“Oh! You’re teaching in person this Fall?” said the store clerk, who then literally took a step backwards from me. (Even though we were both wearing masks and were already more than 6 feet apart.) When I tell people our school has chosen to educate our students face to face, I receive a variety of responses.
However, I know that many of you have not been as fortunate to have been all “brick” this year. And some of you have been stuck in a yo-yo pattern of “brick” and “click” teaching situations.
Maybe this too familiar?
Plan A: We are going to be remote learning for the first quarter of school.
Plan B: Our Kindergarten and Frist graders will be the first students back and they will be in-person Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. All others will be remote.
Plan C: Elementary, Middle and High School students with last names A-L will attend school Mondays and Wednesdays. Students with last names M-Z will attend Tuesday and Thursdays.
Plan D: Everyone is back to remote learning due to the surging cases.
This may not exactly resemble the COVID-19 plan for your school district, but it probably symbolizes the “yoyo” pattern that has been a hallmark of this Fall. We’re doing this. No. Now, based on our new evidence, we are going to do this other thing.
Please do not misunderstand me, I am not complaining about administrators. They have had the unenviable job of trying to balance safety and educational goals. And don’t even get me started on SEL during this time. (That will be another post which is coming soon!) Administrators have spent countless hours analyzing data and working on a variety of contingent plans and how best to execute them. I realize this has been difficult for them, too.
But the purpose of this post is not to gripe about administrative decisions; instead it is meant to encourage teachers on the front lines through another unprecedented time in education.
Whatever plan, stage or level your school district is on, I can bet it is not the one that you have been on since August. I am sure it has changed at least once. This is so frustrating for teachers and confusing for students and parents.
Here are some things that will, hopefully, help you not to lose your mind through all of these challenges.
1. Consistency. This is so important for you and your students. Whether you are in the “brick” stage or the “click” stage, try to have the same routine to begin your class. If there are phrases that you always say, try to keep those consistent so your students have some familiarity. When we are in person, I dismiss my students by my signature hand wave. They know that after the bell rings, the class has to be quiet and all eyes on me in order to be dismissed. When we went remote, I still dismissed my students with the signature wave. They loved it! It was consistent and it added some humor.
2. Prioritize your curricula. Maybe this is done for you by your district, but if not, try to decide on the essentials for your year. I began this summer by asking myself, “If I only had 75% of my year, what are the most important topics that I need to cover in Biology?” We have been able to be in-person for 14 weeks before this recent surge and I am not quite halfway through my list. This has given me a much more positive outlook on my year. If I get through the 75%, then anything else I get to cover is just icing on the 2020-21 cake. I hope that you are in a school where your administrators realize that this year may not be all about content, but about maintaining relationships and establishing a positive educational environment no matter where we are located.
3. Try to streamline make-up work. We have dealt with quite a few absences already this year – many of them due to students needing to isolate because members of their family have tested positive for COVID. Because we are meeting in-person, I am not currently recording my classes. Therefore, there is not a recording that they can watch to see what occurred in the classes that they missed. I decided at the beginning of the year that make-up work would be similar but different than the work actually done in class. I may have the student use the text or I may choose from a list of online videos that cover the topic we are studying. Many of these have worksheets that accompany them or sometimes I can augment an existing worksheet to gauge understanding. Another fun site I have found is Purpose Games. They have all kinds of free educational games on a variety of topics. I can send the absent student a link to a couple of those games and then the student sends back a screenshot of their high score. The important thing is to maintain a bridge to the students who are missing, but also not stress yourself by spending hours crafting make-up work for them. Admittedly, this is a difficult balance. When a student takes a make-up test, I may omit a few of the questions because I know they were not in class for a particular lab experience that is referenced on the test. Or, I may have them write a paper on the topic and count that as a test grade. My goal is to have them get some experience with a particular topic but it may not be in the depth they would have achieved had they been able to be in class the whole time. They are not penalized and I can cut down on some of the mountains of paperwork and time spent on prepping make-up work.
4. Try to add some humor. Maybe put up a joke of the day or a funny, short video. Maybe tell a humorous story of something that happened to you while trying to buy toilet paper. Or just maybe add some whimsy to your year. Here’s an example. I have a stuffed frog in my filing cabinet that I use when I teach anatomical position words like dorsal, ventral, medial, etc. I made a 30 second video as if the frog (creatively named “Froggy”) had stolen my phone to record a video asking for help; he wanted to be released from his filing cabinet prison. I did a silly froggy voice and then I uploaded the video on our LMS website where the students need to check for assignments. Next, I sent out an email letting my students know that Froggy had stolen my phone and recorded a video and by all means, I did NOT want them to watch that video. Well, you know what happens when you tell a teenager that they should not do something? They can’t wait to do it! That video had so many views AND it got every one of my students to get their sign-on credentials up-to-date for LMS. Our first day back, students ran to the cabinet to release Froggy from his prison. He has been free ever since! Everyone’s sense of whimsy is different, but do not be afraid to laugh together as a class. It can truly be the best medicine!
5. Do not neglect your family. We already know that we need more hours in the day to be able to do all the things that are required of us. Thus…you are not going to get everything accomplished. Again, prioritize the things that must be done and then let the rest go in order to have some time with your family. Cooking dinner together, taking a walk or even making a game of who can find the messiest part of the house and then tackling the clean-up together as a family can be time well-spent. You need them and they need you. And speaking of you…
6. Do not neglect self-care. It is easy to let our needs slip in order to get everything else checked off our lists. Try to carve out some time to do something you enjoy. It doesn’t have to be a long time, just a little reward for all your hard work. I am a huge fan of dangling a prize in front of myself in order to get a task accomplished. It goes something like this: If I spend the next hour grading papers and uploading my grades, then I will take a 30 minute walk and see how many steps I can get during that time. Or maybe it’s a pedicure or a TV show everyone else has seen except me. Whatever it is, make your reward something that you will look forward to…and then let yourself enjoy it. Push away the thoughts of the next thing you need to do and be relaxed and in the moment.
I hope this encourages you to continue pushing through this unprecedented school year. When we are able to come up for air, I think we might find that we have implemented some pretty innovative things this year.
I would love for you to let me know what you have done differently this year and how it’s working out for you. Just leave it in the comments section below!