Insane, Sane?

 This is so hard, you guys. 

I know. I see and hear and watch you all. You are working, so, so hard. 

I am not sure if we acknowledge this enough. This is insanely hard on, like, 50 different levels.  Here is a non-exhaustive list of things that are insane. 

• It is insane to teach online and in person, whether you are doing it at the same time or alternating class periods. 

• It is insane to try to gauge kids’ reactions and expressions behind masks. 

• It is even more insand to try to gauge it with cameras and mics turned off. 

• It is insane to have kids ghost your class. 

• It is insane to try to keep naturally-social yourg human beings 6-feet apart. 

• It is insane to think we have 6 feet space in our classrooms, and to keep them 3 feet apart. 

• It is insane to try to do this with some kids on computers, some on phones and some on no devices. 

• It is insane to ban student devices from classrooms like it’s 2019.

• It is insand to plan for in-person and online lessons like they’re the same. 

• It is insane to grade for in-person and online lessons like they’re the same.

• It is insane to assess for in-person and online lessons like they’re the same.  

• It is insane to think you will sleep or see your friends and family again. 

• It is insane to think that the stress of health and safety doesn’t take a huge toll on you.

• It is insane to think that they

This is all so crazy. And I wish it wasn’t. If I could snap my fingers and become a virologist and magically solve Covid, I would. 

In a heartbeat. Because this sucks for a lot of people, but you all are the ones I worry about. 

So, I have two things for you today. First, huge props and thanks. I know that you’re working your butts off and if you haven’t been thanked profusely lately, please hear my thanks. 

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

YOU ARE WONDERFUL AND AMAZING AND MAKING A GIANT, HUGE DIFFERENCE!!!!!!!!!!! 

YOU MAY NOT BE PERFECT BUT YOU ARE WHAT YOUR KIDS NEED TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!  

CHEERS TO YOOOUUUUU!!!!!!!!

Second, I don’t have any magic wand, but I do hear a few small tips of what’s working from some colleagues. Maybe some of the ideas might help? 

If not, take the thanks and run. 

Otherwise, here are the smaller tips and ideas I have been hearing from some of you that seem to be making life slightly easier. 

1. Bond with your kids: Nothing else matters. Most years, you already have that bond “glued” and you have moved on to solid content. This year, between masks, computers, lack of computers, and switching back and forth between computers & face-to-face -- our bonding isn’t quite as strong as it normally is. Keep working on it, and keep being intentional about it and it will make things easier as you go (I promise).  

2. Plan for Online First: I keep hearing this from you guys: it is easier to take an online resource and turn it into an offline resource -- than the other way around. Take the reading offline and make a copy or project it. Don’t take a textbook reading or a paper copy and figure out how to put it on Canvas. 

3. Use The Resources: Your district staff (in secondary SS: Me, Josh, Michelle, Matt, Jess) are working so hard to get every possible resource up on Canvas for you that we possibly can. You are welcome to spend your evenings and weekends searching for and creating your own resources. But if you want some downtime, use our stuff. And if you don’t love our stuff, it’s okay to tell us. We can see what we can find. But we do this, not to mandate stuff, but purely to take some burden off of you.

4. Use Speedgrader in Canvas: If you haven’t used Speedgrader yet, please do. It is, indeed, speedy.  It’s easy to quickly see kids’ work (whether in the text-boxes of an assignment or in an upload) and quick to grade. And then, sync to Focus and you don’t have to do double the work. 

And PS - don’t grade too much (but don’t grade too little). Take it easy-but-fair on yourselves and on the kids!

5. Ask for Help:  Back when we used to use Mac computers, someone sent me something NSFW and I spent an entire planning period trying to figure out how to delete it. If I had asked for help, it would have been gone in under a minute, I would have had a new skill and I would have had my time back. ASK FOR HELP. We are all learning here. This is crazy for all of us and someone has figured out something you need to know that they can solve for you quickly. OR -- they didn’t know it was a problem and they can try to solve it, stat. 

A  reminder. You are amazing. Your kids are learning to love you and you are making a difference. You can handle this by putting one foot in front of the other. You have support when you ask for it. You can do one task at a time. Everyone is struggling (it’s not just you). 

This is a pandemic and teachers all over the country are losing their minds. You are not alone. You can make it through tech problems, mask renegades, virtual meetings, schedule changes, Canvas issues, and the Pumpkin Spice Faculty Meeting.  (Mmm!). Just hang in there and don’t let it get too bad. 

Please know how thankful your kids and parents are (even if they don’t say it. They’re going through some stuff too) and please ask for help when (not if, when) you need it. 

