Many, many students around the world will not return to school until the fall at the earliest. Researchers are predicting that there could be great learning losses due to students not being in school, despite our best efforts to continue instruction through virtual or distance learning.

The effect of emergent bilingual and multilingual students could also be significant. Yet there are some ways we can attempt to keep students engaged in learning, or at the very least engaged in continuing to build relationships with us as teachers and the school community. The activities being proposed are not meant to necessarily be mandatory, but ideas to continue to stay in contact with students and to engage them in informal learning opportunities.

As summer approaches, perhaps the most important consideration is how we will communicate and stay in touch with our students. Relationships are the foundation of learning.

While we may not be the teacher of our current students, keeping in contact with students maintains their relationship with you and the school community. There are several ways to continue to remain in contact with your students. The methods you utilize will depend on a variety of factors, including your availability, your students’ availability, and the availability of technology.

There are a number of teachers that are holding office hours during this time of virtual and distance learning. During these times, students can come to a virtual meeting room or call their teacher to get help with assignments, clarify misunderstandings, etc.

Other teachers are holding times for class meetings or get-togethers. While the purpose might shift, consider having a time where students can join you and others online or on the phone for a social gathering. These might occur every few weeks and provide an opportunity for students to share what is happening in their lives or to just talk to friends and their teacher.

Some have pointed out that virtual meetings can potentially expose students’ privacy to others, as logins and locations can be traced through applications. If this is a concern, you can try other means of communication as well.

For example, set up a schedule where you send students an email every couple or weeks or so, or perhaps a text or phone call. In any of these cases, you are not only continuing to build relationships with students but providing them opportunities to practice language skills; reading and writing through email and text, speaking and listening through phone calls.

These communications need not be about content, but you can certainly integrate topics of interest into the discussions as appropriate. For example, you might add in a comment or questions like, “Did you hear about the earthquake that happened yesterday morning?” Your interest and excitement about events in the world just might spark interest in students and provide an opportunity to discuss important topics and concepts.

Writing letters and postcards are also fantastic tools that are underutilized today. Everyone enjoys getting a letter or postcard in the mail. It is a thoughtful reminder that the person is thinking of you. For your emergent bilingual and multilingual students, you can write the letter considering their proficiency level. In other words, build in language structures and grammar that will be comprehensible to them.

While many online translation tools are not highly accurate, you could consider writing a letter in English and providing the translation in with your original. In this case, it is best to have someone who speaks both languages read the translation before sending it, but if that is not possible, an online translation may be acceptable if the letter is only social in nature.

In your letter, build in some questions so that the student has something to respond to. Consider adding in sketches and pictures as well as a tool for both making your letter more comprehensible as well as a tool for students to respond back to you. You might even provide students with some response frames (sentence frames, starters, or paragraph frames) so that they have something to start with. Also, don’t forget to include an envelope and postage so that they can return a letter to you.

A monthly book club, poem, or article of the month can be another way to engage students. You might read aloud a novel to your students, either live over a virtual platform or by sending out a link to a video you have recorded of yourself reading. Send out questions to your students that will engage them in thinking about the book or article to get conversations going.

Again, this isn’t meant to “create work” for students, but rather to engage them in having a discussion or reading and writing while continuing to connect with you and their friends. Perhaps students can create a meme that represents a surprising moment in the text, draw a comic strip of an alternative ending or a similar event they have gone through, or create an infographic of information that interests them.

Most older students are utilizing social media to some degree. While social media has been taboo in some schools, it is a powerful tool to connect with your students and continue to build relationships with them. Ask your students what social media they use and consider setting up an account (as a teacher) on those sites.

The key is to create a profile that is professional, not personal. In other words, if you already have a personal account on Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok, for example, set up a new profile that includes your school name or “teacher” so that you can distinguish it from your personal account. Use the professional account to connect with your students. You can send students messages or pictures, and regularly connect with them.

Not all of these ideas will be feasible to every teacher given privacy concerns, difficulty in reaching students, etc. The idea, however, is to try and connect with students however possible on the coming months. We all care about our students and their well-being. That’s why we are teachers! Anything we can do to continue to connect with and engage our students will only benefit them in the long run until we are able to see them again.