Our first month teaching to teach

Yanina Bellini Saibene, Alejandra Bellini, Laura Acion, Patricia Loto, Elio Campiteli
4 min read

MetaDocencia was born from the need but, above all, from the ability and desire to help. Thirty days after its birth, more than 300 professionals from differnet parts of the world have showed interest in MetaDocencia.

“The workshop was excellent. You gave me back the will to teach. I hated everything about having to teach online, but you showed me that you can do something nice.” The quote is from Emmanuel Iarussi, who took our course Introduction to the ABC for virtualizing your classes. He added in his feedback: “I couldn’t even imagine the possibility of this being feasible. Teaching online can be much more humane than I could have ever imagined.”

After only one month, 108 Spanish-speaking teachers have already taken this course and joined the community which, added to the more than 200 who are already pre-registered, there are more than 300 professionals who joined the initiative.

Today is the first month of MetaDocencia. We dreamt up MetaDocencia on March 16th and on the 23rd we opened our pre-registration form. We taught the first workshop on March 27th. Since then, we taught 7 more workshops and we have 3 more scheduled at full capacity that we will teach in the next few days.

We initially targeted university-level teachers, but teachers of all levels showed interest: pre-school, primary, secondary, and teaching institutions specialized in disciplines such as languages and music.

Tweet translation: To the teachers in the room, take advantage of MetaDocencia’s resources. It’s one of those things you didn’t know you need.

Our workshops’ participants come from Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, United States, Canada, Spain and France. Argentinean teachers stranded by CODVID19 also joined us from other countries (such as United Kingdom).

Teachers from 16 provinces in Argentina are participating in this initiative. More than 19,000 students in different disciplines and levels are being taught by teachers who participated in our introductory workshops.

At this time, we all are burdened by the need to change the way we work, learn, teach, and, ultimately, live. For those of us who teach, this change has to be made with little to no time or resources. Moreover, so much is changing at the same time; all of it with high priorities. As Fernado Torres expresses in this tweet, MetaDocencia wants to be that friend that helps you understand where you should start, what you can do, and what you should aspire to.

Tweet translation: Today’s course was excellent, super clear, didactic, applicable, one good recommendation after another, it all makes sense. 100% recommended. And also, free! I’m endlessly grateful for the amount of dedication, empathy, and commitment.

MetaDocencia’s team has a favorite quote: “Shared joy is doubled; shared pain is halved”. In times of physical distancing, we found in the community the best guide for working online. Nothing better than another teacher to understand and help a teacher.

Tweet translation: Thank you, @metadocencia for the Introduction to the ABC to teach online course. useful and FREE. The best 3hs I’ve invested in learning something new.

Metadocencia seeks exactly that: to share knowledge and add experiences; in short, to build new learning in this utterly extraordinary context. The key to making it work is to keep the community growing.

Tweet translation: I’m so happy to have been invited (after having pre-signed-in) to the Introduction to the ABC to teach online workshop by @metadocencia. I need it to be Friday now! Thanks for all of what you do 💜

Come join us, you will be welcome!

In these slides you will find more details about our first month achievements.

Originally published in MetaDocencia

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Yanina Bellini Saibene
Researcher

Researcher at INTA.