Day 4: What I Miss (and Don't Miss) About Being in the Classroom

Someone asked the question, “What do you miss the most about being in the classroom?” and conversely, “What are some of the perks of distance learning?” I marinated over this one for a time today, because there are both things about being in the classroom that I miss, and now that I’m back in school, I’m seeing there are things about being in the classroom that I did not at all miss, and frankly don’t really look forward to dealing with again. Distance Learning is a really difficult approach to the job in some ways, but a blessedly easy one in others. 

Here’s a mix of those thoughts from today -- the things I miss and don’t miss.

MISS: THE INCIDENTAL MOMENTS

When you spend so much time with the same group of people day after day after day, and have a relationship where both sides become important parts of each others’ lives, small moments build up into the things that become memories. 

MISS: THE ACCOUNTABILITY

It’s too easy for distance learning kids to not do their work and think they’ve found the perfect lie for when they get called on it. Not all of them, but some. The live version of my teacher stare is much more forceful than the Google version.

DON’T MISS: THE FRUSTRATION OF CONSTANT CORRECTIONS

This isn’t absent from distance learning, but it’s lessened. I don’t have to tell the same kid to take a hat off 47 days in a row. I don’t have to ask them why they don’t have the time to put their name on their papers. 

DON’T MISS: THE POTTY PARADE

This is such a real thing. One person asks to use the bathroom, and within five minutes seven others need to go as well. Especially prevalent during state tests.

DON’T MISS: SWEARING, LYING, FIGHTING, VANDALIZING, STEALING

I don’t think I need to say much more.

WOULDN’T MISS, BUT I CAME BACK IN TIME FOR: STATE TESTS

Especially the moments when you look at the clock and realize that if you were at home you could start playing a movie right at that moment and it would be over before you were done with your testing session.

MISS/DON’T MISS: KIDS WHO WORK HARD/KIDS WHO DON’T TRY

Also present in distance learning, but more acutely noticeable live.

MISS: ADRENALIZED SONGS IN MY HEAD WHEN THINGS GO WELL

I have songs in my head nearly the entire time I’m awake. When I’m teaching and get caught in a moment when a lesson is going exactly as I planned or the kids are proving their success, it pumps me up and some powerful, workout-type song appears in my thoughts.

DON’T MISS IN THE LEAST: THE YARDS-LONG BLACK STREAKS LEFT ON TILE FLOORS WHEN SOMEONE STEPS ON A TINY BROKEN SHARD OF A MECHANICAL PENCIL LEAD

I know they (probably) don’t try to do it on purpose, but when a kid gets one of those hellish graphite chunks stuck in the sole of their shoe, a piece of my will to live falls off and withers away. 

MISS: CREATIVITY

Distance learning is online assignments, web sites, and occasional nods in other directions. Of course there are opportunities to be creative anytime you create something, even a lesson, but it’s not the same as the live version. The bulletin boards, the paper, the colors, the signs, the organizational schemes, the proactive thinking…when you find a lesson you connect with and really want to make your own, it can be invigorating.

DON'T MISS: GLITTER

No further explanation necessary, I'd say.

MISS: FLY ON THE WALL OBSERVATIONS

Some of the funniest moments of the day come from the absence of self-awareness that so many kids carry with them. It’s fun to witness the moments when they are all by themselves in their heads and let their true selves be displayed. 

DON’T MISS: MEAN GIRLS

They’re the worst. I really believe that the ways girls go after each other when they’re going into battle is so much worse than it is with boys.

MISS SO MUCH: GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX

I miss having the unusual moments surrounding me that really define the atmosphere of a school. The way some clocks don’t necessarily line up with others in the building, and everyone has to get used to the idea of how one is two minutes faster. That phantom noise that randomly occurs during the day that sounds like machinery collapsing in the ceiling that you learn to ignore, because nothing ever falls through. The way some kid will leave a banana sitting on the hallway floor right outside of the bathroom and then forget about it when they leave. All of this is to say nothing of how you don’t just learn to accommodate the dozens of quirks the students bring into your days, but often enjoy them.

MISS TERRIBLY: THE APPROACHING CLOSURE

The last month of the year is one of my favorites because the school year has a definitive expiration date, and you know that after that the relationships and group dynamic you’ve worked so hard and so long to establish with the class will abruptly end. That can lead to some powerful goodbyes. Or, there could be (are) years when you welcome the ringing of that final bell on the last day with open arms; not gonna lie, I’ve been on that side of the equation more than once. 

This year though, I have a great class. Even if I’ve spent precious little time with them in the real world, they are still a cohesive group full of distinct personalities that I know I’m going to miss. For so, so, so, so long, they were the only people I would talk to in the past year, in some cases for what felt like weeks at a time. I hope things don't end like this, but I’m afraid our year is going to close with all of us waving to each other as we shut down our last Google Meet of the day, like we do every day. 

I might have to pull out some creativity to make sure we get something closer to the ending we deserve. 

