Chelsea K. Bradley Online Teaching in 2020: Tips for Finding Balance and Success as a Secondary Reading Teacher As the 2020 school year approached spring break, educators faced countless unknowns. Would teachers and students return to school after the time off? Would the COVID-19 pandemic continue to worsen? Would learning become 100% online? How would districts combat these unknowns? Many of the secondary reading teachers I worked with in my previous role as an instructional learning coach came to me with questions such as these. At the time, I did not have a clear answer for them. As the days continued, it became clear that educators would not return to school in their brick-and-mortar buildings; rather, teaching and learning were undergoing massive conversions in mere days to fit within online spaces. As districts scrambled to adjust and modify curriculum to fit within these new online learning spaces, many teachers began to panic. Regularly, teachers mentioned the same concern – online teaching was hard. It was taking up much more time than their already busy teaching load, and they were finding it difficult to find a balance. How could they continue to teach and support students as they did before, while also leaving room for themselves and their own families? While COVID-19 forced changes to occur more rapidly than educators would have encountered during a pandemic-free timeframe, online teaching is continuing to gain popularity (Allen & Seaman, 2010; Allen et al., 2016; Yuan & Kim, 2014). While not everyone who is currently teaching and learning online will continue to do so once the pandemic is over, online learning has a definite place in education. As I continued to virtually coach secondary reading teachers throughout the end of the 2020 school year, I engaged in conversations with them about how to find balance. As these conversations unfolded, it became clear that the concepts and insights from those conversations may prove helpful to others also thrust into online teaching. Before securing my current position as an assistant professor of reading, I worked part-time as an adjunct instructor for two universities for many years. During that time, my courses were mainly online, which proved to be beneficial as I assisted teachers in navigating their new roles within online learning spaces. As the teachers and I discussed the extensive fluidity of online teaching avenues, various tips and tricks were shared that had proved to be beneficial for me as an online instructor. The secondary reading teachers indicated at the time how helpful these tips were, and this seemed to merit sharing them with fellow educators. While at the time, the focus was on assisting secondary teachers of reading, these tips are applicable to teachers of all content areas and many age groups. The main tips shared with reading teachers regarding online teaching fall into four categories: planning, building, connecting, and grading. Planning Teachers may experience struggles with how to plan for an entire unit or quarter. Within online spaces, teachers might worry about whether they are requiring too much or too little, providing students with enough time to complete their assignments, and creating a space where collaboration could occur. Some of those characteristics differ based on the current students in one’s classroom, but the following tips may be helpful as educators begin to teach online.
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