A rolling thread where we are teachers

Always good to stop on the middle Saturday of the two week Easter break, when school is distant enough to take on a rosy glow, and remember, ah yes, this is another reason why being a teacher is great.

They should have take two weeks here, too--for reasons that mystify me, they decided to go online for four days between Easter Monday and delayed spring break.

We only get one week, because we also have a midwinter break in February. Break just started today, and I'm looking forward to it, but at the end of break we go back to in-person teaching and the schedule we've been given makes no sense and is entirely unworkable. The principal literally told us, "We expect you to do the impossible." So I should probably set aside some of my break for figuring out how to do the impossible.

Fuck that. Don’t do any work over your break! We all just need to make it through the year.

I felt bad for enjoying my two weeks, then remembered y'all get three months off in the summer!

And totally don't do any work over the break. Last term, despite only being 3 1/2 weeks was utterly insane. It's legitimately taken me 10 days to recover and feel vaguely human again.

I have to, though! We've been fully remote all year, and in nine days we go to a schedule where we have remote classes for all the students, plus 70 minutes of in-person "asynchronous time" per class where we have a group of students in the classroom but we're not allowed to teach them anything because that wouldn't be equitable for the students at home. Nine days isn't enough to figure out how to handle that; I'm not sure nine years would be enough.

They are asking you to do an impossible thing; it can’t be done! They’ll just have to deal with you figuring it out on the fly.

The way school districts are doing teachers right now makes me deranged-level angry.

"They are asking you to do an impossible thing" --

This thread should be retitled: They Are Asking You to Do an Impossible Thing (A Rolling Thread Where We Are Teachers).

Freud called it the 'impossible profession' (along with healing and governing).

Fuck that. Don’t do any work over your break! We all just need to make it through the year.

― horseshoe, Saturday, April 10, 2021 10:11 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is my m.o. this year

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/alternative-teaching-modalities-in-hell

I've done my first three days of remote supplying. My internet went down for a half-hour the second day. Happily, it was towards the end of the day--they were working on some art, followed by a catch-up period. That it'll happen again is in the back of my mind now.

Starting to stress out about the danger to my students from being back in school in-person. My classroom door opens to the outside of the building, but we are supposed to close and lock our doors because we have a student who likes to escape from his classes and hide in random classrooms. Our in-person sessions are 70 minutes long, and I think most teachers just have their kids on the computer, working silently, during that time. But I've been having them talk to each other at a distance of six feet, since it's a language class and what we've been missing all year is the chance to talk in the target language. I'm starting to worry that I'm putting them at risk by having them talk, when that generates more particles and presumably more risk of infection. But I would feel awful if they came in just to sit at their computers - they wouldn't be getting any learning in exchange for the risk they're taking. Either way I feel like I'm doing harm.

We just finished our first week of classes, and one student who was in my Tuesday class mentioned yesterday (during remote class) that she now has a sore throat. It's hard not to feel a sense of dread and guilt: what if she got someone else sick while I was letting my students face toward each other and talk? I hate having so much potential weight on my tiny teaching decisions.

To state the obvious: it wasn't your decision to reopen. And even with the variants, I'm pretty sure serious illness in young people (I forget--I think you teach high school?) is still rare. They put you at risk.

I teach middle school. I worry more about their families, since Seattle only just opened up vaccine eligibility to everyone. I know it sounds like I'm finding reasons to stress out, but what worries me is knowing that I'm stretching the rules just by letting students turn toward each other to talk. It doesn't seem like it should make much difference, but I just hope I'm right about that, since it's a call I'm making as the teacher.

my school just started forcing kids back en masse two weeks ago and a kid i was working with 1 on 1 for 15 minutes literally tested COVID+ last that day. thankful we were masked and i was also vaxxed bc i remained negative, but there is this ambient dread looming over everything right now.

iow lily dale otm

Yeah but man alive’s kids can get out of his hair now so it’s fine right

lol shhhh you'll wake him

ugh i'm sorry, Lily and m bise. my school is private and has more money to deal with safety concerns than public schools, but i do identify with feeling like i'm in over my head in terms of making minute-by-minute decisions in the classroom to keep my students safe. also everything about social distancing is antithetical to effective teaching--i really struggle to stay in my seat (behind my nonsensical plexiglass).

i think at my school returning to in person has been good for the kids socially, but i think they would be quick to agree that it's worse academically--i cannot figure out how to teach kids at home and in the room well at the same time, and the safety restrictions on the classroom make me feel like i'm trying to teach from a bubble to a bunch of kids enclosed in bubbles (i can't even see some of the kids through the damn plexiglass.

the plexiglass is a joke, i never put mine up

it is absurd theater and i hate it

my favorite is throughout the year how to guy taking temps at the door has had his mask off his nose at various points, its a fuckin joke

*how the guy

We're all back in the classroom so, mercifully, I don't have the lunacy of trying to teach the room and remotely at the same time. I do have the problem of 30 kids in a room though and, half-arsed safety measures aside, the sense that it's basically a lottery. I'm supposed to stay in my two-metre exclusion zone and mask up when I'm circulating (which is to be kept to a minimum) but I do get caught up and forget. Also, we have no mechanism for enforcing mask wearing with the kids, as it was only ever 'strongly advised' by the government. I'd say maybe 70‰ of kids are masked. We're all LFTing twice a week. We've had two cases since we've been back. It'll only increase.

xp That sounds really rough, horseshoe. We don't have plexiglass, at least. And I walk around the classroom as per usual and just try to stay six feet away from everyone most of the time. It may well be that I'm supposed to stay glued to my desk, but the reopening was so rushed and the directions we've been given have are so vague that I honestly don't know. At this point, I'm trying not to ask too many questions.

