From the Classroom - Nate Edmunds
In this unusual school year, sharing a glimpse into the classroom is more important then ever. That is why we are launching “From the Classroom,” a special series of articles highlighting the various ways our faculty are reaching their students this year.
Kicking off the series, a glimpse into Nate Edmunds’ Radical Empathy Upper School English class. Edmunds has been using extended asynchronous work as a means to limit screen time as well as manage content volume.
“Extended asynchronous work to me involves choice and it involves supplementing the anchor text we are studying with other resources and materials,” explains Edmunds.
“The curriculum moves slower with online learning. We just can’t go through as much content. I try to think about how asynchronous work can be an opportunity for students to explore the supplemental content that would be a more robust part of the curriculum if we were in-person, so that curriculum is not lost it’s just packaged in a different way.”
In his Radical Empathy class, the seniors are currently doing a non-fiction unit which involves reading memoirs and narratives, along with several books, including Wave.
“Wave involves the study of disaster relief and how individuals and groups of people respond to and support others when they’re going through some sort of disaster. This week the asynchronous work required watching a couple of Ted Talks, where they learn about people who have thought about that concept in a very different way. It also involved listening to a guest speaker, Dan Saper, the former CEO of YouCaring, now GoFundMe, sharing his experiences in the crowd-funding world. Then the class will write a discussion board post where they’ll reflect on what they’ve learned in that content and how it supplements their understanding of the memoir that they’re reading.”
Edmunds shares that his inspiration for this curriculum shift really came from the fall professional development workshops all faculty participated in. “The Teaching and Learning team put together a pretty remarkable day for us that equipped us with a lot of new strategies, resources, and ideas with how to bring some creativity and novelty into what we are doing and that was really inspirational.”
To check out what the non-fiction unit entails for this class, click on the following Screencast-O-Matic videos Edmunds created for the students.