Since I did a post last week reflecting on my year in writing, I felt it appropriate to also reflect on teaching, because oof: it was a doozy.
There were a lot of reasons for why this hard, and most of them were pretty obvious: COVID-19 threw a massive wrench into the entire education field.
But the beginning of 2020 did not start off on a great foot, either. I was at a new campus, the adjustment wasn’t going super well, and I was feeling burnt out and ready to leave teaching entirely.
Then the pandemic hit, and everything hit the fan.
Crisis Teaching in a Pandemic
The thing about teaching in the spring was, well…it wasn’t really teaching. It was crisis teaching, which is something else entirely.
Crisis teaching is different from current remote teaching because it was entirely asynchronous all the time – no mandatory live lessons or meetings, just some assignments (designed to take only 1 hour to complete) posted at the beginning of the week. Most of my time was taken up in planning meetings. I teach 3 preps, am technically in 2 different departments, and had to attend weekly campus meetings, which meant I had 6 hours-long meetings throughout the given week. Honestly, it wasn’t as horrible as you might think; since everyone was quarantining hard at that point, we all were a little starved for attention, and being able to plan things from the comfort of our homes made everyone happier.
Anyways, during each week, it was my job as a teacher to host daily office hours and check in on students as they were completing assignments. There was one sticky issue with that, though: most of my students regularly never attended virtual meetings.
Here’s the thing: back then, those meetings weren’t mandatory, especially the office hours. They were there in case students had questions and wanted feedback. The work was pretty simplistic, and so students were doing just fine completing it on their own. Why would they need to attend an optional virtual meeting if they were doing just fine?
Another major issue that was cropping up was that many of my colleagues were woefully unprepared to shift to an online setting – some had never even used Google Classroom. A lot of my colleagues were drowning, unsure of how to handle things and not sure where to turn. So there were two big issues: a lack of student engagement and a lack of understanding about technology with fellow educators.
That’s where I came in.
I’ve always been fairly on top of educational technology. I started using Google Classroom back in 2014 when it was just starting out, began using Flipgrid before a lot of educators knew what it was, and had been integrating things like Prezi, Nearpod, Kahoot!, Gimkit, and others on the regular.
Basically, I’m the hipster of educational technology.
So I started making videos. I’ve always toyed with YouTube – throughout my college years I made random Minecraft videos (yep, I was one of those people) – and have always messed about with some video editing here and there. This wasn’t entirely new, but it was still a challenge, learning to explain things step-by-step and not speed through it like I normally do. The tutorial videos met the needs of my colleagues – they were informative, they were helpful, and I got a lot of good feedback that allowed me to go back and improve them and reupload.
For my students, I realized I could do something similar. I started making videos for them: weekly updates, leaving them Unlisted and posting them to Google Classroom for students to watch on their own time if they wanted.
Miraculously, student engagement went up.
Students liked it! By the time the school year ended, I felt like I had made a genuine positive difference for these kiddos, and had broken myself out of anonymity on my campus by becoming the “Tech Guru” (several colleagues gave me that name, I promise; I didn’t come up with it myself). I was feeling good about things!
The Summer of Antici…
The summer was stressful. Sure, I got to stay home and chill for most it (and I got married!), but during that time my wife not only lost her job but also her grandmother. We were worried about finances, grieving over her loss, and concerned about what the coming school year would bring. Another innocent black man was killed by cops, there was political turmoil…it was a mess. On top of that, there was concern about the incoming school year: would we stick to the remote teaching we had done in the spring, or would we be forced to come back?
My big concern about coming back was safety. I wrote a few blog posts about it back then, and I stand by what I said about in-person teaching not being safe. A lot of people, however, wanted us teachers to return to our classrooms and pretend like things were normal. Some of them were parents, fed up with trying to teach their kids on their own; others were educators, confused by the technology and wanting to return to a sense of normalcy; others were policy-makers or investors only interested in trying to make money from education again. We teachers were told repeatedly to “stop whining” or “quit being lazy” and “get back to work,” completely disregarding not only our safety but also the effort we made in the spring to continue educating children.
Luckily, my district started the year with remote teaching. However, it was going to be different this year. Teachers would host mandatory live lessons, following a ‘bell schedule’ like we would in normal times. Students would have daily assignments, and things would try to be as normal as possible.
And, honestly, it went pretty well.
Don’t get me wrong, it started off a complete mess. Students were confused about scheduling, there were issues with some students being unable to attend at all because of technology problems, and teachers were inundated with meetings that stole all of our time. However, after a few weeks, things settled into a sense of normalcy: students were getting better about attending classes and we teachers were no longer swamped with unnecessary video calls that could be replaced by emails. With the pandemic still raging worse than it was in the spring, it seemed inevitable that we would be sticking with this plan for the remainder of the year.
Oh, how innocent and naive I was.
Our district, like many others, was forced to switch to a sort of hybrid model – some days of in-person teaching, some days asynchronous. Many of my students were still online, but some were not. I was forced to go on campus, leaving the house properly for the first time since March. It was terrifying.
Hybrid Teaching
Now hybrid teaching is the new normal. I’m going to be honest: I still don’t like it. I go on campus wearing gloves, a face mask, and a face shield. My desks are spread 6 feet apart from each other, and my desk is quarantined off from the students – they don’t get close to it at all. I’ve become a sort of hermit in my classroom, rarely leaving except for when I have to use the bathroom.
I feel like I’m failing my students – rather than getting to be their obnoxiously dorky, sort-of-strict teacher who checks in on them, who has the time to make weekly videos that keep them updated on assignments, who can grab the nearby kitten and hold her up to convince students to do their work (because seriously, if you pretend that the cat is telling them to do their homework, they actually do their homework), they’re getting a worn-down, constantly-stressed-out mess who is just trying to keep things together.
Because that’s the reality. I am barely holding it together right now. I am exhausted. I’m sick of only getting a few hours’ sleep each night. Of waking up stressed, worried that I might get sick and bring it home to my wife. Constantly fearing for the safety of my students and colleagues.
But even more than that, I’m disappointed. When the pandemic hit, it seemed likely that the education field was going to undergo some radical, positive changes for students. Things like:
- Flexible class schedules
- More remote learning options, especially for students who have to work jobs to help their family
- Classes that start later (because so many studies have shown that teenagers do better when they aren’t having to attend classes half-asleep)
- Grace over grades
Those are just a few changes that it seemed might actually happen. And yet, this school year, it seems like all the higher-ups just want us to try and keep to “the norm.” They want us to keep doing what we did before, even though time after time the results have shown that it doesn’t work that way for every kid.
I’ll admit, this reflection has taken some new direction as I’ve written it. It’s flown from anecdotal to reflective to…well, I don’t even know what this last part is anymore. And I think that’s okay – that’s sort of reflective of this year and the chaos that has unfolded.
An Attempt at Final Reflection
I did call this a reflection, so I suppose I should do some actual reflecting.
I started this year thinking it would be my last as an educator. Feeling defeated, wanting to give up, wanting to try something – anything – where I thought I might be happier.
I end this year still feeling defeated, but revived. I know teaching is my thing. I know that I want to continue to be an educator. I can make a positive difference and help so many kids get a little bit closer to achieving those goals of theirs.
But the road isn’t going to be easy. It never has. There’s still a lot of work that needs to happen in order to bring education out of the 19th century and into the 21st. It will be gruelling, and stressful, and there will probably still be times where I will want to give up.
But I’m not giving up. 2020 may have been tough, but I was tougher.
2021: bring it on.
Jacob Ryckman 