Teaching and Learning During the Pandemic: A Journey of Co-Creation

As Jacques Brel sang in 1967: "Y en a qui ont le cœur si vaste qu'ils sont toujours en voyage" <youtube.com/watch?v=4FUXl0UYow0>. His words might be read as a call to expand one's perspective under difficult circumstances. When I and my fellow teachers were given our directive to transition to online teaching in mid-March, I was relieved. It came as a gift providing physical protection as well as the challenge to embark upon a new creative pursuit. After all, my students had begun feeling spring's onset, and they, too, were in the middle of a great personal transition, with one foot stepping toward the portal of their summer while the other restlessly waited for spring semester to end. "I might actually be able to hold student attention longer online!" I thought to myself. On top of this, I would be able to curate something new with intentionality. Instead of feeling caged in, I felt like there was an ocean of possibility in front of me.

The first thing that warmed me toward this shift was knowing I would be able to access interesting teaching tools directly from the internet without having to set up any extension technology—they would literally be at the touch of my fingertips and easily shareable for viewing together as a class. We were already learning through an e-book, and now I would have the focus and attention of students to tap into without devoting time to set-up and snafus in the smart classroom. I would be able to incorporate even more audio-visual experiences rooted in metropolitan France and the wider Francophone world on a voyage of immersion. And we could explore a sense of abbreviating the transoceanic passages physically separating us from these places by way of "le cœur si vaste," our shared heart experience with the Francophone world during le confinement.

Nonetheless, I knew there was an undercurrent of fear pervading this teaching experience that we must tap into, thoughtfully. I would settle into this new world by creating a space within which feeling safe—and practicing safety—were not only paramount within students' daily lives at home, but part of our learning goals too. Therefore, on the first day of our online meetings, rather than diving straight into the lesson, I provided a safe container for our learning experience within the seeming constraints created by the pandemic. I gave students a chance to exhale any held-in fears and speak from the heart before we switched to a comprehensive input-based lesson. Then we transitioned into slides of bandes dessinées from France created for young people about personal and community safety steps we should take to fight back the pandemic, incorporating the topic within a global context of cultural comparison. Addressing the global elephant in the room safely allowed students to destress and find relief while still learning in French. And it set a collaborative tone for what would follow.

There are several key aspects of our learning journey together that now stand out retrospectively. Before outlining these, I should explain that our school chose an online learning calendar that gave us 40 minutes of synchronous teaching per class three days per week. Students were given homework to do on the other two days. I felt it was more important than ever that students be given homework that lessened their sense of being confined. Their mental health was at stake more than ever. How could we help them learn, feel safe, and even heal during this time? How could we continue to help them grow in a seeming standstill of their normal daily routine?

Music

Music helped to ease the transition. The pandemic came at a time when we had already begun watching French-language contributions to the Eurovision song competition past and present—so we had enjoyed a first contact with these prior to the onset of online class. These immediately gave as a more expansive sense of our classroom as one unconfined, taking place in the Francophone world...