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Having been an educator, I know that a teacher’s job is difficult at baseline. Once a pandemic influences school districts and other large gatherings to find alternative ways to function, that role has become even more difficult. Through my service-learning project, I was and am interested in assisting a few teachers with whatever needs they have professionally or for their students’ needs. The two educators I will be assisting are a veteran teacher who is head of a high school Arts department, coordinator of the school’s Fine Arts Cohort, Language Arts teacher, and teaches a variety of classes in the arts. Throughout this process I will refer to her as Chelsea. The other teacher, for whom I will be using the name Cooper, is in his 5th year of teaching high school choir, AP music theory, and recently started teaching semester-long classes in guitar.
Chelsea made it very clear almost from the beginning of the interview that what she has noticed as a result of the new teaching format is the lack of ability to “read the room” and assess in the moment. Not only that but her sense of building impactful teacher-student relationships is not happening. She notes this could be due to a multitude of reasons. For example, not having cameras on and students having jobs and helping in the caretaking of siblings. A general concern she has is students simply being absent from check-ins and class meetings altogether. Chelsea noted that before distance-learning, she stated having a great handle on assessment of students’ academic abilities as well as extracurricular circumstances that were benefiting or inhibiting students’ engagement in class. She also mentioned the fact that she was one of those people her students would come to if there were issues in their lives, she would listen and give advice. Chelsea acknowledged that those situations may not ever look the same while distance learning is enacted, but she is wanting assistance in helping foster a reciprocal culture of empathy, community, and engagement in her students. When asked what she would like to see come from our collaboration, she wanted to have a better sense of community even through the screens.
For Cooper, he states having to grade more than he has in his entire professional career. Since he cannot listen to his choir as a group and assess if music learning is occurring, he has had his students submit recordings of themselves singing and listens to each one. Besides the choirs, he stated teaching an AP music theory class is innately difficult to do in this format, particularly due to the nature of the content. Cooper stated wanting to get a better grasp of self-care due to the lengthened time commitment of grading and working from home is causing a blur in professional/personal boundaries. He stated that having a better grasp on ideas relating to self-care and boundaries will benefit him and then overflow into his students’ academic well-being.
Between Chelsea and Copper, I am planning on providing in-class activities to facilitate student interaction as well as focusing on the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) competencies to help foster a better sense of community. I also plan on creating self-care activities designed for the teachers with the flexibility to be used in-class for the students. All the activities I design will also be available on the site. To decide the effectiveness of the activities, I currently plan to include a self-report/reflective component. This is a natural extension to the intended exercises due to “reflecting” being a component of the core competency of “responsible decision-making” of SEL.
So that I have a better understanding of my community partners, my current plan is to virtually deliver these activities to them and check-in with them intermittently throughout the remainder of the academic year. Both had hopes for returning to in-person instruction but realized the pre-requisite conditions needed for that to occur may not come to fruition. If one or both teachers decide the activities are not functioning as they intended or desired, I will work with them and find ways to get closer to their desired outcome.
Update: since the interviews Cooper and Chelsea have returned to school in a split hybrid model: one group of students receives optional in-person instruction Monday/Tuesday and the other group receives optional in-person instruction on Thursday/Friday. Online instruction is utilized all 5 days of the week for all students.
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