Chinaski, that sounds nuts, I'm sorry you have to deal with that. We are constantly 100% masked to the point where the kids can't even pull down their mask to eat a snack in between classes, we have cohorts of no more than 15 per class, and I still worry about the risks.

I was doing remote yesterday for the music teacher at my old school. She has some K/1 coverage as part of her day, which includes dance. I hope my neighbor wasn't looking in when I was standing in front of the computer (and window) doing--or trying to do--this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LS89QO3U28

I hope the school board reimburses you for the pink cat costume.

Unbelievably stressful: losing the internet when on a remote supply/substitute job. You've left behind ~25 kids who may, at that point, know what they're supposed to be doing or--if you're just about to start something--may not. Lost my connection twice this morning. Much colorful language. At least I'm with 7s and 8s today--even worse if it's young kids.

Essentially, because the government have advertised the appeals process, and made school's liable, we have to have robust data to prove each student is entitled to the grade we award. We've had a month or so to turn ourselves into an exam board, desperately trying to retrofit data for purpose. So this week alone we've been moderating the 480 papers our Y11s sat in mid-May. We've marked them as a department (all anonymised), input the data onto a spreadsheet, moderated each other and changed any anomalies, re-entered data that needed altering, added names to the anonymised data and are now trying to match with data from across the last two years - with the aim of chucking out final grades that won't exceed previous years' by an amount that might trigger an investigation. All alongside our usual teaching and planning load (Y10 are preparing for end of year trials) and obviously for no extra money.

It goes without saying that as an English department we a) are under greater scrutiny as a core subject and b) simply don't have robust data in the way that STEM subjects do. We have student work but it's not marked in a way that generates neat summative data and anyway, it's not marked with this kind of end-goal in mind (and can't be adapted for purpose, really). It's been an extraordinary week already and there's still a shit ton to do before Friday's deadline. And our head could still kick our results to the kerb if he thinks they're lacking integrity or are too advanced on the previous five years.

The scale of stress and rage within our department is amazing.

give everyone a's

That sounds miserable. I'm so sorry you have to deal with that.

I think I taught the world's first trillionaire this morning: a kid in kindergarten who, for his sharing, had a chart with the main units of money from 20 different countries. He could pronounce most of them--Deutsche Mark gave him some trouble.

(Quadrillionaire, that is--my brain and my hands are often strangers.)

I only come here to moan... By the middle of this week: all of Y8 isolating, half of Y7, Y10 preparing for trial exams told to go on study leave because of an outbreak in their year group, 12 cases in Y9. Y11 have already left, so we're down to about 400 kids out of 1400 and about 25 staff are missing. Could this all just fuck off now please?

And yet people keep repeating ad nauseam that Science Shows Outbreaks Don't Happen in Schools.

How much more of the school year is there where you are? We got done a week ago.

Right? I guess we were pretty lucky in the run up to Christmas but this is madness. We're all double vaxxed but ffs.

School year finishes 23rd July unfortunately. Not even a whisper of closing early.

Science Shows Outbreaks Don't Happen in Schools is/was one of the most pernicious lies told during COVID.

Just signed off on my last remote supply/substitute job of the year. I enjoyed it at first. The last two or three weeks, no nearly as much--much apathy, especially in the older grades. Would be happy to never do another remote job in my life.

We got done a week ago.

When do you go back?

Last day for my partner. She is going drinking with the staff and told me not to wait up

xp Well, that depends on whether I can find a job for next year. They phased out the French program at the school I was teaching at, displacing me, then the school district decided they had too many French teachers and laid me off for real. I'm also endorsed in English, but the district has also been laying off English teachers this year, so the job market isn't looking so good. If I find another public school job I'll go back at the very end of August, otherwise, idk.

Where I am, French or music always pretty much guaranteed you a job (and probably a choice of where you wanted to go).

French is not all that popular here; I think it's seen as the elitist choice compared to Spanish. So when they had to cut costs at my school because they had lower enrollment than before, they chose the French program to get rid of.

To be fair, it made sense if they were going to to cut a language program; there was a lot more demand for Spanish. But it's hard on the high schools that no longer have a feeder school for French, and it's hard on the heritage Spanish students who really do not want to be stuck in a middle school Spanish class.

Languages and music are def not the route to job security in teaching in the USA lol

French, as you might guess, is mandated here; not sure why qualified music teachers were always in short supply, but they were (at the elementary/intermediate level, anyway--not sure about high school).

here in mexico city schools have been closed since march 2020, and from a purely selfish perspective i loved teaching from home and not having to deal with the awful traffic every day, plus having more time for myself to explore the city. sadly it's all coming to an end soon.

it was pretty fun to see the students take advantage of online classes too - every week there was someone connecting from acapulco or cancun excited to show the class their hotel room.