As teachers and students around the globe continue their online learning, WAB teachers have found one strategy particularly successful when engaging students: Make learning relevant.

“For my Grade 9 to 11 classes, I have mostly changed the curriculum to make it relevant to our current context,” WAB French Teacher and Head of High School Languages Ludi Kennedy said. “One thing I love about teaching languages is that I have the flexibility to choose which topic to use in order to teach. Our new topics include ‘My daily routine during coronavirus,’ ‘The use of technology in education,’ and ‘How to protect our data online.”

Like many teachers, Ludi said she misses the chance to be in the classroom, speaking and interacting with her students. She has offered assignments through online platforms that give students flexibility to learn on an individual schedule, but she also hosts weekly live classes. There have been some unexpected positives, Ludi said, that have come out of the situation: She hosted one class in her kitchen, teaching students how to make crêpes, a favorite French cuisine.

“The distance has actually made us closer in some ways,” Ludi said. “My son has been doing his best to help me teach my Grade 11 students, and he was very excited to share that he lost his first tooth with all of my students!”

Live classes across the different languages courses have also been essential in creating a sense of normalcy in the learning experience. Teachers said playing games, engaging in conversations, and having a laugh together just like in the classroom has been enjoyable and impactful.

In Middle School Danish courses, teacher Maja Tschufarin has been connecting students to their learning through assignments related to newspapers. They studied the different sections and layouts of newspapers, and then studied the varying genres and purposes of newspaper content. Afterward, to give students choice in their approaches, Grade 6 students wrote a letter to the editor and Grade 7 students wrote an editorial piece based on a topic about which they feel passionate. For the younger Danish learners, students read about zoo animals and then explored a map of the Copenhagen Zoo.

Flexibility has been essential for teachers and students, as the world has had to cope with different levels of quarantine around the globe, conflicting time zones, fluctuating access to internet, and worldwide mobility. For Dutch students, teacher Anne Dorst introduced new online platforms that ensure a continuous linear study of grammar and vocabulary, and has also used live video classes and reading comprehension techniques to enhance culture and history.

“I have learned how important it is to stay connected to the people around you both formally and informally,” Anne said of her online teaching and learning experience. “As a teacher it seems more important than ever to follow our students’ lead: If they are having a good week, then we can try and challenge them some more. If they are feeling unmotivated or anxious, then let’s pause and find out how we can help. We need to have our antennas up to detect how our students are doing and find the right approach for each of them.”

One thing many of our language teachers are saying is that the switch to online learning has been a catalyst for enhancing the personalization of learning for each student. Though our teachers knew and have been working toward ensuring each of our individual student’s learning needs are met, this experience has accelerated the process of creating those personalized approaches and has taught the community how to adapt to this type of required flexibility.

In Grade 11 Chinese, we saw all of this come together in a unit on poetry. Students selected a poem they liked, found a news article about a global issue that related to the poem, wrote an analysis of how they related, and then spoke individually with their teacher about what they learned.

“The students really liked the choice and freedom they were given and the sense of ownership of their work and learning,” WAB Chinese Teacher Lynn Long said. “Our students are focused on learning, and our faculty has put our students’ well-being at the center of what we do. Individualizing learning is one of our school’s goals for the future and is the direction we are heading into the future, and we learned so much about that during this time of online learning.