This school year has been unlike any in my career and I hope unlike any year I will have in the future. I'm sure the same can be said for almost every student and every other teacher at Talawanda. This year has been difficult. It's like being a first year teacher again. As the year began online there was a rush to prepare and although my tech skills are fairly good there was a lot to learn. Digital tools to facilitate learning needed to be mastered and assignments needed to be digitized and uploaded. Assignments once taken then need to be graded online. All of this took a massive amount of time. Grading online is clunky and what used to take just moments now took planning and forethought. For example just passing out a map assignment, which used to consist of going to the copy machine and running off 100 copies then passing it out by row now requires creating and uploading the assignment into Google Drawing and then posting it in Google Classroom - an exponentially longer time, Testing is much more challenging. For obvious reasons tests had to be recreated for an online format and made so that students could not simply look up answers. As a 22 year veteran I have lots of teaching and learning resources, but everything I had was made for face to face so everything has had to be redone; again, it's like being a first year teacher.
The first nine weeks was the most difficult, but as the year has gone on a routine began to settle in. The most obvious change to the routine from years past was Wednesday being an asynchronous day. People outside the school may wonder what takes place on Wednesday, for us it is a day to plan, meet, create, upload, digitize, and contact students. For students it has been a chance to catch up. When we were totally remote I know my son was working late almost every night to stay current on his work and Wednesday was a chance to make up ground. As a teacher Wednesday has been super valuable. Mr. McGhehey, Mrs. Baker, and I have been planning World History together all year long. This planning has been one of the highlights of the year. The support we have provided one another professionally and personally has been invaluable.
By the second nine weeks we returned face to face, and then went remote, and now we are back face to face. I much prefer seeing my students in person. It makes it easier to develop positive relationships. The hard part has been the need to teach concurrently - teaching to in-person students and online students at the same time. Again, a routine has developed, but I can't help but feel that it is not ideal for either group of students. Being totally remote, while not what I want, allowed me to focus on everyone equally. Concurrent learning is socially awkward. I can't move around the room because I am tied to my computer and the students online cannot effectively communicate with the students in the classroom.
As I write this it occurs to me that all this sounds like a negative rant and that's not who I am. While I do not want to continue teaching this way I have been super encouraged by the adaptability, ingenuity, and the ability to overcome obstacles that so many students and teachers have displayed this year. Despite so many changes and challenges teaching and learning is happening everyday. Students are achieving. It's also interesting to point out that while so many national experts are worried about educational "loss", this group of students are going to possess skills unlike any before them. While the delays in learning mean that I don't get through the entire curriculum in World History, the remote learning has improved every student's technology skills. This group of students will be ready for tech. Remote working and learning has prepared them for a digital age.
It's truly been a year unlike any other. It's been a year to celebrate teamwork and appreciate the relationships in our lives.
The coronavirus has changed a lot for us. Schools went online, people protested wearing a mask, getting groceries and once simple tasks became much more complicated. But there is a lesson for some of us to learn.
We all had to face struggles that normally wouldn’t be a problem. We weren't able to see friends and family often, if at all, and many things like concerts and other events got canceled. One day we were joking around saying the teacher was sick because she coughed, the next day we were being sent home because school had gotten cancelled. There's one thing I, and I hope most, if not all people learned from this is that we should never take anything for granted, appreciate it while you have it because one day you might lose it.
On that last day we had school in person, I remember there was a kid who was showing most of the symptoms of Covid in my english class, which put everyone on edge for the rest of the day. It didn't help that he got sent home half way through the class. On the bus ride home, we hit a bump and I dropped my phone and my earbuds went down along with it. During that few seconds I was forced to listen to the radio on the bus, I heard people talking about how the governor was shutting down schools for the rest of the year, and that Friday would be the last day for schools. Most people would’ve been overjoyed to hear this news, but I hated it. I hated school, but I knew it was a necessary evil needed to succeed in life. I was worried about what would happen if we didn’t go back to school, or how this would affect my future.
I’d do anything to have things back to the way they were before. The week after spring break, I went to my grandma’s to keep her company since she lives alone. And what started as a week-long stay at my grandma’s turned into two and a half months. School was different, I rarely got to talk with anyone other than my grandma, and out of the two months I was there, I saw my girlfriend once and my parents twice. I constantly found myself wishing things would go back to normal while playing Wii Sports with my grandma.
I never realized how good we had it before all of this happened. I learned how to appreciate things while I have them because soon they're gonna be gone. I’d do anything to go back to the good old days where I could beat my grandma at Wii Sports.