My teaching practise
After posing the questions to the teachers above, I sat and reflected on my own practice post September. To view the immediate months following Covid's arrival read my article: https://wke.lt/w/s/2sL6VP
With all that is required from teachers it is very easy to devote reflection time to other priorities. The nature of our delivery from September was uncertain. Whilst I can say that I have had it a little easier than most, as an educator who is shielding, I knew up to a point that the majority of my delivery would be online to 16-18 year old students on a study programme. The uncertainty I faced was around the length of time I would have with my students. Movement was always on the card due to Covid logistics. Taking advantage of our online situation I implemented an approach that would support the increase of our student’s digital literacy as well as their subject requirement. 
We explored a number of Microsoft suite tools to support our online learning:
Teams – including breakout rooms
OneNote
Stream
Assignments
Nearpod
Kahoot
Jamboard
Classroom Screen
Century 
Essentially work normally delivered in the classroom was tweaked to suit an online platform. Group work became a favourite which were done via breakout rooms. Starters supported punctuality, preparation to learning and importantly we quickly became familiar with each other through the use of starters. They allowed us to share unthreatening information about ourselves, as well as injecting an element of competition at times, through the use of Teams conversation button. Over a few sessions some students began to unmute. Notaby this was not applicable to all cohorts. Some students really were not ready to unmute immediately although they were always invited. 
There were circumstances where the whole cohort of students had no access to microphones. We adapted. The conversation box with this particular group was always rich with content. We managed to form a respectful classroom community through the chat tool! I recall day one with this group: whilst setting our ground rules someone muted me mid-sentence. I felt fortunate because I realised fairly swiftly what had happened and reacted by changing the meeting's preferences. From here on we established a level of respect and came together weekly, to learn. 
The foundation we built in terms of mutual respect and the level of expectations and clarity given week after week had a positive impact on the students who wanted to engage. Those students who did not want to engage but logged on were trickier to motivate. A combination of consistently reinforcing expectations, assigning specific roles to them and positive peer behaviour played an enormous role in their conversion to producing work. 
Naturally there were students whom had to work from their phones due to digital poverty and although our institution is working to support them, it is a crying shame that in some cases it has taken until now, as I type, for devices to be provided. And final there remains attendance issues for students whom we often work harder to get into the classroom. Teaching remotely has inadvertently made it so much more difficult for our achievement tutors to enable engagement online since they are unable to see them or speak with them if they will not answer their calls.  
Teaching online is difficult and exhausting. It can also lack inclusivity - this needs addressing. Conversely, teaching online can also make teaching life easier over time, increases interactivity and engagement once students become literate on how to communicate and it can be used to expand student’s minds, opening up and making way for the creativity.

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