It’s Tuesday, September 22, 2020. School started on September 2. We are three weeks in.
Due to health concerns, I moved from my fifth-grade classroom at a brick-and-mortar school to teaching at our district’s online academy. I get up and dressed for work each day. Then I walk down the hall to the study or the dining room table or the card table in the family room.
That’s right. I’ve set up three workstations. I migrate from place to place, from one type of chair to another. It’s one of the ways I keep moving during the day.
Most of my days have been taken up with:
- Helping students get registered in the online system.
- Dealing with the two different email systems—district and online school. (They don’t play well together.)
- Learning how to find things in the online system. Then once I figure out a complex pathway, immediately forgetting how I got there and having to figure it out all over again. And again.
- Communicating with parents, who are also trying to figure out this new system.
- Tech support.
Actually, about half my time is probably taken up with tech support. I have open office hours every day. Supposedly, that time is set aside for students to ask for help in math, ELA, science, or history. So far, I haven’t had a single question about any of those subjects. Every single question has been about tech.
I can answer maybe half those questions, on a good day. Then I do research, trying to find answers.
I try to help students and parents. All of us on staff help each other.
Last night I had a parent meeting. I said it was like we were beta-testing the airplane while we were flying it. In a windstorm.
It’s depressing, really. I didn’t sign up to do tech support. If I had, I would have gotten training and specialized certification and gotten a job where I got paid by the hour and went home at a reasonable time. (So far my school days are running very late.)
It’s really stressful too. I’m used to going in for a medical check-up and they ask about my stress levels, and I laugh. I don’t ever feel stressed.
Except right now.
I think it’s because I’m a teacher and I haven’t gotten to teach. Not for three full weeks!
But today was the first glimmer of light. One of my students emailed me a mini-project she had completed for math. I looked at it and realized she had made a mistake based on a misconception that I really didn’t want her to carry forward.
I called her and asked her to join me in a meeting. We did a short math lesson together. (She was worried she had done something wrong. I said, “No, it’s just something you haven’t been taught yet.”)
That was it.
It was enough to make me feel like a teacher again, though, at least for ten minutes.
I may make it through this year after all.
Aww, Jan, I totally get this! I spent the whole spring helping kids with tech. I still spend most of my time on it. We are called to help kids learn, to inspire them to learn. It only truly feels right when that is what happens. I hope as the tech issue becomes a done deal the lessons become the norm. Thank you for being there for those kids!
The silver linings are so important… I’m also feeling like I’m not doing much teaching. Lots of creating materials, recording videos, answering emails. Objectively, things are designed well and pedagogically sound (given the circumstances) but I’m also having a hard time assessing/gauging what kind of learning is happening… so much of that occurs in those back-and-forth interactions with kids, and these interactions (like the one you share above) are where we can see that the teaching is producing learning. There are far too few of those interactions right now, and with not enough kids on a consistent basis, and for me that is what is making it a challenge.