layers of feedback are equally important, but the way that the feedback is brought to the teachers determines how influential the feedback becomes.

When I think of valuable feedback, I instantly think of my past colleague who taught across the hall. I was fortunate enough to have her as a teacher myself in high school. She had since developed a reputation for being an amazing English teacher- the “ELA Queen”. Now that I had the opportunity to work beside her, I wanted to make sure that I not only made her proud, but I wanted to take after her. Because of this, I would often ask her for advice on various aspects of teaching.

One day, out of the blue, she mentioned how impressed she was with this years’ group of freshmen. The same freshmen that I had taught the previous year. She praised my methods of teaching, telling me that she could see a big jump in the students’ knowledge and their writing skills. She encouraged me to keep up the good work and she looked forward to having my students again next year. I could feel my pride swelling like a balloon inside my chest as she told me this.

Sure, I loved to hear the praise from my role model, but it wasn’t always puppies and sprinkles. She would give me constructive criticism when necessary. However, the way she went about it was part of what made her an excellent teacher. She didn’t just tell me to get better at something. She worded her feedback in a kind, encouraging way. Plus, she would then sit down and help me brainstorm ideas on what I needed to work on, what I could do differently- almost making it seem like it was our problem, not just mine. For example, one day I had made a lesson plan that well, to be frank, bombed. What teacher hasn’t been there…I was flabbergasted. It was supposed to be perfect! When I went to her for guidance, she told me what I had done wrong and what I needed to change. Then, she sat down and offered to help. Instead of looking at me and saying, “Well, no duh that didn’t work. That was stupid!” she took the time out of her afternoon, even though school was out and the rush to race out the door to the comfort of our homes was upon us. The fact that she not only gave me feedback, but then showed she cared enough to use her time to help me fix it, meant everything.

Sadly, there has also been feedback within my teaching career that to this day, I still don’t understand. At one point in my teaching career, I was given feedback about my teaching technique from a different colleague. This colleague told me what I did wrong and when I asked if he could explain further, he only spoke in circles. The more loops that our conversation ran, the more exhausted I became. Finally, I simply asked my colleague for advice on what I could do differently. My colleague’s response? “Talk to so and so. They can help you figure it out.”

This person gave me feedback stating that I needed to improve on something, yet when I wanted to discuss it and improve upon myself, they spoke in circles and then pushed me in the other direction. I may, or may not, be a bit of a perfectionist, so if there is an area to improve upon, I am going to try my hardest to do so. To say the least, this person’s reaction exasperated me. You took the time to tell me I am doing a poor job, but then won’t take the time to speak to me about it?

Looking back at the layers of feedback within the teaching profession and the different people whom I have received feedback from, I have learned that when giving my students feedback, it is important to be kind, it is important to be helpful, and it is important to show that you care. I think that by doing those three things, the students will realize how important learning is and how important they are. Obviously, the content of the lesson is valuable, but helping the students to feel comfortable with themselves and their learning will guide them even further.

Supplementary Materials

While the content in Michigan Virtual is designed to promote student learning, there are instances within the online classroom where I have found that supplementary content is necessary. Especially when it comes to English!

English can be very tricky for some students because of all of the various rules of grammar and mechanics. I always tell them that I’ve been studying and teaching it for quite some time now, but even I have to look things up every once in a while. I think it is unfair to expect students to be learning all of the grammatical and mechanical rules while also working to improve their reading comprehension and writing techniques. Especially for those students who struggle with English. This is why when I taught f2f, I gave all my students a “cheat book” that they could use. It held all of the basics that they should know or would learn. They could use this whenever they needed.

This is why I have started posting PDFs about comma rules, paragraph structure, in-text citations, etc. Yes, students can always search the internet in all its vastness, however, I’ve found that often times, the internet can be a black hole for students. There are so many resources, not all of them reliable or understandable, that may guide the students in the wrong direction. The internet also has that magical ability to suck you into a downward spiral of procrastination. When searching for information, they might decide to just check their Facebook page a second while the other page loads. Twenty-three videos and a tired thumb from scrolling, the student sees a meme that reminds them of the comma rules that they were searching for originally and gets them back on track.

If these resources are provided to the student in Blackboard, the chances of the student needed to search the internet for help diminishes. They get to stay on track and already know where to find useful information, ultimately saving them time.

To encourage students to use these resources, I will often refer to them in my feedback. For example, “Remember to cite this quote. Refer back to the document I shared in the announcements to help you with this.” I think the reminders help keep the resources fresh in the students’ minds, as well as increases their chances of using the resources I have provided.

With the start of the new term quickly approaching, I would like to create a folder in Blackboard with all of these extra resources. Currently, I simply post them to Blackboard in the announcements. I think this makes it more difficult for the students to find what they need as they have to scroll back through all of the announcements.

