May 31: Pandemic Summer

I’ve started past summers by covering my refrigerator door in a colorful array of sticky notes, creating a massive list of goals, hobbies, and adventures meant to fill my summer break with experiences and accomplishments. This summer I’m leaving it blank. 

This coming Friday would be Track and Field Day at my school. In a lot of ways, that day is the emotional starting point for the end of the school year. However, because of the coronavirus and distance learning, our Track and Field Day is virtual this year. No sweaty day out in the sun. No kids dumping out their water bottles on each other. No Tug of War, or Fifth Grade All-Stars competition, or dunk tank, or subsequent happy hour which I probably would have gone to this year.

The beginning of summer break is a wonderful time, the launch pad of so much possibility, and so many things to do. Go see a movie in the middle of the afternoon, if you want. Meet up with a few friends for lunch somewhere you usually wouldn’t go and catch up. Enjoy the open time without any immediate responsibility, or at least less of it.

This year though, I don’t know how much it will even feel like a break, at least for me. I haven’t seen my students in nearly three months, and I won’t see them as a group ever again. I’m sure it will feel like summer, with the pounding afternoon sun and the humid air and the occasional storm rolling through. So summer, sure. But a break from what? My work day for the third trimester has meant sitting in front of my computer screen each day, which is what a good chunk of each day will be like as I work (and yeah, it really is WORK) to write one new manuscript and revise another. That was always going to happen. Anything I would have had on the Sticky Note To Do List would have been distractions around it.

But this year, what’s going to happen in the outside world? For the second time in 2020, the world has gone through remarkable change for the worst almost overnight just this past week. George Floyd was killed not even a week ago, and not for the first time we’re finding so much of our lives affected by the actions of one violent ex-cop. Tragically there’s no way everything that followed that won’t lead to a second wave of COVID-19 by July, and my guess is that by then one community demanding justice and another wanting to go up North every weekend won’t eagerly welcome another shelter-in-place order.

So in my little world, there are a lot of things that either I really can’t, or shouldn’t, do, as well as things that would be pointless. There won’t be the traditional countdown to the first day back to school in the fall, because there’s really no telling what the fall will look like. There won’t be any boiling afternoons spent in a dark movie theater to retreat from the excessive heat and the storm watches, because even if the theaters were open there aren’t exactly any movies out for them to show. There won’t be afternoons or evenings, or sometimes even mornings, wandering the aisles of Cub or Target for an hour, only to arrive at the check-out with a cartful of things I don't really need. Live music is pretty much dead at the moment, so the one concert I was excited about attending has been postponed for at least a year, to say nothing of how there wasn’t even a Summer Concert Series at the MN Zoo amphitheater announced. I didn’t even bother trying to pick an Official Driving With the Windows Rolled Down Album of the Summer, both because friggin’ 2020 doesn’t deserve one and because the last time I filled my gas tank was mid-March and it isn’t even half empty yet.

On top of all this — no State Fair. Maybe at least on the Fourth of July I can try to watch the fireworks from that show near my house …maybe they’ll allow that with social distancing…at least on the fourth I can watch the Hot Dog eating con…nope, that’s getting shut down for sure.

I don’t know. I mean, I fully expect the Second Wave to hit like a tsunami, but maybe before it does I’m being too cautious. A lot of people are getting sick, but a lot aren’t. NO, that’s the kind of magical thinking that ends up with people in the ICU. I’m not taking any risks I don’t have to, and if that means more time in the designated pick up spots in the Target parking lot instead of in the store, so be it. I’m walking around with an underlying condition or two here. I’m not taking any risks I absolutely don’t have to. 

Besides, there are still a lot of things I can do. There are dozens of books to read in my house, along with the two of my own I’ll be working on. In fact, I’m halfway through the new Stephen King right now and have an older John Sandford mystery I still haven’t read on deck. I’ve got miles and miles of summer dog walks ahead of me, along with sunny afternoons we’ll spend in our chairs on the patio. There are all of those shows on Netflix people talk about, and I’ll probably take the final technology dive into Disney+ at some point, to anesthetize myself with Marvel movies. I’m also taking on the summer project of catching up on classic movies I’ve never seen; I think “From Here to Eternity” is actually recording as I sit here and write this. I have a well-worn copy of Fallout: New Vegas at the ready for any night I can’t fall asleep, now that I don’t have to worry so much about waking up to “go to work” anymore. And as far as shopping? I can get pretty much whatever I need delivered to my house. To paraphrase one of my students from an assignment they wrote about living through a pandemic, there’s a difference between the things you want and the things you need.

