Distance Learning Survival Guide

Teaching is hard. Virtual teaching is harder.

Before we go on, I just wanted to remind you that:

Okay so your district decided you will be doing online learning the upcoming school year-now what?

Well, let me tell you- you WILL get through this. I hope to share a little bit about what worked for me as well as tips and tricks for online learning. Here are a few tips I have for you:

☆BE KIND TO YOURSELF-please please please don't forget this! It is so easy to focus on all the negative stuff or compare ourselves to other educators. However, this is not going to help you at all. Instead, I encourage you to be kind to yourself and take it one day at a time.

☆Create a "home office" space. When I finally decided to do this after teaching for about 2 weeks, I was so much happier. I was able to decorate my space in a way that made me happy and excited to teach. I was also able to focus more and be productive by having this space.

☆Take advantage of FREE online trainings. I have googled "distance learning", "remote learning", "virtual teaching" SO many times it's not even funny. But, I have learned so much from other educators and specialists. There are so many amazing online trainings that are available out there.

☆Make lessons engaging. There are so many tools you can use to do this. For example, have fun creating your bitmoji classroom- it is so easy and you can link websites and other things to it. Your kiddos will LOVE IT. There are also so many google chrome extensions you can use that allow for more engaging activities and discussions (flip grid, share to classroom, custom cursor, screencastiy, bitmoji, kami pdf annotation and mote to name a few)

☆FOCUS on SEL and not just academics. This is so hard for everyone including our students and their parents. Please remember to ask them how they are doing and have real conversations about feelings and things we can do to feel better. Maybe think about posting a daily check-in for your students.

☆Ask for feedback. Don't be afraid to ask your students and your parents for feedback so you can continue to improve your instruction and best meet the needs of your kiddos. I sent out a google form and got great feedback that I actually used to improve my teaching.

https://forms.gle/AbKaXNzLd1qEDHTT6 (Here is the link to the parent survey - click on "make copy" when you open it.

☆HAVE FUN! Try new things, search for products on tpt, watch youtube videos and learn from other educators. We can make distance learning fun, but we need to do the work.

I hope you enjoyed these 7 tips to make distance learning more fun and easy for you and your kiddos. Remember that all your feelings are VALID. You are amazing and you are doing so much for your students. This "new normal" sucks at times but I hope I can inspire you to make the best of it.

I hope you have an amazing day. Please contact me if you have any questions or need resources, materials or ideas

Adriana from

Teaching with Ms. Suazo ♡