Carrión Guerrero & LS 211 Transition to Remote Teaching
Elena Carrión Guerrero, coordinator for LS 211, shares the experience of the LS 211 team in the transition to remote teaching.
“As LS 211 coordinator, I cannot thank my team enough: Yuliana Orta Ramos, Bruno Nassic Peric, Helena Talaya-Manso, Boris Corredor, Angélica Avcikurt & Alison Carberry. Their energy sharing ideas and putting them to work in our sudden shift to remote teaching has been wonderful.
As instructor and coordinator, students are always at the core of my teaching. Participation in class is key for a communicative approach and for learning a language. My first thought when moving to remote teaching was how to maintain the community we have built in our classroom; how to transfer it to this third space, the online world. The first thing I did was to send them a survey to see what my students were worried about, and how their access to technology would be. This was key to making decisions later and connecting with my students.
To move forward, I requested that they post their location on Padlet, including who they were with, and something they wanted to share with their classmates (pictures, videos, books, music, etc.). Commenting on this later in class was a good starting point to creating a safe online space.
We have continued that online community by creating a YouTube playlist, with music in Spanish that gives us good vibes, and we usually play (a different song) during those few minutes before we start class.
Weekly Diaries (using the blogs feature) on Blackboard has allowed for the classroom to share their experiences. To ensure sure that there are options when blogging, I have combined prompts related to the current situation we are living in with the content we are studying in class. Some students use those blogs for catharsis for this situation, while others prefer focusing on different content. Overseeing their conversation thread has been an enlightening look into what students are going through.
In line with my online community goal, we are using Flipgrid. Students practice their oral skills while recording videos and responding to prompts from classmates, creating short videos in a low stress environment.
Lastly, in order to keep a positive and active role to our present moment, we are comparing and contrasting how Hispanic societies are reacting to our current situation. In this vein, I put forward the idea of being part of the project ‘I send you a hug’, where they send messages to patients and health workers at a hospital in Spain. This meaningful assignments not only teaches our students about language and culture, but that above all we are humans in a country called ‘world.’
My goal to create and foster an online community continues. I believe that flexibility and options for our teams and students should be our mantra as educators during this uncertain time. I am very glad to be part of such an enthusiastic team at Boston University that is supporting me to learn at every step of this transition.”