A rolling thread where we are teachers

I must say that I am very anxious to get away from this place. I have become very weak in health and do not seem to recover myself here or likely to do so. Teaching is very burdensome, especially when you have much of it: I have. I have not much time and almost no energy - for I am always tired - to do anything on my own account.

Gerard Manley Hopkins on teaching

Ontario's a huge mess right now. Rotating strike-days board to board (my old school was out today), a province-wide strike-day next week, endless sniping in the media, escalating job action (onto extra-curricular) if there's no settlement by Friday. I was supposed to supply next Monday/Tuesday, but Tuesday's another strike day; I'm at my old school, so I'll stick around and walk with them.

Just read your post from three months ago, chinaski...Some of it didn't make sense to me (Ofsted?)--are you in Britain? My standard advice for stuff pouring in from above is smile, nod, and let it go in one ear and out the other. But I know that's not always possible.

G.M. Hopkins otm as usual.

Clemenza - yes I'm in the UK; Oftsed is the government office for standards in education. And they are as Orwellian as that sounds. I mean, they were set up to introduce some sense of accountability, which I can understand, but the relationship has become so toxic and punitive that they basically exist to make teachers' lives a misery. I'm lucky, in that my school remains largely untouched, but schools in 'special measures' or 'requires improvement' are under what amounts to outside rule and governed by whatever directives are imposed upon them. It's hideous. Our previous head was brilliant in shielding us from the latest bullshit but we've had a new head and she has retained the basic ethos but there are things creeping in...

Anyway, aye - GMH otm.

Teachers...you remember them.

Got a FB birthday notification today for a former student (I was still substituting at the time) celebrating his 40th. Felt like some kind of a vicarious milestone.

A Brooklyn high school teacher died yesterday from COVID-19.

http://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/coronavirus-death-brooklyn-school-principal.html

The mom of a student I had 20 years ago posted some old photos on Facebook this week, one with me, so we're FB friends now. From a post she just put up: "I’m running out of batteries......get yer mind out of the gutter." Geez--moms!

My wife (public school librarian) got a linkedin email from an old lawyer colleague (literally named Karen) who was looking for public school teachers who "might be looking for extra work" to run some pod for her kids and a couple other rich families. My wife gently told her that she wasn't interested and that she wasn't comfortable with the ideas of these pods given the huge equity issues they raise.

Felt a pang of deep shame when I saw a former student at my part-time job and I recognized them first. Not really sure they even remembered me when I told them how we were supposed to have known each other.

no need to feel shame about that! i love recognizing people and if they don't recognize me, oh well!

the separation of fortunate children into private learning pods makes me feel ill; i can see the temptation to do it esp for unemployed teachers or those who are looking to gain experience or whatever reason but it's just so wrong. still, i know it's coming and probably not too long before some people i know are even hiring private instructors for their kids :( :( :(

thinking of taking a pod gig and seeing how long i can teach age-appropriate lessons on das kapital b4 i get fired

Well this is interesting:

San Francisco officials are readying an unprecedented educational assistance program for the fall meant to help up to 6,000 children with their distance-learning needs, as parents and students confront the reality of starting the school year without classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Starting in September, dozens of recreation facilities, libraries and community centers across the city will be transformed into “learning hubs,” spaces where young students who may struggle with remote instruction can go each day to access their digital classwork and the social interactions that virtual schooling cannot provide.
[...]
Officials are prioritizing low-income families, children in public housing or the foster care system, homeless youth, and others in living situations that make remote learning particularly challenging. At first, the hubs will serve students in kindergarten through fifth grade, a group that has lower rates of infection, but officials will consider making the hubs available to older students. They will operate five days a week during ordinary school hours and will be staffed by experienced nonprofits and other organizations — many of which already partner with the city to provide after-school programs.

Hm. Well then I guess if rich people want to pod up (in San Francisco, at least), have at it? What do you guys think?

Three weeks out, I still haven't decided whether to supply/substitute or not, though I'm leaning towards yes.

I don't think in-school will last past September--it'll take one school with three or four cases to shut everything down--so if I don't get some days in before that, I think the year will be a write-off. I lost my last 20 days last year, costing me about $5,000, but was lucky to have gotten in 30. Because all it will take is a sniffle for a teacher to book off, I'm sure the work will be there.

I honestly don't know how risky it'll be. And I'll be leaving a town with no cases to teach in a municipality with the second most in Ontario (although not even remotely close to what's going on in the States--there are currently 159 active cases there). And I'm still not sure how vulnerable I am personally; I've always had reason to believe I have a very strong immune system, but who knows.

What's actually going to happen three weeks from now, the province seemingly hasn't figured that out.

Someone alerted me to the supply-substitute/itinerant-long-term-care-worker analogy a couple of weeks ago--hadn't really thought about it--and I decided I would at least limit myself to my old school.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/supply-teachers-covid-ontario_ca_5f4fcb2fc5b699772e2aada9

I'm trying to get onto the supply list where I live now; I suspect it was a disqualifying admission to let them know I was still planning to do the occasional day with my old board.