I would also like to find videos for various topics that are discussed or stories that are read in my courses. I have found a few here and there, but the big problem becomes finding videos that are, of course, appropriate and keep the students’ interest. Finding videos that are well done can be near impossible at times. Having been a student who loves English, but wanted to gouge my eyes out due to pure boredom during the many videos I watched in high school, I would really like to avoid making my students feel that way. I believe that more and more students dislike reading and writing these days, and having them watch those ridiculously boring videos isn’t going to help gain interest in the subject! Eliminating some of the frustrations they may have about a certain topic by providing additional resources may help some students develop more of an appreciation for reading and writing.

While I have a lot of resources from my f2f years, I am always looking for new ones. As my job as an iEducator continues, I hope to develop a bigger and better stash. After all, I can’t expect my students to learn and appreciate our lovely English language on their own!

Strengths

I must admit, I am one of those people that love to take personality tests and quizzes. When we were told that we would have to take the strengths finder test, I was kind of excited! This test sounded like it was legitimate (unlike many of the other quizzes online!), so I was very curious to see what my strengths were. I didn’t know what to expect for results, but I figured it would be something along the lines of linguistics and spatial. Those are common themes in the other quizzes that I have taken. Mmm, not quite…

My fifth strength was restorative. At first, I didn’t know what to think of this. Honestly, I think this is the one that I questioned the most. Restorative is referring to me enjoying solving problems. I must admit, when it comes to this, I often rely on my husband. Even though I’m an adult, I am sometimes awful at this “adulting” thing, so will refer to my husband to handle it. However, the more I thought, the more I realized that I do enjoy solving problems, just with topics that I am comfortable with. When it comes to things such as projects around the house or my pets, I want to get the problem solved as soon as possible and I enjoy doing so.

Consistency was my fourth strength. Now this one I fully agreed with right away. I am a consistent person. I strive to treat everyone equally, I enjoy creating a plan so that things can be consistent and followed easily. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people are not treated equally, whether it be they get something everyone else doesn’t or are allowed certain privileges. My husband has often called me “a creature of habit” as I am even consistent with my behaviors and routine.

Responsibility was my third strength, which I was not surprised with. Growing up, it was stressed to me that responsibility is important. No matter my role as a student, a sister, or a daughter, I was expected to fulfill things that were asked of me and make good decisions. I have taken this to heart. In fact, when I was younger, people always thought I was older than I really am because I acted so mature for my age! Not exactly what I liked to hear, but looking back on it, it is a compliment. Sadly, because of this, I am a bit of a perfectionist. As the description for the strength says, if I make a mistake, apologies aren’t enough and I strive to do whatever I can to make it up. It also takes me an abnormally large amount of time to do simple things as I have to check, double check, and maybe even triple check. Even a Facebook status requires a few checks to make sure spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure are okay. Oh, the woes of an English teacher and perfectionist.

My second strength made me chuckle. Strategic? Really? Right away, this made me think of math, which has always been my number one enemy. In fact, my husband actually laughed when I told him strategic was my second strength! However, reading the description of strategic, it fits me to a “T”. I am always thinking of different scenarios and “what-ifs”. So much so, I sometimes drive my husband nuts- oops! What can I say, I like to be prepared and try to analyze what might go wrong to try to avoid any problems that might arise. I like to have a plan!

And finally, my number one strength. For this one, I tested as intellection. I completely agree with this one. First of all, my poor brain never stops working; I’m surprised it hasn’t overheated yet. My thoughts vary from simple things to more complex topics, but my brain is always going. I love learning and reading whenever possible. In fact, I’m such a nerd, that I don’t really watch much TV. The programs that I do watch are shows where I can learn something: veterinarian shows, documentaries on history, animals and mysteries, and even hunting programs every now and then with my husband. The only exception is The Big Bang Theory because c’mon, how can you not love that show. Sure, I love “The Game of Thrones”, but why watch the series when you can read them?!

Of all the quizzes I have taken, I would say this one was the most eye-opening and accurate. I didn’t understand some of the strengths at first, but after reading the description, it made me realize characteristics about myself that I didn’t realize I had. I enjoyed taking the quiz, and am curious as to how I can use the results to help me with my teaching and role at Michigan Virtual.

Persona

Again, I can’t help but compare my experience as an iEducator to my five years of face-to-face teaching. Obviously, there are a lot of similarities, but there are also some differences that threw me for a loop. One of the biggest ones being my persona in my online classroom.

The students face-to-face learned quite quickly that I was a touch sarcastic. After getting to know some of the students, we would often tease one another and play back and forth. I could teach in a manner that fit my personality and if I wanted to stop the teaching to tell a related side story, I’d go for it.

