I teach ESL in an international school in a midsized city in China, called Suzhou. In mid-January, I received the news that all of my lessons were to be online because school was cancelled. Now, as I have completed several weeks of teaching my high school students online, I have had the opportunity to pause and reflect on my experience. My most significant lesson has been about leveraging foundational classroom skills to maximize engagement and realizing that the technology is just a platform.

Tip 1: Build Community

For many learners, social media and online communication have always been a part of daily life. In an online classroom, we can tap into some of these preexisting schema and utilize them for building classroom community. Even something as simple as encouraging students to “like” a post or creating a venue for casual chatting adds a little life back into your classroom.

Adding in games or opportunities for humor also builds community. For a daily warm-up, I asked students to find a photo of an animal and write two sentences from the animal’s perspective. Here is an example response:

I have also utilized a plethora of ESL games online (see the example in Figure 1). You can find some great no-prep games at eslgames.com; there are also a lot of excellent activities in New Ways in Teaching With Games and New Ways in Teaching With Creative Writing, both from TESOL Press and available digitally. In some ways, it is even easier to play online because students have plenty of think time and are able to choose when they respond.

Figure 1. Online teaching warm-up game example.
(Click image to enlarge.)

Tip 2: Structure Your Video Conferences

Video meetings are harder than they seem. In video meetings, we lack so many of the classroom management tools normally available to us, like proximity and eye contact. These tools are what give most of us that sense of having our finger on the pulse of what is happening in our classroom.

After suffering through my first few video meetings, I learned that small groups are the way to go. Meeting with 10 students for 10 minutes is more effective for group discussion than 30 students in 30 minutes. Structure and preparation are also vital. Tell your students ahead of time what the icebreaker and discussion questions are and how much they will be expected to speak. Then follow an order of speaking. For example, “Yang Lin will start now, and Tony will be next.” Over time, students will open up and become more active.

Tip 3: Keep Collaborating

When school is online, it’s easy to turn off the collaboration between teachers. For many of us who take pride in a job well done, this change to online teaching has created a lack of confidence—don’t let these negative feelings cause you to shut your colleagues out. Ask a trusted colleague to be best practice buddies and invite each other to be members of your virtual classrooms where you can observe each other and trade tips. You can also get involved with the greater community of ESL teachers via TESOL interest sections, where you’ll find others to collaborate with. As mandatory online teaching threatens to push us apart, let’s fight back by growing closer as a community of ESL professionals serving the world’s learners.

Hetal Ascher is currently the head of English as an Additional Language at Dulwich International High School, Suzhou. Before that, she worked with English learners at a public middle school in Minnesota. She obtained her MA in ESL education from Hamline University and a BA in ESL education K–12 from University of Northwestern, St. Paul.