Day 3: Building a Mini-Bucket List

During an early morning Target run this past weekend, I bought a new package of Post-It Notes to use on my fridge this summer. If you’re new to the idea, I’ve spent most of the past few summers turning the front of my refrigerator into a massive To-Do list of summertime activities, with each note listing something else to do, which I peel off and throw out as I complete them. Hopefully by the time school starts again in the fall I’ve finished off at least most of the things I had listed. It’s a good cure for the days when you can’t think of anything to do.

I didn’t do it last year, because the options of what to do seemed so severely pandemic-limited and the only thing really on my list was stay home and not die. However, the world seems to be regaining some of its equilibrium. Even though Covid is hardly resolved (and seriously, if you think it’s gone or will end anytime soon you have some real self-searching to do), life does feel slightly less dangerous than it did a year ago. I’ve gotten pretty good at managing a safe lifestyle, and I’ve had both of my shots. Maybe the occasional measured or controlled risk wouldn’t be completely inappropriate? After all, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph — I did actually go inside a Target store, and buy things. Clearly I’m ready to live on the edge.

In all seriousness I have no plans on going crazy with the “open world” idea. But I love my vaccines and the increased security I’ve learned to feel with their 95% efficacy. I think getting out and doing a few things might not be so bad under the right conditions. After a year of isolation, there are a lot of things I’ve always enjoyed, particularly in the summer, that I missed after holding back from doing them.

There are things I’d like to do that I’m not ready to yet, and even some bigger, more adventurous things that I’d like to try someday. But in the short term? There are the things I’ve missed being able to do. There’s stuff I’d like to try, projects I’d like to attempt, things about my life I’d like to work on trying to change, for real. People to see. Skills to develop. The kind of unremarkable but still unusual and potentially memorable experiences to be collected that would be worth the investments of time and effort. 

I think a lot of people might see life this way now, divided between Before Covid and After. Speaking for myself, living through an existential threat (shut up, science deniers) gives you a watered-down version of the perspective that I imagine people who’ve experienced near misses with illnesses or injuries probably feel. They survived, and come out the other side with an appreciation of the opportunities, the potential, and the promise life still holds.

I’ve never really had an official Bucket List so much as some things I hoped I’d get to do or see someday. I’m not thinking in terms like that here, at least not exactly. Instead of putting together a checklist of things like exotic places to visit, I’m thinking of smaller things, sort of like the things that really I could have done at almost any point but never took advantage of the opportunities to do. The smaller things. It seems to me as I start thinking about another summer with my fridge hidden beneath a layer of Post-It Notes, this might be a summer to try and accomplish some of those things.

For example: I’ve never been big on spending a lot of time in the city. Really, it’s just not my thing. I was brought up in small towns, and I’m relatively comfortable here in the blandness of the suburbs. But I’ll admit I can enjoy the energy of the city when I’m there, at least if I'm not trying to steer a grade level through a field trip. Maybe taking the commuter train downtown to meet up with a friend for lunch sometime could be a nice little fun-sized adventure. Of course I’d have to feel comfortable about riding the train, which is far from a lock right now, but we’re really just throwing around hypothetical spitballs here, so why not consider it for the list.

I’d like to give my dog a chance to see more of the world around him than he has; he likes exploring the neighborhood, so he might like getting out a little further. I have friends with dogs he could meet. It could make for a fun evening to go visit with some of them some summer evening, and maybe sit outside for dinner. I’ve been a writer for so long, and my best friend is a professional musician. We’ve talked for decades now, literally, about trying to collaborate on writing at least one song. I know he’s game for it and is just waiting for me to have an idea. Maybe this could be the summer to really try. A few years ago a friend of mine and I joked about making a day trip up North to visit a mutual friend with an alpaca farm and shop. That could be fun. I'm almost certain it would be.

The way I see it right now, I have a little over a month to really zero in on what would be the things that could both enhance my summer and help me fill in some of the overall life gaps I’d like to close while I still have the chance. Even if I only managed to address some of them in the end, I think it'd be worth the attempt.

Day 2: Reflections on a Year of Distance Learning

This time last year teachers were still trying to find their footing with distance learning. We’d been at it for a little over a month, and were just coming to terms with the idea that Covid-19 had abbreviated our in-person school year. When school started in the fall of 2020, some of us would still be needed to continue distance learning as the rest of the staff and the students would ping-pong between different learning models, depending on how the decision makers would determine which was appropriate for the pandemic conditions we were facing. I was one of those distance learning teachers. 

When we started in the fall, it was with some of the same excited optimism that comes with the beginning of any new school year, when it’s all fresh and the new ideas you want to try are bountiful, and you feel ready to take on the world and make a difference for someone. (Of course some of that excitement was tempered by a virus that had already killed hundreds of thousands in our country that was still circulating through the population.) I started with thirty-three students in the first trimester. That number gradually dropped by ten as the year went on. The pandemic evolved, vaccines emerged, and opinions about learning models changed, but my distance learning class ended up sticking it out to the end.

