Things Change Quickly
Staying Sharp While at Home We've all had to make some serious adjustments lately, but when it comes to school, "The show must go on." Many of you are teaching from home, which means converting your lessons into Zoom meetings, turning your materials into Google Docs, and relying heavily on parents to facilitate learning. Many of those parents are also having to work from home while becoming proxy teachers, all while adjusting to the a new reality of parenting 24 hours a day. It can be overwhelming. Tools for Teaching is here to help. Our purpose has always been to improve learning while making the job of teaching easier. So we asked ourselves three questions,
In what ways is Tools for Teaching relevant to an online classroom?
How can we still service teacher development while quarantined?
How can we service parents whose relationships with their children are experiencing new challenges?
Still Relevant One thing you'll always hear me say in our workshops is that Visual Instructional Plans (VIPs) are the most powerful learning tool in our program. They cater to our most powerful learning modality - the eyes. They break down learning and tasks into easily digestible steps. As a result, they increase the rate at which we learn, and they are an important step in a dependent student's road to independence. What we are discovering online is that the VIP has even more value because it does all the things listed above while providing a set of plans for parents to follow during class time at home. In addition, VIPs are an important part of the Say, See, Do lesson framework. So revisit the VIP and Say, See, Do chapters in Tools for Teaching, or read our blog posts on the topics here:
I'm sure you will start integrating both these strategies in creative and meaningful ways. Servicing Teachers Seeing teachers adjust to online teaching in this new Zoom dominated landscape we thought, "Why not us?" We have been inspired to offer live webinars for full Tools for Teaching training. The webinars cover the same material as our in-person workshops with only minor adjustments due to the new format. Patrick is excited to present to people who may have never been able to attend before. Learn more here. Servicing Parents We have offered parent training for years. However, the program was designed for teachers to facilitate training to parent groups at their school. We have now adjusted the original set of videos so everyone can benefit from this training. We are proud to announce that the Tools for Teaching Parent Edition is now an online course. All three discs have been converted into three distinct course chapters titled: Meaning Business, Teaching Responsibility, and Building Values. We hope we can help parents cope with these new circumstances while building positive, productive, and stronger relationships with their children. The first chapter, Meaning Business, is free and the entire course is offered in English and Spanish. Learn more by clicking here. Thank you for your continued support of Tools for Teaching and we are looking forward to these new ways to reach teachers, parents, and communities.