Teaching in the Online Classroom: Surviving and Thriving in the New Normal, by Doug Lemov and the Teach Like a Champion Team (2020), 192 pp., Jossey-Bass, $19.95.
The book was edited by Lemov and has seven chapters, each authored by two or more Teach Like a Champion Team members. Following is a brief overview of each chapter, along with a section about what topics you can and cannot expect the book to cover.
Spring break of 2020 thrust teachers into a unique situation. First, many teachers received an extra week of spring break while districts awaited both guidance from their respective states and hoped to welcome students back after an unprecedented 2-week spring break. Unfortunately, students were not welcomed back, and guidance from state education agencies changed almost daily. One thing was certain, and that was that school had to resume in some form. Teachers began publishing their lesson content in various learning management systems (e.g., Canvas) and content management systems (e.g., Google Classroom), and creating paper copies of that content for students who could not access the internet at home. This practice was the modus operandi for the remainder of the school year. After the summer break, teachers returned to their classrooms and learned that online synchronous and online asynchronous instruction were part of “the new normal.” In response to this paradigm shift, Doug Lemov and the Teach Like a Champion team wrote Teaching in the Online Classroom: Surviving and Thriving in the New Normal. The Teach Like a Champion Team is an organization (part of Uncommon Schools) that analyzes examples of teaching to produce literature and professional development to help teachers improve their craft. The team, lead by Lemov, is composed of: Darryl Williams,Erica Woolway, Rob Richard, Colleen Driggs, Hilary Lewis, Hannah Solomon, Dan Cotton, Brittany Hargrove, Joaquin Hernandez, Dillon Fisher, John Costello, Jen Rugani, Emily Badillo, Beth Verilli, Kevin Grijalva, Jasmine Lane, Jaimie Brillante, Kimberly Griffith, Tracey Koren, and Michelle Wagner.
Lemov and his team studied what teachers did that was successful and unsuccessful during the spring 2020 semester. They provided seven chapters of pedagogical tips to help teachers not just survive but thrive in the online instruction situation the COVID-19 pandemic forced them into. In the introduction, Lemov and Woolway said this book has two purposes. First, they wanted to use the book to highlight some of the successful things teachers were doing in their online classrooms during the height of the pandemic. Second, the book was a way to encourage and show appreciation to teachers for all that they did during the spring 2020 semester, as well as for all they have continued to do during the 2020-2021 academic year.
SUMMARY
The book is divided into seven chapters, each of which is coauthored by two or more of Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion team members. Solomon and Verrilli use Chapter 1 to define two terms that have become incredibly prevalent amid the COVID-19 pandemic: synchronous and asynchronous. Chapters 2 through 6 highlight different strategies teachers implemented to make their online lessons successful.
Rugani and Grijalva define dissolving the screen in Chapter 2. This term refers to lessons that engage students and make them feel like they are actually in their classroom and not at home behind a computer screen.
In Chapter 3, Driggs and Brillante discuss building a culture of engagement. They recommend helping students set up a workspace, giving very concise instructions, and giving them as many nonscreen activities and assignments as possible to break up the screen’s monotony and keep them engaged.
Lewis and Hargrove remind readers of the importance of pause points in Chapter 4. They recommend using them as a teacher normally would in class in synchronous lessons. For asynchronous videos, they recommend building the pause into the video and not just asking students to pause the video. They also suggest using a cue such as a pause symbol during pauses in asynchronous videos.
Badillo, Rugani, and Solomon discuss providing feedback in Chapter 5. While having students submit assignments for marking is one way to give feedback, they lack the instant feedback they get in the classroom when the teacher walks around or when the class does examples together. To bridge this gap, the authors suggest providing completed examples during asynchronous lessons students can use to check their work. They suggest using the chat feature or simple thumbs up/thumbs down to assess students quickly for synchronous lessons.
In Chapter 6, Williams and Cotton emphasize keeping classroom routines as much as possible, whether using synchronous meetings or asynchronous videos. They provide examples of teachers mimicking their usual routines. The exemplar teachers they studied had paper taped to the wall to make a makeshift whiteboard that they would turn to just as they would in class. They also used the same structures, wording, and cues they would have in class in their videos.
Lastly, Chapter 7, by Richard and Costello, highlights various features of Zoom. Although they talk specifically about Zoom, they point out that most of those features are also available on other major platforms such as Webex, Google Meets, or Microsoft Teams.
WHAT THIS BOOK IS AND IS NOT
When I initially saw this book, I expected it to be a book full of the ins and outs of Canvas, Blackboard, Google Classroom, Zoom, Google Drive, and a plethora of other online tools that can be implemented into the curriculum; however, it is not. This book is practical advice to help K-12 classroom teachers adjust to remote instruction and plan their lessons to help their students succeed in remote instruction. Rugani and Grijalva start by talking about dissolving the screen, as mentioned previously. All authors believe dissolving the screen is the only way to help students to be successful in remote instruction, as that theme is interwoven through every chapter. Most K- 12 students do not have any experience with online learning, and dissolving the screen gives them the familiarity of the classroom that they need to be successful. Driggs and Brillante suggest that teachers dissolve the screen by requiring the same attention and engagement that would typically be expected in class. They also say teachers should set the norm that everyone in the meeting has their camera turned on. All authors recommend providing documents students can print and interact with, pause to allow them to gather necessary supplies such as paper and pencil, and not having them use an interactive document during the lesson because switching screens promotes distraction.
Richard and Costello also discuss ways to engage students with Google Docs(c) to provide and collect assignments from students. Their advice is to have students create copies of the documents before editing them and set up procedures for submitting the documents to avoid having your inbox flooded with notifications of shared documents. Multiple students sharing documents can easily clog up your inbox, and Lemov and his team want teachers to be prepared to deal with the influx of emails.Lastly, it is necessary to point out this book does not specifically address teaching synchronously online and in-person simultaneously. It is mentioned in the book that some teachers have had to do this during the 2020-2021 school year. However, all of the guidance provided deals specifically with teaching online either synchronously or asynchronously.
CONCLUSION
Teachers have been in uncharted territory since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March of 2020. Lemov et al. provide very practical advice for K-12 classroom teachers to teach their students during this difficult time. Their book is an excellent reminder that teachers know how to teach. Many of the same strategies that make teachers successful in the face-to-face classroom will also allow teachers to succeed in the online classroom. Lemov et al. provide teachers with tips to leverage webconferencing software to do the formative assessments we typically do in class while using many of the same engagement strategies and routines we already use to dissolve the screen and make our students’ online experience as close to the face-to-face experience to which they are accustomed.