Fall forced a new approach. The district expected more time spent online with face to face instruction and more fidelity to the curriculum than back when we had limped through the spring, when even the almighty state tests were sidelined for a year. Our distance learning team had a lot of talks about the best way to approach all of this. We put together schedules we hoped would comply with all that was expected of us, and began the experience, not knowing if it was going to last a month, or a trimester, or the whole school year. 

The district created a lot of videos for us to use with our online classes. I used a few, but never got comfortable with the idea of posting a link for the kids to click and having that be how they learned. It took the organic moments of spontaneous learning out of the lesson, and frankly, I’ve always seen moments like those to be among my strengths. Besides, how was I supposed to build relationships with students if I was little more than Video Assigning Guy?

For the record, it is absolutely possible to have relationships with students you only interact with through a computer screen, and strong ones at that. The time spent online allowed me to get to know most of my students as well as I would have in the classroom. Unfortunately I can’t say that’s the case for everyone, though. Sadly, there were several who would keep their cameras and microphones off and mostly existed in our class as online avatars. Some of my students I’ll be pressed to remember three years from now, but almost everyone else, especially those who felt comfortable enough in our virtual classroom to display their personalities, I know I’ll remember.

One of my most frequent refrains this year was some version of a speech that went a little like this: “I can’t MAKE you do anything. I can’t make you come to these meetings, or keep your cameras on, or participate in discussions, or complete your assignments, or keep you in from recess if you don’t. I can give you directions that will help you learn. I can answer the questions you have. I can provide you with opportunities to practice the skills you’re developing. I can try to make your work interesting. But I can’t make you do any of it. That’s on you. If you choose to the jobs you have with school, you’ll learn. If you choose not to, you won’t. If you don’t, you won’t be as prepared when you go to middle school next year.”

That speech worked pretty well, too. By the time we reached the third trimester, my assignments had a consistent completion rate of 87%. Not perfect, but pretty darn good for teaching a class separated by dozens of square miles. I had a lot of hard workers who took their learning seriously from the first day, but I also had a lot I had lead to that point over a long six months. Somehow most of us reached a point that helped lead to personal levels of success.

I really believe the emphasis I put on creating and taking advantage of the small moments that presented themselves as opportunities for relationship building made a difference. The ones who took the meaning of my “I can’t make you do anything” speech to heart will walk away in June having experienced a positive year. The ones who lied to their families about the number of meetings they had each day, or how many assignments they needed to do? The ones who avoided the minimal steps toward self-accountability they needed to get through the year successfully? The ones who wouldn’t interact with their classmates or actively participate in their learning, or refused to complete any work until the promise of a family contact was held over their heads? Well, not every student learns the same way. Distance learning might not have been for them. I won’t be able to finish the year without feeling some deficiencies in what I did (usually the case anyway) or without wondering what else I could have tried to get them more engaged than they were and give them a better year. A sad thing about teachers is that when all is said and done, we tend to focus on the ones who didn’t reach their goals instead of the ones who did.

One unusual dynamic about distance learning has been teaching with home in the background. Sure, we get the occasional diapered two-year-old wandering into frame looking for a dance party to join, or the puppy stopping by to pull their best friend away from class because there are toys to be squeaked and balls to be thrown, or homes with phantom fire alarms beeping out low-battery warnings all winter. But when I think of the home dynamic, I’m thinking more about the adults. And I have to refer to them adults: I can’t limit myself to calling them parents, since I’ve witnessed other family members stepping in to support some of my students in the aftermath of Covid, when parents were no longer available.

There are adults who are nothing but supportive and appreciative, which is such a wonderful, invigorating relief because it’s honestly the exception to the rule. Most of the adults have been content to have a talking head on the Chromebook keeping their fifth grader busy with learning, and that’s fine since that’s mostly what school would normally be like. Meanwhile, some adults were in a version of Covid isolation that saw them just offscreen during our meets and auditing everything we were doing, then offering the benefit of real-time criticism through email when they felt it was necessary. On the flip side of that, I also noticed a few students snuggle up together on the couch with their adults when it was time for me to do read-aloud, which I absolutely loved.

You develop a lot of close relationships with people as a teacher. Many of these are with your students and some even with their families. Of course you never really become part of the family, but I think it’s fair to say that you often find yourself becoming family adjacent. Distance learning often enhanced that. I think in most cases, that’s been a positive thing. 

So in conclusion, after spending over a year in a distance learning model: If the teachers are given the resources they need to meet the unusual challenges of the job, as well as the opportunity to plan and collaborate and reasonable time to do so, and the students and families involved are aware of the expectations from the beginning and have agreed to work their best toward maintaining them…then yes, distance learning can be successful. For some students, it probably gives them a better chance for success.

If the conditions were right, I think I’d be okay doing it again.