During the summer of 2020 I had the chance to train teachers on our school district’s new learning management system. It was full-on pandemic, and teachers were reeling from leaving for spring break in March of 2020 for a week and never returning for the school year. There was a lot of anticipation and anxiety (and germs) in the air as there were so many unknowns for the upcoming school year.
How long would we stay digital? Are we going to be safe? Will our students be safe? Will things ever go back to normal? Can you really socially distance in a school?
I had to have a quiet place to work to deliver these training sessions on Zoom. My wife and I had a baby in January of 2020, my in-laws were staying with us, and we picked up a roommate to help us pay the rent. When the pandemic hit, there were now 6 of us in the house, including an adorable but crying baby.
I asked my principal if I could work in the vacant school building and she kindly obliged. So every day in June and July I drove up to a nearly empty school building, got my temperature checked, joked around with the tech guy in the media center (from more than 6 ft away), and led 4, 90 minute zoom sessions in an empty library room.
I got pretty good at leading the sessions. By the end of the summer, I was picking up more training sessions as the whole world was trying to figure out how to use an LMS if they hadn’t already.
This became part of my norm for the next couple of school years. In addition to teaching, I would train teachers on how to use their technology. Many tools that once seemed complex felt very simple to me. I got really good at little tips, tricks, and hacks that would save time on the computer and sharing them with others
Often, after you do the same thing over and over, it no longer feels special. But I try to pass on these little tips when I’m training other teachers. I shared one such tip that I didn’t consider to be a game changer in one of my Zoom sessions. All of the sudden, in the chat box, one of the participants posted,
“You just changed my life!”
I was quite stoked. I’m not sure how or why that little tidbit changed their life. But I do know this… teachers are carrying a heavy load. Building relationships and communicating with hundreds of students and parents. Serving as a nurse, counselor, social worker, community service agent, public speaker, disciplinarian, data clerk, and motivational speaker every day in class.
One teacher told me he was spending an hour or two each evening moving his grades over from the district gradebook to the LMS gradebook.
I taught him how to do it one click.
He kept thanking me for saving him hours of time.
One of our goals at EduThemes is to save you time. You shouldn’t have to spend your precious after-work hours pouring over lesson plans and figuring out what to teach or how to teach it. There are thousands of other educators across the globe who are doing it and you shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel.
We want to change your life by making these resources available and easy to find!