When a student walked into my face-to-face classroom, they saw a lot of posters, colors, and pictures. I was always trying to keep my room new, inviting, and colorful. I tried to personalize it as well, creating my own posters of some of my favorite quotes and putting up new pictures on my bulletin board that I had taken. I will always remember the last day at the school when my students came into my classroom and saw my posters removed, my pictures removed from the bulletin boards, and my colorful classroom decorations now in white paper boxes. My students slowed down, and looked around my room in awe. Finally, one turns and says, “Mrs. Broton, your classroom is so sad now.”

Online, this is all quite tricky. Everyone knows that it is hard to convey tone through writing, and how in the world are my students supposed to know when I’m being sarcastic?

At first, I was quite reserved in my messages and announcements. I tried to make my tone as obvious as possible, don’t put anything that even had a small chance of being misconstrued, and frankly, I was boring. This is not who I am, but I wanted to make sure that I remained professional.

As I have become more comfortable with my new teaching situation, I have found my persona coming out more and more. Every week, I post a little blurb about my life in on my weekly announcements to let the students know what is going on in my life. I also had a few pictures that I have taken over the last week to give them a glimpse into my ever-exciting life. And, of course, I use Bitmojis like crazy on my announcements! What online teacher doesn’t!?

I noticed just within the last few weeks that I have been using a bit more humor and sarcasm in announcements. The sarcasm isn’t directed towards my students, but the topic at hand. For example, “let’s face it, commas are evil little things.” This is more of my writing style and I think, gives the students a glimpse into what my personality is like.

I have also been making a solid effort to use memes more. Something that I never really thought I would do in education! There are so many out there that are funny, yet appropriate for school. I recently made a document about paragraph structure and put this at the end of it:

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So, there you have it. At this point, I am hoping you can relate to this meme:

But if you try writing in this format and find yourself relating to this meme more, please don’t hesitate to ask me for help:

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When I started this new adventure, I was sure that my five years of face-to-face teaching experience was going to help me; however, I almost feel like I am starting from scratch! As I am slowly adjusting and getting more comfortable, I think my teaching persona is becoming more apparent online. In the meantime, I will continue to keep working on it and picking up as many tips from my colleagues as I can!

Relationships

It’s funny how often we take things for granted. Whether it be clean water, a toothbrush, or even your favorite sweet (I think any dieter can relate to this one!), as soon as they are no longer available to you, you realize just how much it meant to have in your life. Something that I didn’t realize how much I took for granted was talking to my students every morning and during lunch.

I used to have kids come into my classroom to share their latest stories about hunting or farming, vent about their latest woes, or ask me for advice on what to do in one of their dramatic and awkward “growing up” stories. I often had students leave lunch early to come sit in my classroom and do the same thing all over again, or update me on the latest happenings with their problems from that morning. As much as I loved it, I couldn’t help but think, “Ugh, I have to go make copies” or “I really need to get this History lesson finished”. I will admit, there were times I listened halfheartedly to their stories in an attempt to get my work done.

When I got the call offering me the position of an iEducator I was ecstatic. As a matter of fact, I am embarrassed to admit, I still have that voicemail on my phone as I felt like this was a new door opening up for me- a new direction (What can I say, I am sentimental like that). I was ready for this exciting change and as terrible as it sounds, I was ready to put my face-to-face classroom time behind me and start this new journey!

That is, until my last day at the school. That morning, I had students bring me cards, flowers, candy, and more importantly, hugs. Students that I didn’t even think liked me or hardly spoke to me were hugging me after class saying how much they were going to miss me after having me for two years. That day, the tears just wouldn’t stop flowing. That is when I realized how many relationships and bonds I had formed with “my kids”.

“You will form new relationships with your online students,” my husband told me.

My first summer term as an iEducator has come and went and I am disappointed to admit that I didn’t form relationships with the kids like I had wanted. I tried to be upbeat, talk about their hobbies, and used little bitmojis, but something just wasn’t clicking. I wasn’t used to not seeing the students’ faces as I taught a lesson, being able to give them a side story in the middle of class, or have them pop around the edge of my classroom door to visit. While I loved my new job, it was hard for me to not have that face-to-face contact.

Then Collaboration of the Minds came around. I went into the conference with the goal of learning how to make relationships with my students online. To my surprise, the entire conference was about forming relationships.

I soaked in what the keynote speakers said and listened to what some of the other online instructors had to say. That’s when I had an epiphany. Just like in my face-to-face classroom, the online students want support. They want to know that if they need help, you are going to be there. The stories and the hugs came after they learned to trust me. Show them you care and that they can trust you to help them, and the rest will follow.

As I start my first busy term as an iEducator, I am sticking with this philosophy. I still share stories about my life, but on my weekly announcements and instead of talking with my usual sarcastic tone, I type in a playful manner using as many bitmjois as I can. But my main goal is to just support my students and get them to trust me. Hopefully the rest will all fall into place from there.