Whatever happens, the summer of 2020 promises to be both quiet (personally) and dramatic (publicly). Let’s just hope there’s still a world left out there when it’s time to start school again in the fall. 

May 30: Reflections on Distance Learning

The distance learning experiment began two months ago today. Teachers, students, and parents all had to learn how to make it work along the way. Some things worked, some didn’t. The district staff who slapped the original plan together all in a matter of weeks may be all intelligent and experienced, but they are only people and are subject to the same limitations as the rest of us. 

After two months of teaching from my home office, I feel I’ve got some of the distance learning process figured out. Here are a few things I’ll be keeping in mind for if/when we eventually fall back into the same routine at some point in the coming school year.

*Be flexible with your time. Office hours mean there are times you’re expected to be available, but not every child or every family will be able to align with that schedule. 

*Stay in touch with the families. Some families will roll with it all fairly well. Some will be anxious and confused. Some will not be very involved at all. 

*Make your directions abundantly clear. Sooner or later, you’re going to explain the directions to an assignment in a way that aren’t as straightforward as you intended or believed them to be. In a classroom, you can monitor and adjust. You can’t online. There likely will be times when the best thing to do will be to accept it didn’t work and move on. Video or audio instructions are very helpful. Some kids still won’t watch them and will do everything wrong.

*Understand that sometimes things will not go the way you want and there won’t be much you can do about it. It’s hard to find a balance between the rigor of assignments being too easy and too difficult. Sometimes you’ll thread that needle, sometimes you won’t.

*Some kids who are used to trash talking through their gaming and texting online will think that kind of discourse will carry over into their school work. If they aren’t going to show simple respect online, you probably have the capability to limit their interaction in the digital classroom setting. Use it. I did, once. I had to put up with a temper tantrum in an email later, but it worked. 

*If there’s a kid in your class who never shows their work, never hands things in, complains constantly about what they need to do (and there is at least one kid like that in your class), you’re going to have to monitor their participation very closely. If you have ways to stay in contact with them, use those to remind them about what they need to do. If they aren’t getting their jobs done, let the families know. With some families, that works brilliantly and you’ll see immediate results. With others, you’ll at least some improvement, either overall or in spurts. With a very small number of exceptions, it won’t make any difference at all. 

*Realize when you have video chats that sometimes the kids are only there because they want to see their classmates, and they couldn’t care less about what you’re trying to teach them. 

*Your email inbox is going to get ridiculous. Whatever tools you have, keep the important messages tagged because they’ll disappear in the crowd five minutes after you first see them. 

*Be flexible in your expectations because you don’t know what anyone is going through, but hold them accountable for what they’re expected to do. The day is going to come when they need that skill for real. 

May 29: 5 Good Things

The world isn't a great place right now. Minneapolis is in turmoil, the global population is being dominated by a virus, and 45 just keeps coming up with new ways to embarrass and distress the country he’s supposed to represent. Usually when I make a list of good things, I either do it to highlight how many good things there are in life at that specific time. When I’ve done it before, I would include ten good things. Today, I feel lucky I was able to come up with five. 

1. My students are aware of what’s happening in the Cities. There was a fair amount of discussion about the riots on our Google Classroom this morning as several people took turns expressing how they felt about it. Most of them were scared. I don’t like the idea that they have to accept that things like this are a part of the world they live in, but I’m happy they’re aware of it. I believe this will help them to be more involved citizens as they grow up.

2. My school has a very diverse population. While there are unavoidable hints and moments when racism comes out in the open and has to be dealt with, most of the kids acknowledge each other as individuals first instead of members of any pre-defined group. I believe attending school in such an environment will help them learn tolerance. 

3. Our state has a governor with a wealth of useful life experience that helps him when it comes time to make difficult decisions. He is also someone who doesn’t shy away from the responsibility that falls to him when the time comes for him to make those decisions. 

4. This isn’t getting anywhere near the media coverage as the destruction, but there are so many people in affected communities taking it upon themselves to begin cleaning up after the ones who raged and burned and leveled tragic amounts of the city. There are people in the world making the effort to begin the process of bringing things back. These people are just as important as the elected leaders, if not more important, when it will come to healing. 

All right. I’m going to stop there. Things are pretty bad, and despite what points of view I try to look at things from, today I think I’m lucky I was able to come up with four. Maybe that should lead me into a fifth one: 

5. Even if things are bad right now, and even if our culture and society are horribly and combatively splintered, there’s always hope that things might someday be better for everyone.