All that changed on Thursday. The governor extended our absence from school until the end of April (still holding out hope, I guess) and the DE rolled out a list of options for schools to begin delivering instruction to students. Suddenly those laptops and tablets the vast majority of schools in Iowa have provided students in the interest of enrichment and equity, will become the primary vehicle of instruction for students throughout the state. Suddenly teachers who build their instruction on platforms of engagement, connection, and interaction, have to learn how to teach from behind their computer screens.
Because the majority of the high school classes I teach are concurrent enrollment courses, I have a head start. Those courses for which students are receiving college credit moved online three weeks ago. That head start has provided me a little time to reflect and a little insight I think is worth sharing.
The first week of teaching online, I cried every day. Every single day, I would sit with my Macbook in my lap and before finger hit key, I would cry - for everything my students were missing, for the conversations that would never be the same online, for the stress I knew they were under, for how much I missed their bright faces, for how inadequate I felt for this job, and for how fortunate I felt to get to teach them at all. It didn't take me long to realize this could not go on for the remainder of our confinement and I had to find a way to pull myself out of the hole of loss I had managed to dig. Then in a brief moment of clarity it dawned on me - it's all about perspective. I can choose to look at this as an impossible task, given the seemingly insurmountable hurdles involved with teaching students in the midst of a global crisis or I can choose to look at this as an opportunity to reinvent myself as a teacher and discover how good I can truly be. Thus began a Thoreau-like purge of my curriculum, beliefs, and even my teacher identity, during which I cast out all but what is truly essential.
That was hard, the stripping away of layers, the sacrifice of lessons that in a normal year I would deem critical, the realization that what I do right now simply cannot look the same as what I did last year. That is the number one piece of advice I would like to give educators who are at this very moment considering how to move their instruction online:
Do not be tempted to take everything you normally do and put it online. The world is not normal for our children right now. Nothing about any of this is normal, and pretending normalcy will not fool or heal our children. Besides, this is not the time for your Clark Kent glasses; this is a time for your superman cape. So put it on and start asking yourself some hard questions:
What are your students going through right now? I know some of my students are suddenly working 40 hours a week in grocery stores. Those seniors who just earned their CNA certifications are doing their best to keep the elderly protected in nursing homes. Some of my students are babysitting so healthcare professionals can keep doing their jobs and some are living with friends because their parents are healthcare workers. My high school kids have lost the certainty of the things they love - their sports, their theatre productions, maybe even prom and graduation. My seniors aren't even sure when their freshman year of college will begin. Right now, those are the kids I must teach. Those are the kids I must convince literature is important, the quality of the sources for their research paper matters, APA style is critical to future success. Do you think they believe me?
What do your students REALLY need?This question is a trigger for a lot of us. We have been asked this by well-intentioned district administrators for years and we have "packed," "unpacked," and "bundled" our standards, putting them in spreadsheets and curriculum planning resources where they will live until we do it all again. But that isn't really what I am asking. I am not asking which standards are your "rocks." I am asking what your kids need RIGHT NOW, when they are scared, or overworked, or depressed, or stressed, or lonely. I am also asking what skills your kids really MUST practice to be ready for their next step. While an elementary teacher might want to make sure her students do not lose prior learning and growth in this time away from traditional school, someone who teaches seniors might very worried about the two or three skills that have not been taught but college freshmen will certainly be expected to know. Figure out what those "can't move forward without them" skills are, and be honest with yourself. Yes, it's all important, but what is ESSENTIAL? Ask yourself that and then ask yourself "why" again and again until you boil it down to what matters most. To borrow a phrase from Thoreau (and Robin Williams), suck out the marrow.
How can you make it something they want to do? Motivation and uncertainty are not friends. Kids who don't feel they can count on the future, are less likely to jump into assignments designed to prepare them for it. Now is not the time to be the teacher who insists "life is not fun," and "we are not in the business of edutainment." If you want to motivate a kid (especially a teenager) in crisis, you better step up to the edutainment plate or at least the relevancy plate. This is especially true if your school has chosen the "voluntary" model for learning in your school. Ask yourself what will be so relevant and engaging that even a student who is not earning a grade will want to do it. Try tapping into the realities of their worlds a little more. Can you involve them in projects that get them to create solutions for some of the problems the world is now facing? Can you adapt your curriculum to get them to reflect on their own mental health right now? Can you create activities that will allow them to improve something in their own homes? Can you create an activity that encourages them to go deeper than they normally could into a topic or project that inspires them? Can you develop activities that provide them with an opportunity to have what they crave most - connection? Can you tap into something you know they already love or are doing - Netflix, music, social media, Youtube, work, going out in the backyard for fresh air - without sounding like the dorky parent who doesn't get it? Could they share learning in a new way? Can you ask your students for ideas? This is a time for us to deeply reflect on what we know about our students and how we engage them. See that as an opportunity to pull yourself out of a rut and sprinkle a little glitter on your curriculum.
How can you create something that meets the needs of everyone? This is the greatest challenge of all. So far, I have had it easy. My five DMACC classes do not include any students with identified special needs (of course all students have unique needs), so my only hurdles have been helping a few at-risk students check in and finding work arounds for a student without computer access. As I add my two non-concurrent enrollment courses to my load, I will need to ask different questions. I will focus first on what skills students already have and need to practice. Rather than immediately introducing new learning, I will tap into the skills already learned and ask students to practice and deepen those skills and apply them to new situations. We spend a lot of time casting the learning net wide, but I am going to look at this time as a chance to instead, dig deep. I know what skills each student has and I will look for ways to make those skills stronger and to have them use those already learned skills in new ways.
I know this doesn't answer the equity question fully and I will have to explore every tool available to me to meet the IEP requirements of my students and to ensure economic status is not a barrier to learning, but that is also an opportunity. Sometimes I ride too tightly on the tails of my special education co-teachers. Sometimes I rely on the equity of the public school classroom, to do the work that is my work to do. I can't be complacent right now, and I can't be lazy. I must reflect deeply on what my students need and can do. I must consider each and every one of them as an individual who needs something individualized from me, even as I attempt to create online learning for ALL.
Lessons to Be Learned
I know none of this is easy. I know that it will not be perfect. I know there are kids who will be missed by my instruction. Some kids have help at home and some do not. Some kids are busier than they have ever been and some are bored. Some kids are up and eager and some are too depressed to get out of bed. Some kids need their paraeducators to help them focus and some will manage somehow to get by without them. Some kids hate every minute of being out of school and some find online learning on their own schedule to be a dream come true. Realistically, I will not meet all of their needs. But I am not a realist. I am a teacher and that makes me an idealist. I will embrace this new challenge and use it as a gift - an invitation to become more individually focused, more engaging, and more acutely aware of what matters most in my courses. It has already made me think about equity more deeply than I have ever considered it. It has already made me think about the value of engagement, relevancy, and connection. I don't want to walk this path. I want to be in a classroom with 150 amazing teenagers this week. I want to listen to their discussions, hear their stories, direct their play, dance with them at prom. I want all of those things, but in the absence of the bone, I will find the marrow. I will boil what I do down to what is most essential and I will do what teachers always do. I will give absolutely everything I have to give, go to bed knowing it was not enough, and get up to try again tomorrow. That is teaching and teaching, my friends, is love in one of its purest forms. Love in the time of Corona (shout out to Marquez!).
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