Just taught my first online French class. It sucked. I suck. The students were bored to tears. I'm feeling like crap about my general language teaching abilities now, even though I know a lot of it is just not having any remote teaching skills yet.

It doesn't help that they hired me a week into the semester, I've had none of the trainings or practice time the other teachers have had, and scheduling has been messed up so only half my students were even there, making me unsure of what I should even do on Day 1. Still, I should have planned a better/ more interesting class and I'm mad at myself.

What grade level? Almost every elementary teacher I know hates online teaching.

Seventh and eighth. The kids are great, actually - they're attentive and doing their best. I just didn't have a sense of how long it takes to ask a question and get an answer, how to quickly direct them to an activity, and how to sustain attention when you're not physically there. I tried to keep it simple, since only half of them were there - just have them introduce themselves and say how they were doing, and then talk about the class and have a Q&A, and then a short activity to practice one of the apps we'll be using. But I ended up talking too much, and spending too much time trying to navigate the tech, and none of my explanations were clear and we never got to the one actual activity I had planned. It felt like the very first day of teaching rather than the first day of a new class.

The adjustment is just very weird, from being able to tell them to turn and talk to having every interaction be between you and individual students. All my teacher senses - pacing, student talk time, how I'm coming across to them, etc. - are completely thrown off.

I don't think I could do it, and I'm glad I got out before I had to. I'm not even sure how you teach math to struggling younger students, say grade 3 or 4, with the requisite social distancing in a school. To help kids with math, you've got to be right there next to them, looking at their work and finding out what the problem is. You can't just talk kids through math.

Yeah, language is very weird too, because typically you would have students turn and talk every few minutes. I knew you couldn't do that remotely, and that it would be weird, but I didn't have a good sense of just how flat everything would feel without movement or turn-and-talk.

Don't beat yourself up - teaching remotely is brutal and so hard to get used to! As you say, all of those cues you're used to - human heat, basically - are gone and impossible to replicate online.

I eventually got into a rhythm, which was much less of me rambling on, and more 5 minutes of instruction, 15/20 minutes of them carrying out a task. Quizzes on Teams/Forms worked well, as did Show My Homework. I think you have to direct the energy you'd use in a lesson towards creative forms of feedback on their work: you could try audio feedback, email, target setting. Jamboard is worth exploring (in Google Classroom), Whiteboard (in Teams) - you can collaborate in both of these and see multiple students' work in front of you in real-time.

I came to accept that I was performing a slightly different function as an online teacher; I also had to accept that I simply didn't have the same level of control and that I lost some students altogether. It's shitty but you're still doing an amazing thing.

Thank you, that's very helpful and reassuring.

I'm an English teacher btw, and it's so fucking *hard* to do this stuff when you can't see faces and gauge emotional responses. I'm back in the classroom now and I'd forgotten that that's hard too, but that simple fact of being able to question and respond to body language and not let students get away with half-arsed answers is *everything*. Hang in there because it's not forever.

Thank you! I'm an English teacher too, most of the time, but the last couple years I've gotten stuck teaching French, which is stressful in itself because I'm still building up my basic language teaching skills.

Do you have a sense of how long you'll be doing it for?

The most frequent conversations I had with other teachers were along the lines of 'I didn't sign up for this!', which is a way of saying for all its maddening aspects, the job is about relationships, and online you're just jabbering into the black mirror and the feedback is distorted. Having said that, certain students do blossom online - more introverted kids who find classroom situations intimidating etc. Eck, it's an adventure, innit. Tech troubles are part of the ridiculous bullshit of it all

I hear you all — don’t be too hard on yourself is the only advice. That will prevent self immolation/burnout. It’s the clarity of the moment I realized that being hard on myself was a self destructive habit and started to just do my best and self preserve when necessary.

I am managing, absolutely not doing my best, and giving myself full permission and encouragement to care for my personal needs and those of my loved ones.

Thanks to both of you. I have no idea how long this will be for. Right now my district is online-only for the fall; they'll make a determination about spring at some point.

everyone otm about everything. this is nerve wracking at best.

i got a cheap lavalier mic, it's helping me not shout into the void

aside from that i have no good advice that hasn't already been mentioned. maybe do what i did and draw a stick figure in a hammock on a post it note with the words relax written on it too and put that post it on your laptop to remind yourself to relax.

One of the teachers at my old school posted a list of goals for teachers this year: "and we'll try to learn something along the way" (or words to that effect) was fourth on the list. Which is basically saying what you've all been saying.

Just wanted to thank everyone who reassured me after my first remote teaching day. It's still weird as hell, and I still don't know how to plan remote lessons to be both interesting and productive, but the actual talking-to-the-screen part of it has gotten much easier and I think most of my students like me okay.

