THE IMPORTANCE OF CONNECTIONS Tracy Galvin Year 2 Leader, The International School @ Park City, Kuala Lumpur
In Malaysia, most of last academic
year was spent teaching online and 1. Engaging with Students schools have begun the new year in the As teachers, we always aim to develop the best same way. Whilst there is light at the end of the relationships with our students. Yet our natural proverbial tunnel, with vaccinations progressing well and plans in place for a phased return to campus, it is tempting to revert to ‘normal practices'. However, by diverting our attention in this direction, there is a danger of moving on too quickly, and most importantly, not learning from our experiences.
Without doubt, campus closures have almost forced teachers (and students) to develop new skills and have pushed us all to try new strategies for teaching, many of which we will continue when back in the classroom. The use of technology; the variety of platforms with which to engage and stretch our students, and the wealth of online CPD opportunities are improvements to our practice and should easily stay with us. However, there are other opportunities that online teaching has created that might require a more conscious effort to sustain. These are vital as they are all about human connections and relationships. I believe that schools should endeavour to highlight these strategies and make plans for how they can translate back into the physical classroom.
inclinations are often to maximise every teaching moment we have with our students and pastoral times such as registration and end-of-day sessions can often be accompanied by slides full of activities and further learning. When online, we purposely built in time to come together as a class and get to know the students as individuals. We must endeavour to keep these key moments in the timetable when back on campus as through giving ourselves time to connect and have fun, we strengthen the bonds and relationships with our students, resulting in better outcomes, pastorally and academically.
2. Engaging with Parents Our school has always maintained many channels of communication and opportunities to build relationships with parents - from weekly newsletters to termly parent conferences, a few minutes chatting at the gate to parental involvement at events. With the move to home learning, the need to engage with parents was vital yet these physical opportunities were not available. Thus we had to innovate and adapt. 20
