8 Things Teens Want Teachers to Know During the COVID-19 Epidemic

Brought to you by the Here.Now. Teen Executive Committee. Here.Now. is a teen-driven Jewish movement to provide support, build connections, increase wellbeing and resilience, and reduce stigma around mental health. Made possible by UJA-Federation of New York and The Jewish Board.

1. Variety is key. Doing the same type of work in our classes every day is starting to feel like torture.  Please help us be creative and spontaneous and find a way to stay engaged. We want to be engaged. 

2. We really would love more project-based activities and more discussions. We miss being social!

3. Please use videos or pictures or memes, honestly anything visual. 

4. There are some amazing websites out there. We know it’s a lot of work, but if you can, try and make use of them. Here are two examples:
Delta Math — which gives math a ton of much-needed structure!
Perusall — you can post reading material and we can all annotate it together!

5. Use humor and be human! We actually love it when your kids or pets interrupt the class. 

6. There are also some websites we hate. AP classroom has awful formatting. 

7. Some things have started to feel like a waste of time. Remember all those hours we spent getting ready for the AP exams? Now that they will be condensed into45-minute tests,   it has made many of us feel like our hard work has gone to waste. Or all the work we put in to apply to colleges? We can’t even go visit them and we’re nervous about this upcoming Fall.‘

8. And most importantly, THANK YOU! Thank you for changing your entire curriculum in a single weekend. We’re grateful for everything you’ve done.o. We see you working hard, and we know that you’re stressed too. We know that  Zoom is confusing and that you’re a teacher, not a coder, and we know that you’re doing your best. 

 

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