It seems like everyone is more or less struggling. One of the science teachers at the school I'm working at just retired today - did a month of remote teaching, then went, "Nope, this isn't working for me," and peaced out.

God bless for fighting forward; this is just the worst for everyone.

My friend with two intelligent, artistic teenagers told me the other night that they're both failing multiple classes, despite the best efforts of teachers and admins to make due. Their senior year is a waste.

She thinks they should have scrapped the school year or gone with a Montessori model of learning, so that students could get some credit for engaging in their own interests. I agree with her, to be honest!

I am teaching in person on Tuesday. I will be in two rooms of ~ 12 students for three hours at a time, during which they will remove their masks for lunch.

MicroCovid calculator puts my risk at 2-4% likelihood of contracting corona per day, assuming all protocols are effectively followed.

That's basically what I've doing as a substitute--but it's one room for six hours at a time. Didn't realize the odds were that high.

yeah are they really that high? This is now week 5 of our term, I've been teaching in person 4 hours one day per week (2 hours with about 30 students, then 2 hours with about 15 students). As far as I know there haven't been any cases among students or faculty. The rooms are big enough not be packed too badly.

The school where I substitute has zero documented cases right now, so technically that'd be 0%, except I know you have to account for potential asymptomatic carriers--I'd have to take a two-week timeout to be sure.

You can check your risk here — https://www.microcovid.org/ but it’s hard to get the numbers exactly right.

My town had four confirmed cases this week, but it is wealthy and testing is not readily available.

I am actually less worried about my safety in the building than I am about what happens if/when I DO get sick. (Because we do not have subs, shared lesson plans, and the expectation is that we work from until we can’t).

The erosion of workers’ rights is one of the scariest parts of this whole situation.

I could not agree with you more on that. My rights (and those of my few remaining colleagues) have been eroded to such an alarming degree that my internal bells are all going off. All the time.

Most of the public will be appalled, but I agree with the West Virginia superintendent who made news today announcing that snow days will remain in place there.

With remote learning in place now, I know a snow day can't really be rationally defended. But if you've taught elementary (can't speak for secondary), you know what a godsend they were. Even a no-bus day--which at my old school, meant maybe 30 kids total in attendance--was a gift in terms of catching up on marking and organizing the room. The superintendent is selling this in terms of the students--tobogganing, frolicking, etc.--and sure, students love them too. But a snow day for a teacher is pure joy.

Public: good point, you don't get enough fucking time off already.

Public: good point, you don't get enough fucking time off already.

The public would break into a cold, nightmare sweat and go weak in the knees if their job suddenly became walking into a classroom full of 35 sixth graders day after day and they were required to teach them the curriculum for seven hours straight with minimal breaks. It would break them in pieces before the end of the first week.

No argument here, but with an unreceptive audience, I've found it impossible to move that conversation past SUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFFSUMMERSOFF...

ppl tend to stfu abt summers when i explain to them how much grading / planning / tutoring i do outside of my "work day"

Having my life dictated by the academic calendar for 14 years now I can say that the “summers off/bust ass beyond reason 10 mo/yr” model is actually not a very good one.

Imagine getting to travel when you want, to have 4 weeks of vacation (or some ppl I know get “unlimited” PTO *as needed*)

Instead you work doglike for 10 mo, need a month to recover and then you get the other month to relax but it’s always the same month of the year and this will never change. Your entire life revolves around this calendar.

Even with the envied “summers off” it’s a raw deal. My school switched to year round and offered us no secure PTO. Raaaaawwwwest deal

I understood the arguments for year-round (from a teacher's point of view), but I never even considered applying one of the two or three schools in my board that offered that.

Instead you work doglike for 10 mo, need a month to recover and then you get the other month to relax but it’s always the same month of the year and this will never change. Your entire life revolves around this calendar--dead on (though I'd say it was more like half the other month to relax, because the anxiety started up in the third week, and the fourth I was in the school setting up). And even with all that, I still wanted those uninterrupted two months away from the school.

Yes agree, the two weeks before going back were fraught so yeah two good weeks in there.

Is it normal to be fried to a salty crisp like this? I don’t believe so. I’m on burnout outreach if anyone needs resources.

Three months off = six unpaid weeks

also lmao at "summers" i literally get july and a week on either side.

honestly it's not that bad though. i could think of worse things i could be doing, and workload or no at least i got to talk to teenagers about escape velocity and car accidents for like nine hours today instead of whatever lame shit ppl do at desk jobs

Guys, Friday’s my last day before winter break, and even so I just don’t know if I’m going to make it. This year is crazy.

I feel like I spent the last month putting my students through a bunch of really dreary classes that were just repetitive and content-focused and no fun. Mostly because I had a ton of election/post-election anxiety and headaches, and kept having to work through headaches where I could barely think. I feel really bad because I know my class started out pretty fun and I feel like I'm losing my students. This week I have good plans and good energy, but I can tell my students have lost momentum. Wish I could rewind and do this whole month over.