Reflect on the Past to Inform the Present

by Mary Ellen Daneels, Civics Instructional Specialist

Schools across the Land of Lincoln are starting to reopen for the 2020-21 school year. Whether you are meeting with students on an online platform or in a blended format, creating a safe civic space for online learning takes intentionality and reimagining of typical back to school routines.

This past spring, we had the advantage of already knowing our students when school buildings closed and classes shifted to distance learning. This semester, all stakeholders will have to create room to put “Maslow before Bloom” and build a foundation for relationships in virtual and/or blended spaces.


All teachers are civics teachers. We send messages to students about power, equity, justice, and representation by our classroom routines, relationships, and curricular choices. While the following resources have explicit connections to the civic learning practices in both the middle and high school civics course requirements, they are also best practice for ALL teachers.

Your students will come to you with lived experiences on remote learning from the spring that can inform and enhance your classroom practice in the fall. Take time to have them reflect on their experiences from the spring, have a voice in recalibrating classroom practices to create routines for success, and engage in a collective renewal of goals for the 2020-21 school year.

The following activities can be used to help students reflect on their experiences with remote learning. Choose one to start with and use the others to check in throughout the year to recalibrate classroom practices.
  • Have students individually complete the following sentence, “When I think about online learning, I feel_____________ because________________.”
  • Use some of the Visible Thinking Routines from Project Zero
    • Compass Point Reflection (see above) has students identify something that is worrisome, exciting, a need to know, and a suggestion for moving forward.
    • Color, Symbol, Image students share and discuss color, a symbol, and an image they think represents online learning.
    • 3-2-1 Bridge can be used to have students identify 3 ideas they have about online learning, 2 questions they have, and 1 idea they have for improvement.
    • Claim, Support, Question can be used to have students make a claim about online learning, support it with evidence from their past experiences, and ask questions they have about online learning.
Collect the responses and display them in a chart or word cloud. Discuss the responses. Engage in a proactive conversation about what can be done to address past issues and create new routines.
 
You can access a one hour webinar that provides an overview of the resources and a demonstration of some of the strategies. Our Remote Learning Toolkit has resources around community building, establishing norms, and ready to go lesson plans for classroom use.

What are you doing to engage student voice to reflect on the past to inform the present? Please comment below. Together, we can prepare ALL students for college, career, and civic life?

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