Have  a great rest of the week. This weather, amirite?

-Tracy

Together, Apart?

 A hundred years ago, schools were redesigned from one-room schoolhouses (which functioned a lot like farm houses and small businesses where everyone did what they needed to at wherever level they were) to industrial revolution schools. 

Industrial revolution schools were where children were trained like factory workers -- mainly  because they were being trained to BE factory workers. They sat in rows and the info went into the children as simple input and came out of them on tests as simple output.  Low-level learning, teacher (boss) directed. Not creative or collaborative learning, because that’s not how their workplaces would be when the kids moved up and into the work world. 

And then, in the last decade or two (or more?) we have worked on preparing our kids for a different kind of workforce. For jobs that don’t exist yet. For collaboration and creativity. For solving problems. For flexibility. We have asked kids to use higher order thinking and small groups and project-based thinking.

Suddenly, our classrooms look like plague-versions of those industrial revolutions. Rows, spaced as far as we can get ‘em. Not a lot of collaboration, if any.

And our at home kids are often silent. And invisible. 

What the heck, you guys? Did we go back in time? Are we just training ALL kids to be Amazon drivers? How do we get back to collaboration and problem-solving and creativity?

Here are a couple of ideas to help kids collaborate. Because they are social beings who need to be social (for their mental well-being!)

(PS -- for YOUR mental well being, JUST TRY ONE OF THESE! DON”T OVERDO IT! 

1. In-person Partners: Let’s not get in too deep here. Start slowly. There is no reason to start with anything complicated. We can start with our in-person students in pairs. They do not have to move close to each other. They can either talk (maybe loudly) to one partner in a smaller class or they can use (and clean) white boards and markers to “talk” in a larger class. Turn and talks are not dead. They just require a little finessing. 

2. Online Discussion Boards: They aren’t bad tools, if used well. Ask kids to post “x amount” of times to a prompt -- and have REAL discussions, not just checking a box to get a teacher off their backs. Post something thought provoking, knowing that a quote, a political cartoon, an artwork, a chart/graph or something that has real substance gives kids something to discuss. Feel free to MODEL what a real online discussion should look like (their social media examples are probably poor examples).

 

3. In-person Teacher-led Small Groups:If you’re teaching simultaneously, it’s OKAY to give your online kids a task and a time limit and say “go read this NewsELA reading and meet us back here at 11:15”. Then, sit down in a socially distanced small group of in-person kids and work with them on a specific task like teaching a text-marking strategy or thesis-writing or explaining the corroboration between two documents. You can split your room in half and work with half your room while the other half reads the article, too. (it’s better for the other half if they can use headphones so they aren’t bothered by your group talking). It’s like rotations! 

4. Online small-groups: These are slightly more tricky, but even more necessary for our lonely, at-home kids who are at risk for more mental health issues. You can create a sub-channel on Teams. Next to a Team, click the three dots (the breadcrumbs) and choose “Add a channel”. Then, give your sub-channel a name, like Group 1, Blue Team, or whatever you like. Assign students to a sub-channel (Group 1 will be Deshawn, Emma, Diamond, and Aiden). Show the kids how to click on the sub-channel.

NOW THE HARD PART: SUPERVISING THE CHANNELS! Make sure to pop between your channels at randomized times quickly to make sure conversations are appropriate and that kids are not up to mischief. If kids are up to no-good, remove them immediately and use your school’s discipline procedure. 

5. Rotations: Treat your online students as one or two groups (depending on the number of students). Treat your face-to-face students as one or two groups (depending on the number of students). Then, have them rotate. Give the kids you are not working with a video, reading, computer work, or other independent work while you make your way through the 2, 3, or 4 groups. This helps the kids bond with you and with each other. It helps them see and be seen, hear and be heard. It helps them better understand the content. And it helps you-the-teacher see what content they are or are not getting.  

I know you’re tired of “delivering” all the content in a teacher-centered way. It’s okay to take a break from that and rearrange some learning in a collaborative way. Actually, it’s really good for the kids. 

And if all you can do is a discussion board or a turn and talk, that’s ok too. Do what you can do. I know that this is incredibly hard and that simultaneous teaching is double the preps and double the work. I see you and talk to you all. Maybe this can be a way to stop doing all the teacher-led work and let the kids do more of the thinking and leading? It’s worth a try. 

You don’t work in a factory and you don’t teach in a 20th century version of a factory-prep school. It’s ok to let some collaboration back in as best you can. 

Let me/us know how I/we can help. 

-Tracy