Checking in Vs. Catching up: Teaching in a Pandemic

Four Months in and we are still in hybrid. I’m not really sure how I feel about this. I thought we would be in the lush green grass by now, sipping our green matcha drinks and making up for lost time. Instead we are still in the yellow zone, the yellow snow, the patch that the dog peed on. I know I should be grateful to be in yellow and not red, but yellow has it’s own areas of hard.

I don’t mean to sound like an ungrateful arsehole of a teacher. I have a wonderful group of kids and I don’t say that In a Hallmark, generic, all babies are beautiful kind of way. They are literally the sweetest, most sincere, most flexible kids I have ever met. PLUS and this is a big plus. They have a lot going for them. When they came to me in August , I was thinking they would all be reading waayyy below grade level and have the writing stamina of a mosquito. My group has surprised me over and over by how great they are at reading, the endurance they have for it and their motivation to do more. I always have a quiet reading time after recess and I literally say zilch to them.

They come into the classroom, grab a book from their 1950’s desk and become completely absorbed in it.

Some of them chatter the words happily to themselves, while others read in their heads. I am learning I need to re-work my classroom library however. They aren’t interested in chapter books and they also have zero time to finish them when they only come a few days a week. No one picks up a Ramona Quimby or a Magic Tree House. They all want Who Would Win books (short engaging non-fiction texts) or graphic novels like Dog Man. A few of them prefer shorter books from the Mo Willems collections. I thought about going up to Barnes and Noble and saying what do you do with the student mags you throw out because we would use the heck out of them in my classroom.

They are also avid writers and artists. This shocked the heck out of me too. I thought for sure everyone would come in with carpal tunnel after two weeks of school, but man can they write! They have stories for days and they love to read out loud. They beg to author share after every writing workshop. The one big downfall to teaching Pandemic kids is they want you to spell everything for them. I think this goes hand-in-hand with remote learning. I’m sure when they yelled to their parents back in March how do you spell guinea pig? And then they yelled again, and again after that. Their mother took a big swig of wine and then said for the love of God this is how you spell it. So I mean I get it, but in my classroom, I have worked long and hard to squash the spell-it-for-me students.

Something that did take a big hit, at least for my classroom, has been math. Holy Hannah, my second graders have had to back up to kindergarten concepts sometimes and they don’t want to math talk it out. When I ask them how they got the answer, they look at me like I just asked them how to get to outer space. I swear to God some of them whisper under their breath, fold in the cheese David.

But the biggest drawbacks. The worst hardships, have nothing to do with their academic shortcomings. That is the least of my worries. Sometimes this year, I am just so scattered, so torn between who is in my classroom, who is weighing on my heart, who is quarantining right now and who is at home trying to learn with heavy, some or no help that I am rendered useless to anyone, including myself.

At times this year, I have had to will myself to be present to the group that is in the room RIGHT NOW, because I am constantly thinking ten steps ahead, while at the same time reflecting ten steps behind at what did not go well with the last cohort. This causes me to spend crazy money on sites like Teacher Pay Teacher, because I just want it ready to go. Ready to spit out to them with cute graphics and voice overs and less headaches for me. The other day I checked how much I had spent on Teacher Pay Teacher in the year of 2020 and I had spent almost 600 dollars. I nearly threw up when I saw the balance. What other profession are we asking people to spend their paychecks to find materials that are user friendly and technology ready and then to spit them out on a platform where some kids will not even look at it? Then when kids don’t look at, teachers will lose sleep and locks of hair over the fact that they aren’t looking at it and what to do about it. This will cause the said teacher to buy more products that might be even friendlier and eye catchier.

One of the biggest issues I can see, is that we were told we are not catching kids up. Don’t try to catch them up. Just do your teaching, do your curriculum, but this is like asking a person to drive a car, when they haven’t ever operated a bike.

It just isn’t. going. to. happen. Teaching in the year of 2020 is like taking your car through the car wash and at certain times you can see all the pretty soap and it looks like things are getting cleaned and waxed and then all of a sudden the door gets ripped open and its just you, sitting in the drivers seat, getting soap in the mouth and getting wacked in the face by different levers with various sirens going off.

I am not giving up. I am not throwing in the towel. These kids are worth it and this job is worth it, but I have seen and heard things that have broken my soul a little bit this year. I have had kids tell me they got on google meet right after they found out I had Covid, just to make sure they could talk to me incase that was the last time they got to talk to me. I mean for real. How do you even respond to that? These kids are seven and eight years old and have worries that big. I have kids who have the help of both parents and grandparents and I have kids who are trying to do work on their own and support a younger sibling who is also working on their own.

So what are my tips of the trade you might ask? How am I catching them up? The simple answer is that I’m not.

Instead of saying here is what you have missed, on the days you weren’t with me. I am saying here is your opportunity to talk, to connect, to share with the eight of us in the room. If you have been talking to adults who are busy working, or a man on You Tube opening toys out of plastic containers, then please have this opportunity to speak about what you do know, what you want to know and how you are feeling about how this world is crumbling. I have had times this year, where I have had my heart ripped to shreds from watching students cope with issues way beyond their maturity or capability and the one ray of hope that remains and seems to keep students pushing out of that darkness is their connections with their teachers and their classmates. Report cards, standards, assessments, deadlines mean far less to students than a face who is going to greet them at the end of the hallway or on the other end of a computer and listen and giggle and sometimes sing badly. If you want my advice, just show up. Lean on your friends, even for small amounts of time. Find resources that don’t break your bank account because you need to live too and when people ask you if you have caught them up yet. If you have solved the problems of the pandemic. Turn to them and say these kids don’t need you to solve all their problems. By the end of this they will become the best problem solvers, the most resilient thinkers, the pivoting kings and queens of the Universe. Student-Teacher connection is the bridge that supports these kids in their learning. When you feel like giving up, just remember how strong that bridge is. Stronger than vaccines and social distancing, stronger than quarantines and Google itself. You don’t have to push anyone across the finish line, just be there on the sidelines when they feel like they can’t go another step.