Back-to-School Scaries Part Two

Three years ago, I wrote a post about going back to school.You can check it out here if you want, or I can give you a brief summary here. In it, I tell about the anxiety the beginning of the school year brings to teachers. We play all the scenarios in our heads of what the first day or week will be like. Will I get a bad group of kids? How many mistakes have I made on my syllabus? How will my own children handle school? 

The BTS Scaries are still here, but they look a little different this year.

In the past, I worried about what I would wear on the first day.I always wanted to look nice, somewhat stylish, and professional. This year, what I'm wearing ranks at the bottom of my worry list. After six months of quarantine, perceptions of teacher "professional attire" have changed. My administration asked that we not wear scrubs on the first day.They don't want the students to see us as medical professionals and become nervous, but after the first day, no one cares what we wear. I won't go as far as to wear scrubs, but I predict many days of jeans and school t-shirts. The constant addition to my wardrobe is a mask. I haven't decided about the face shield. 

I always over plan for the first day of school to make sure I have enough to fill the class period. I want the students to know from the beginning that time isn't wasted in my class. We work from bell to bell. This year, the class periods changed from 50 to 105 minutes. Some would say, "Just do two day's worth of instruction in that one day" but it doesn't work like that with young people. On the first day, I usually hand my students a syllabus detailing what we do in class every day/week for the entire semester. They know when every test will happen and when every essay is due. I was so proud that I could be that organized. This year, there is not a real syllabus.  I have a list of the major assignments and the weight each has on the grade, but I have no clue when they will happen. I do have the first week planned. This year, I will be one day ahead of the students. I hate operating like this after 39 years in front of students. 

My biggest worry (besides Covid) this year is technology. In an effort to get all the classes operating in the same online platform, we now use Canvas to share our lessons, lectures, assignments and tests with the students.  Everyone is on the same page. Yeah, right! It will take a year to learn this new way, and I'm hopeful that it will make life easier in the long run. Presently, I spend too much time in front of the computer making modules and then having to remember to publish them so the students have access. On the first day, I'm pretty confident that I have done something wrong and the whole class will be wasted. 

Of course, there are "those teachers" who have gotten all creative with Canvas. They have beautiful home pages with bitmojis and virtual classrooms that look just like their room at school. Not me. My home page has a banner and buttons because my young colleague and her husband made them for me. Thanks, Michelle and Will. My home page will look like this for the rest of my teaching career. 

Tomorrow will be the beginning of year 40 as a teacher for me. I look forward to building relationships with my students and seeing them become better writers. Going back to school brings challenges because of the change in routine and the fear of the unknown. This year, I'm once again drawing on that AA mantra "one day at a time" but this year, the words have a whole new meaning.

Stay safe! 

Teaching in a Covid World

It’s been a minute since I have written a post for Pass the Honey. Actually, it’s been over two years.  I didn’t feel like I had anything worth writing about, or at least I didn’t feel that my thoughts were worthy of someone’s time.

I’m not going to go into all of the events of the last six months.  I’m sure you know all about Covid-19, the pandemic, hand washing, mask wearing and social distancing.  I don’t want to beat that dead horse. What you may want to read about is the latest controversy coming out of the pandemic – going back to school.  On that, I am an expert.

I’ve been a teacher for 40 years and have experienced so many events on global and local levels with my students – refugees from Vietnam and Hurricane Katrina, the HIV/AIDS panic, terrorist activities, space shuttles exploding, civil unrest, etc. We have shared suicides/deaths of classmates and teachers, break-ups of families, unwanted pregnancies, incarcerations, etc. In all these tragedies and changes, I felt that I was one person the students looked to for answers or comfort when life went awry. We, as a team, worked through the problems together while also trying to learn the correct uses of the comma.  My job was to listen, reflect, point toward a brighter future and move on with the lesson. This is when I’d quote Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind – “Tomorrow is another day!”

Life is different now. I don’t know if I can pull off the team concept of working together with my students to face this latest devil.  I’m overwhelmed with having to learn all new technology and curriculum for teaching in person and online – synchronous, they call it. I’ll have my students sitting in front of me wearing masks (I hope), waiting for me to connect via Zoom to the kids at home. All of them will look for me to guide them through their senior English class, but we will be cognizant of maintaining our 6-foot bubble which is impossible in my classroom. Every day, we will be waiting for the notice to “retreat to home” for remote learning.

My colleagues are facing impossible odds. We cry multiple times daily. We bitch about having to teach some automated curriculum so we will all be at the same pace when we “retreat to home.” We now must fill 105 minutes of class time instead of 50 so our pacing is totally off. We have little faith in our leaders because we don’t know who to trust with our lives. We feel like sacrificial lambs being led to the slaughter of ourselves, our students or our family members. We have a doomsday outlook because we know the technology will fail given that we teach in a school that is over 100 years old. The Wi-Fi never worked in the past, and it certainly won’t now with every student sucking up the signal. We anticipate fielding many complaints from parents because their kid isn’t getting a quality education.

Every day, I count my blessings; I have many and I’m grateful. I follow rules and laws. I do my best to be a good citizen and person. I also try to find a way to be positive through terrible events. I have faith that God knows what He is doing, and I hope that we will come out of this ok. My colleagues and I are going to do our best and hope that parents will be patient. But honestly, right now I’d love to tell Scarlett O’Hara to shut the hell up.