What is a teacher to do?
Racism, Murder, Injustice, and Oppression
Our school system has been focused on this topic for a long, long time. We have made some good steps forward and we have expressed collective awareness that more needs to be done. This year, in fact, I have felt that there have been the most positive action to work against racism, prejudice, and oppression. We clearly have more to do.
Our system is offering a number of education/conversation events for educators and I will be hosting a number of book groups related to the book, White Fragility, once school ends for the year to give those interested and myself a chance to think deeply about what we can do to make laws and life better as move ahead in schools, the community, and with our families.
While I want to work for greater equity and opportunity at school, I also want to work against economic injustice and health disparities related to long held classist, racist, and oppressive laws and practices.
Pandemic
No one likes the restrictions this pandemic has caused, and no one likes the death and illness this virus has created. Many, like me, fear what will happen after these protests with regard to the spread of the illness. I don't want to see people die unnecessarily. I don't want to see family members, neighbors, colleagues or the students I teach lose their loved ones or experience illness themselves.
For now, I'll stay the course of social isolation by wearing masks and keeping my distance when I have to go into public places. I'll continue to stay abreast of the information that teaches us how to be safe with respect to this virus and live accordingly while looking for the silver linings and taking advantage of those.
Politics
Of course, I hate what our country has become under the heinous leadership of the self-serving, ignorant, and hateful policies, words, and practices of the Trump Team. They clearly waste our time, waste our money, waste our potential, and sadly waste lives too. Day after day they suck time from news shows and good government time and potential to pad their pocketbooks and power. They are an evil bunch that have done so much to ruin our good country in three short years. I truly believe President Trump is deranged, and his backers, both in the United States and abroad, are self-serving, bigoted, evil people. I will continue to find ways to work against this heinous, dangerous, violence-inciting, oppressive regime.
Teaching
I have learned a lot about remote teaching, and have a lot to be grateful for during these past three months of remote learning and teaching. First, I work with a dynamic group of students, educators, and family members. It has been incredible to see how this incredible teaching/learning team has maximized their strengths throughout this event to make it more meaningful and productive for all of us.
Clearly, some practices have worked well and other practices have been more challenged. Remote teaching and learning is not as good as teaching and learning at school, but we have been able to find practices that do work and children have made progress with reading, writing, math, and learning about themselves and the world around them. In some way, we've replicated almost all the experiences we typically do.
If we have to do this in the fall, a few integral points we have to pay close attention to include the following:
- attendance--records show that children who showed up made more progress than children who did not show up regularly for remote learning and teaching lessons.
- tech access--our school system did a great job with this at intermediate elementary, middle school, and high school because every child had access from day one. Tech staff made sure that children without WIFI got hot spots so they could access the Internet. They are working now to make sure they can provide access to the primary grades.
- parent expectations--it would be good for us to work as a staff to clearly outline the expectations for student learning
- teaching/learning patterns and schedules--we need to re-look at how we schedule and staff remote teaching and learning to make sure we are doing this well and meeting the needs of students.
- social services and guidance--we've worked hard to identify and support the students who have not been taking part in the virtual teaching and learning regularly. These students, though few in number, represent a range of situations that we will need to think about and work to remedy should we have to teach this way again.
- Update, learn, and improve our tools. While our tools and programs for remote learning were quite good, there's still room to make them better. I'll be doing some research on my own and with colleagues this summer to understand this and make better.
Our team and most teams in our school system were already teaching in a blended way which made the transition less difficult than it might have been, we'll continue to work at creating a positive blended teaching and learning environment to support student happiness and success with the entire learning team including family members, students, educators, other staff members, administrators, and community members.
Personal Health and Happiness
I am looking forward to a reprieve to the busy remote teaching and learning schedule. Summer vacation will be a welcome event. I can't wait to simply relax and then think deeply about what we've done and what we'll do going forward. In the meantime, I'll stay the course for the next three weeks of school. We can do this.
