After a few days of mental paralysis, I made a firm decision to focus on finding a solution. I was determined not to stray from my student-directed pedagogy, though I’ll admit in a few moments of weakness, I considered it. I refused to let the hardships of this year be for nothing. I knew I didn’t have time to look for big picture solutions to last year’s problems. I was trying not to drown, so I would have to do my best to address them slowly as I crafted each week’s daily lessons. 

The first step was to establish a way to present my goal process online in small daily pieces. Because our virtual learners were asynchronous, I had to either write down everything or create videos of myself teaching. I opted to stick to writing things down except for the occasional screen recording. In the first few weeks, I didn’t attempt to address goals. We set up digital portfolios on Google Sites, created a few base-line drawings to get to know what they were interested in and what their skill levels were, learned about the difference between art and design, and practiced photographing artworks. 

When the first day of school came and we began, my on-campus students often asked me questions about what to do, and my reply was like a broken record. “Read the instructions,” I’d say. It took some time, but eventually, they started reading my arduously crafted lessons and stopped asking me to repeat what was in the assignment. It seemed as though I was running a computer lab. If I had made the lessons clear enough for my virtual learners, there was nothing for me to do during class. I was suddenly finding myself unsure of what to do with myself other than redirect those that were off task. Did they have everything they needed? I wasn't re-teaching, but I wasn't teaching either. When the bell rang, my students would get online and begin their lesson, so what was I going to do? 

Because everything was online in small daily assignments, there was a lot more grading for me to do. That seemed bad at first, but when I found myself with time during class to look over their work from the previous day, I found that it was a major upgrade. In the past, their work was in physical journals that they used everyday. It was disruptive for me to look at them while they were in class. With their work turned in online, I could walk around the room and check each student’s previous day’s work on my phone or tablet, allowing me to address any misconceptions or give advice before they had moved too far along in the process. This felt much more like the facilitator role I was used to filling. The online assignments gave instructions, the students, made choices, and I guided them to what they needed to be more successful in those choices. 

This new format also made my lessons student-paced. If a student missed a day, or they were quarantined and disappeared for ten, they would just pick up where they left off when they returned. All the lessons had to be completed in order and nothing could be skipped. This might have been the single-most beneficial element. Before Covid, we would have great class discussions and activities that were highly successful in guiding students' understanding of certain topics. And then a student world show up the next day and ask what they missed. It was heartbreaking to me. I simply couldn't replicate the previous day's experience. But with this consistently available curriculum, it was easy. Do I miss those discussions? Sometimes I do, but ensuring every student interacts with the material has become more important to me. We still had some cool discussions in class. In fact, in some ways, they were cooler. The questions that led to those discussions went beyond the expected learning, and involved those that were interested. I wasn't having to attempt to keep others awake while I nerded out on conceptual art or my latest favorite artist with a table of students.

Even with the curriculum being student-paced, there was a certain amount of work that had to be assessed each grading period, so there were a lot of students scrambling to get caught up at the end. I was beginning to see students skipping the last few lessons because they had gotten too far behind and anything over a 69 was okay by them. To mitigate that, I opted to leave the last week of the six weeks open for catching up or extended learning. Those that had finished their work, got to do special projects, like working with clay or paint, that would acknowledge their success, challenge them further, and motivate apathetic students to stay on track the following grading period. Those that simply needed more time, had what they needed to complete the essential assignments. Daily online assignments literally freed me to spend class time in ways that were more beneficial to the whole class as well as each individual student.