Colleen LaMotte has always been fascinated with science—she was a pre-med student on her way to become a doctor after all. Working as a bus driver in college, Colleen spent her summers as a tour guide in Alaska teaching her passengers about the history of the area.
Although many of the travelers—impressed with Colleen’s enthusiasm—suggested she should consider teaching as a career path, she insisted on sticking to her original plan. It wasn’t until her trip to Southeast Asia after college, where she was teaching Cambodian men how to speak English, that she started to question her own career choice.
“I was surrounded by the people who were so hungry to learn, and I felt so alive,” LaMotte recalls. “It was at that moment that I decided to do a master’s program when I got back, and I have been teaching ever since.”
As an established teacher with 15 years of experience under her belt—like many other teachers this year—Colleen found herself in a position to reinvent her teaching style during the pandemic. Firstly, she decided to incorporate mindfulness to online learning.
“Every day we start with a mindful minute,” says Colleen. “I tell my students it’s a gift of a minute to themselves, and they deserve it. I want them to know they matter, they are enough and they are a gift to the world.” This simple activity has helped her students calm their minds.
Secondly, she incorporated music into her classes. “I play music when my students come into the room, and we take five-minute movement breaks.” By playing music she is showing the side of her that is unique to her outside of the classroom, and that it is okay to be a person. And students respond to it by showing up.
As a practitioner of “Ambitious Science Teaching” (AST)—a method which focuses on bringing students’ understanding of science ideas, gathering evidence and discussing them in groups—Colleen and her colleagues spent countless hours brainstorming and envisioning how to engage students in those practices in a distance setting.
“Teaching myself and my students how to use these tools takes a lot of patience and trial and error,” says Colleen. She recalls attempting to show a video of herself explaining a concept to her students only to find out they were unable to access it every way she tried. “I went down a rabbit hole trying to record a seven-minute video which ultimately ended up taking five hours to make!” Nevertheless, she recognizes that, in this process, students are getting access to observe a successful adult flounder and navigate challenges in real time.
Colleen admits that her biggest fear with transitioning to online learning was not being able to make the same strong connections with her students. “I would have never imagined that, in some ways, I would get to know my students even more this way,” she says. From private Zoom chats with students who are usually shy, to requests for indigenous music from Native American teens, to seeing students being caring around their younger siblings, she has been enjoying getting to know them on a personal level over the last few months.
Despite this challenging time, LaMotte remains focused on the ultimate goal: who she wants her students to be when they leave her classroom. “We are often so worried about covering content, but the kids are learning some extremely valuable life skills right now,” she says. In essence, they are learning to be flexible, to help each other and build strong communities and that it is okay to make mistakes; and that will serve them for a lifetime.
This story was published in November 2020 issue of Richmond Beach Community News