Normally, I could move through August a little bit on auto-pilot: get the room set up, check the rosters, re-tool and update the curriculum, plan to fold in the lessons learned from the previous year, maybe build a new unit or two based on my most recent reading or learning.
Like many schools in Washington, my district is starting up in September fully virtual/distance learning, a difficult decision and one I personally support both as an educator and as a parent. For that reason, auto-pilot is a no-go. This is hands-on navigation through a hurricane. In a mountain range. At night. With no GPS and glitchy radar. And there are murder hornets in the cockpit.
I cannot plan in a vacuum: the pandemic, the protests, the politics, these are all realities that I understand will impact what I do as the outside world pushes into my classroom unlike ever before. This August, I’m focusing on a few things I need to remember as I welcome students, virtually, into our learning environment:
Mark,
I resonated with so many of these ideas as we plan for all remote learning in just a few weeks. We indeed can’t plan in a vacuum, nor should we, but you’re right in that we need to reflect on how we approach the myriad challenges our communities are facing.
I appreciate the focus that it’s not about you (in regards to deadlines, nit-picky rules, etc) and the more we focus on our students over ourselves or our curriculum, the better. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can set aside some of the “normal” guidelines of school for SEL and equity work. What would happen if we didn’t worry about formatting a google doc, or have firm deadlines? The world would continue to turn, and maybe we’d have more time to build relationships and engage with students in ways that are meaningful for their learning.
I’m seeing a collective, panicked push to catch students up from “all the learning they’ve missed,” but I recognize the danger in starting our with a deficit mindset from the beginning instead of meeting students where they are. That’s what we do, that’s what we’ve always done, and that’s what we will continue to do online.
Thank you for recognizing you’re privilege to think about systemic racism academically, while so many are forced to live in the reality that white supremacist culture perpetuates. I believe our students deserve change but I appreciate the reminder it has to be about them, not the sage on the stage white person who wants to share all they’ve learned on day one.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts during this uncertain time.
Thanks for reading and commenting Emma-Kate! I too worry about this pressure to “catch up,” less for my students than for my own offspring. Of my three, the older two (13 and 16) followed the rules, leapt the hoops, and were not shy about voicing their criticisms of the merits of the tasks their teachers asked of them. The youngest (10) couldn’t be bribed to check Seesaw on his own and every task was a potential fight. No amount of parent “support” or teacher-dad trickery could cajole him forward. No doubt, he would/will be labeled one of those who are “behind.” He is a social learner, so that layer of what school provides was THE missing piece in helping him move forward. On one hand, I do want him to make progress, but on the other, I don’t want any potential joy in learning to be squeezed out of him by a series of extra zooms or worksheets aimed at “catching him up.”
Mark, your line about making literary experiential brought back our family’s experience so vividly. Our daughter asked us to homeschool her in her sophomore year of high school for some of her classes, including her English class. She thought the reading list for her class was mostly dreck. She wanted to read Crime and Punishment and Dante’s Divine Comedy.
The only book she wanted to read that was on the class list was Macbeth.
When it came time to read the play, Dave and I pulled out the capes and the big soup kettle. And the swords. Colleen read all the women’s roles, I read all the bad male roles, and Dave read all the good male roles.
We stood up. We declaimed. We waved swords around.
About a week into the nightly readings, Colleen came home and said, “Mom, the kids at my school HATE Macbeth. How can anyone possibly hate Macbeth???”
I said, “Well, kid, they’re not reading it the way we are.”
One advantage to remote learning is having families involved in total-interactive reading experiences!
Jan, that would be a dream for kids to be able to interact with text in such a way! I have many kids who love doing the “pick a scene and modernize it, then film it” kinds of assignments, and there are tons who love making graphic novel versions of things we read.
For the kids willing to pick up books (either at home, from the library, or ones I send them) I’m less worried… it’s the students whose self-talk and school experience has led them to believe that they “aren’t readers.” I know many would love doing the action you describe…so how to get them across the threshold to give themselves the chance to read it first… I know they can, and it is so much easier to help them across the threshold in person.