6 Tips for Virtual Teachers Who Teach From Home

Teaching from home has transformed from a temporary solution to a widespread and enduring approach to education. As we navigate this digital terrain, the distinction between physical and virtual classrooms continues to blur, presenting unique challenges and opportunities for educators worldwide.

Whether you’re a seasoned virtual teacher or newly transitioning to online education, mastering the art of teaching from the comfort of your own home is crucial for fostering engaging, effective, and enriching learning experiences for your students.

This blog post will explore six essential tips for virtual teachers teaching from home. These strategies are designed to enhance your teaching skills, improve student engagement, and ensure a productive and positive learning environment for all.

From creating a dedicated workspace to leveraging technology and maintaining a healthy work-life balance, we’ll provide you with practical advice to excel in your virtual classroom.

Navigate Virtual School as a Teacher Who Works from Home

How schools approach virtual learning is changing every week and every day. How we educate students is a now constantly moving target.

Elementary teachers are in a unique place to care for little people whose families have chosen online learning. Teachers’ focus is on their students, both emotionally and academically. Here are some tips for responding professionally during virtual learning.

Create a Schedule

Are you the type of teacher who likes to have things in order, know what’s coming next, and plan out detailed lessons? Creating a schedule, or really multiple schedules, will help you feel calmer. Of course, be sure you allow some flexibility within these schedules, too!

Create a schedule for yourself during the day

Set a routine. Know when it’s work time and family time.

As teachers, we tend to work all of the time and have trouble turning off our teacher’s brains. This is one season where I would consider being more intentional about work time and nonwork time to decompress and have that time away from work.

Create a Schedule for Your Students

Create a schedule for your students so they (and parents) know when to communicate with you. Consider setting office hours and only work with those hours, if possible.  Since everything is online now, parents and students can now access the visual classroom and online learning 24 hours a day. 

Create a Suggested Schedule for Parents

Like students and yourself, parents may benefit from a routine and schedule. This parent schedule is likely very different from a student schedule and includes more guidance about helping children with schoolwork, having downtime, and expected hours of worktime or downtime.

Make the schedule realistic.  Some parents think their children must do 6 hours of work daily because that’s what students do at school.  Or that students need to sit for hours at a time.

Help parents understand that school at home does not need to mirror school in the classroom.  

Set Boundaries with Parents

To follow up on the schedule that you have created, consider setting boundaries with parents and clearly communicating when you are available to answer questions.

Parents likely aren’t used to virtual learning.  Parents may have A LOT of questions.  Answer them, but also be honest when you can’t answer something. 

Figure out your boundaries and what you’re willing to do and not willing to do before you’re in a situation that pushes you up against those boundaries. 

Are parents texting at 9 PM? Is this outside of those boundaries?  Do some parents want more work, less work, or no work? 

An Exercise to Think Ahead About Your Boundaries

Before parents come to you, brainstorm situations you might encounter with parents and consider ways to respond to them. Doing this exercise will help you respond calmly to students.

1. Sit down for 10-15 minutes. 
2. Divide a piece of paper in half. 
3. On the left, brainstorm all the different scenarios that could come up with parents.
4. On the right, write down how you will respond in that scenario.  Think about multiple ways to respond. Also, think about ways to calm yourself down if you’re in a situation that makes you uncomfortable or stressed out.

By thinking about situations and scenarios ahead of time, you prepare your mind and your heart for these difficult times. You will likely be the brunt of some negative words from parents. Knowing how to respond to their stress will allow you to deal with your stress.

Recognize when Home Situations are Out of Your Control

School may be the only safe place for some of your students.  Not all families are equipped to have kids at home for long periods of time. 

While we can recognize this, it is not something many teachers can directly influence.  You may have to come to terms with being unable to help some of your students in some areas of need. Figure out how to show compassion but not let students’ home situations overwhelm you. 

An Exercise About Your Sphere of Influence

Are you ready for another exercise? This is a quick one.

Taking about 15 minutes to do this exercise will help you prioritize how you spend your time over the next few weeks.

You’ve likely seen the concentric circles and your sphere of influence concept. Stephen Covey is the founder of this exercise.

On a piece of paper, draw two concentric circles. Label one Circle of Influence. Label the other Circle of Concern. Use another piece of paper as a brain dump or sticky notes.

Alternatively, label the circles as the image below: I can directly influence, I can indirectly influence, and it is out of my control. I sometimes find that I can indirectly make a difference while I don’t have complete control over something.

Spend 10-15 minutes reflecting on the past week. On each sticky note, write something that happened that worried you. After reflecting on the week, think about the week ahead. What do you have coming up that may cause you to be stressed?

After you have a list of ideas or a stack of sticky notes, start categorizing them. Place them in your circle of influence if you can directly control the situation. Place it in the circle of influence if you cannot directly control it.

Some things might be in between, and you could move to the circle of influence with a little collaboration with other teachers or actions from your school district. This can be placed in the “indirectly influence” circle.

The way we do life is changing every day and every week. Teachers are continually being asked to adjust and change with it. While you may create a schedule, set boundaries, and place certain things within your circle of influence, know that things will likely change. Create order, but also be flexible.

Personal Ways Teachers Can Navigate Working from Home

Teachers are being called to a whole new way of teaching with distance learning and teaching from their homes. While in the past, teachers could physically leave things at school (even if we emotionally took them home), the lines between home and school are not as clear with virtual learning.

Some of the above suggestions help you navigate your school life at home. Here are some suggestions to navigate your home and personal life to be more present in your school life.

Be Intentional about Decompressing

Whatever you do to ease the stress from your life.  Do it.  In fact, find multiple ways to decompress. 

Here are 30 ways to destress.  It was written for the beginning of the school year, but most of the tips are applicable at any time of the year.

Here are 95 ways teachers can stay fresh over the summer. It may not be summer, but some of the ideas still fit.

The main idea is that you must be intentional about separating work and home time and finding ways to reduce stress.

Get Your Finances in Order

There are many ways teachers can focus on their finances. In the past, we followed Dave Ramsey. Now, we are fans of Choose FI. I actively listen to the Choose FI podcast.

The central idea of both resources above is to know where your money is going and reduce spending.

We have had to take a hard look at finances.  We’ve figured out our necessities and the costs of food, utilities, mortgage, and insurance.  From there, it’s all negotiable and more or less in the want category. 

We’ve run a few scenarios about how much we need to have for three, six, and eight months.  We’ve figured out our income and whether we can meet our basic needs, then how much must we put into the negotiable categories?  Having a plan, expectations for the next steps, and discussions help a ton. 

Spend Intentional Time With Your Family

Use this time at home to re-establish family relationships. Play games, go for walks, and do art projects.  Organize and clean out the garage or your kids’ dressers.

Do your best to engage your kids and spouse in intentional, quality time.  Build relationships you don’t have time to build because you teach in a classroom.