Ah, the start of the school year: Multiple trips to Staples to buy paper, pencils, dry erase markers; the hallways packed with students, old young familiar faces in my classroom (and some new ones), chatting with colleagues I haven’t seen all summer …. not!
Instead: Adjusting to teaching full virtual with synchronous and asynchronous time slots, frantically trying to figure out how to make (and use) channels in Microsoft Teams, in addition to keeping up with the barrage of emails telling me to do this to my Canvas course and that to my Microsoft Teams (all seeming to involve some new, and baffling, technological feat).
Day one teaching virtually: Actually feeling sick to my stomach with the nervousness of how it is all going to (not) work. Received a lovely email from a parent saying how much of an “anchor” I am for these students. All of a sudden feeling like I can do it.
First week: Me telling students that my goal is to get through this virtual thing without “cussing” the technology while teaching, them being shocked that I actually know how to “cuss” — which I should probably take as an indication of my previous success at quelling that impulse in live classrooms.
Doom scrolling our county’s education Facebook site and reading parents’ complaints (but also a lot of praise, support, and encouragement): The teachers are giving too much work/the teachers are not giving enough work. Reading their accounts of various things, they have overheard teachers saying while teaching online. Eeek! I am in everyone’s living room and kitchen! Who am I to talk? It’s not as if I haven’t done the same listening into my “homebound” college-junior son’s classes for tips on how his professors are doing it.
Sigh. No matter how hard I try, the video camera always seems to catch me at a bad angle (at least I hope that’s not what I actually look like). On the upside, no one can tell that my shirt isn’t ironed — I think.
Trying to rise to the challenge of teaching to a classroom full of circles with initials instead of faces and imagining them all playing video games and watching Netflix. The opening lines to Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” come to mind: “Hello? Is there anybody in there?”
Week two: Signing kids up for Cambridge Elevate. Much smoother since I did it all myself, but very time-consuming. Inputting nearly 70 book codes, usernames, passwords, and linking them to my groups; it took at least three episodes of The Great British Baking Show (and one episode of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat) to get them all in, but it was worth it. Nary a glitch! In the classroom it would have been a flurry of 30 voices synchronously calling out “Ms. Kelley! Where do I click?” “Ms. Kelley, it says the code is invalid!”
Takeaway after two weeks: I am totally floored at how patient and supportive my students have been, even when I accidentally created two general meetings and spent nearly twenty minutes trying to herd them (while not cussing) into the correct one. I don’t think (i.e. I know!) I wouldn’t have been that patient at their age. Maybe there were lots of eye rolls and a lot of texting each other (confession: I’ve done that in meetings; the texting part I mean), but, another benefit of virtual learning, I couldn’t see them doing it! Still, what I remember most is one lovely student who said: “It’s okay, Ms. