COVID-19

Tired and Overwhelmed – I Hear You

My middle grades teaching career began in August 2003 when I found a teaching job in line with the guidelines for the Master of Arts in Teaching alternative route to certification.  My family moved from the metro suburbs to a rural community. Yes, we moved one day, and I attended a teacher inservice the next.

I worked full time as a 7th and 8th grade teacher of record with a provisional license, teaching three classes of each grade level for a total of approximately 160 students.  The administrator and language arts department  assisted me, but I had come from the private sector — administrative assistant in marketing — and feared relying on others too much.  Certainly I could handle reading 160 essays, providing feedback, and grading revisions before the statewide portfolio assessment was due.

Teaching full-time, grading students’ papers and writing my own, and leaving two little ones behind while I attended class each Saturday made me question (many times) why.  I felt stuck — we had moved, I needed to finish this degree, and I did not know if I could handle one more day.  One Saturday, I entered the university classroom, saw other students with their composition notebooks, and realized my journal assignment was incomplete. Before class even started, I had hot, overwhelming tears of frustration spilling from my eyes, no longer containable.

It is years later, and I am okay.  I have written several times about classroom successes and exciting professional experiences.  My colleagues — friends — make me thankful each day for choosing such an amazing career.

But not everyone is okay right now.

The Padlet board “An Anonymous Teacher Speaks” reminded me of hot, overtired, stressed, one-more-thing tears of not enough — not enough me to be my best.

Not enough of my best to read, provide feedback, and grade

and learn new technologies, plan engaging instruction, implement online activities

and conference with students and parents

and attend workshops, trainings, and committee meetings

and be a parent

and be something for myself.

I hear you.

Tell me how I can help you be okay.

 

Happy Hour

Educators depend on time and space for professional conversations and collaboration to improve classroom instruction. Often these collaborative efforts are planned as part of professional development workshops or professional learning community sessions.

Yet, what we need even more are conversations that “fill” us when we’re tapped out. Some of the most meaningful, innovative, “light-bulb” moments for me have been informal chats in the hallway between classes.

In spring 2020, those impromptu check-ins or “water cooler” conversations disappeared. Working remotely has separated us physically from one other and joined us unceasingly to our workspace (kitchen table, home office, living room). The time before or after scheduled department meetings when colleagues casually checked in with one another in the doorway or corner of the room has been replaced by entry chimes to a screen full of faces. I remember the times before spring 2020 when I joked about needing a magic wand for transporting me to back-to-back meetings. Now, I do magically transport myself with the click of “end meeting” and “join meeting” buttons.

How can we find ways to recreate the informal hallway chat when we’ve been connected all day?

Recently, several of us met to try a virtual happy hour.  Although we had intended to break into small groups to discuss books, movies, or recipes, we opted to stay together to just talk.

No agenda. No meeting minutes. 

We had rich conversations about our remote and in-person teaching experiences.  We compared and learned from one another’s stories while sharing virtual shoulders and hugs for individual struggles.

Was it the same as 2 for 1 wings at our favorite eatery? No, not the same. But we do not have a comparison for this new existence, so we move on and move forward by supporting each other the best we can. If virtual happy hour is the best we can do right now, then I guess you’ll get to see wings grilled my way. Cheers.

Korean Fried Chicken Wings
by powerplantop

 

Remote Learning, or whatever “it” is supposed to be

When the weekend feels the same as any other day of the week, it is difficult to make Monday feel like a real workday. Or Tuesday. Or whatever day this is.

The current “learning” situation:  two children have been e-learning since March 17.  Somewhere during that time was a spring break.  The college junior was on spring break for two weeks and has had online classes since March 30.  I was on spring break for one week, designed online lessons the next week, and started teaching online March 23.

Moving everything online has tapped me out.  I like teaching my summer online course, but I get to plan ahead of time how to monitor discussion board posts, projects, and assignments.  In face-to-face classes, our “discussion board posts” are class discussions using big pieces of butcher paper.  Everyone has been challenged in multiple ways, but this is seriously affecting my ability to focus on anything tangible.  Another day passes and I still have over 100 discussion board posts/comments/replies.

Was it the right move for me to shift whole class meetings to small group and individual Zoom meetings?  I do know that providing a more flexible online class schedule allowed some of my students to pick up extra shifts at their second jobs (second) when their primary employers (daycare worker, teacher assistant, etc.) closed doors.  However, other students are Missing-In-Action, not responding to my emails, announcements, or other requests for communication.

And I get it.  My own college daughter is struggling with her professors’ expectations, all of them different.

  • Does this professor expect discussion board posts?
  • Is this the class that requires a comment on someone else’s post?
  • Am I supposed to watch this video-recorded lecture?
  • Which PowerPoint slides go with this quiz?

As a program coordinator for secondary English education, I have to ask questions from the teacher preparation standpoint, as well.

  • What has the pandemic and remote learning changed how we think about classroom preparation?
  • What will schools/districts expect student teachers to know how to do this fall or next spring (especially if there are thoughts of another extended closing)?
  • Will principals require two weeks of remote learning activities in teachers’ back pockets as opposed to the traditional 2-3 days of substitute teacher lesson plans?

These are important conversations to have now – right after I read these new discussion board comments, log student engagement, and email anyone who appears to be struggling like I am.

Tell me where you are struggling.

Pandemic Productivity

What exactly is considered productive during a pandemic?  I think we need to seriously reconsider what that is supposed to look like when there is a house full people.  Even though I am perfectly capable of taking a book or a laptop into another room, I don’t. I find myself looking at statistics and watching the news.  Then I ask myself, “When have I ever watched or read more than headlines unless it has to do with an education policy?”  Now.  At this time is when.

Yesterday is a blur.  I know I read a little of Glasser’s Quality School, which my further research online has helped me discover Choice Theory’s basic needs.  Choice theory psychology states the following (copied from the website):

  • All we do is behave
  • Almost all behavior is chosen, and
  • We are driven by our genes to satisfy five basic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom and fun.
  • We can only satisfy our needs by matching the pictures in our Quality World. These pictures motivate our behavior.
  • In practice, the most important need is love and belonging, as closeness and connectedness with the people we care about is a requisite for satisfying all of the needs.

I know very little about this theory, having been introduced recently to Glasser, but I find these points interesting.  The two points I bolded are my world right now.

What does survival look like?  Survival is having food, toilet paper, and other supplies.  But it is also being able to focus on work-related tasks such as writing, planning, grading, and meeting.  I am seriously considering upgrading my Pandora to the ultra supreme version, but for now I will try the Pandora Plus free trial.

What about freedom and fun?  We have board games and cards.  Teaching the 13-year old to play Euchre was fun.  But he’s not free.  None of us are.  My son played basketball in the neighbor’s driveway last night when my neighbor gave the all clear.  He used his own basketball.  My husband paces and is thinking about going into an empty facility to his closet office.  My college daughter wanted to make plans to see a friend today.  My senior daughter works at a veterinary hospital, which still needs people to show up.

My senior.  I know she had no plans to attend prom or other senior functions.  Those types of social events make her uncomfortable.  But what else is she missing just by not being in the hallways and classrooms at school?

Basic needs.  In the meantime, the world has toppled upside down.

My first online version of a face-to-face class is this afternoon.  It will be the first of several weeks until the term ends in May.  On the first day of class in January, students shared what they were looking forward to this semester (not necessarily in my class).  One student was excited about a study abroad trip to Italy.  A few students are preparing to graduate in May.  I cannot make that trip happen or ensure commencement will look or feel the same if it is planned for a later date.

What I can offer is belonging.  We are together in this struggle to complete classes, but it’s about all I have in me right now.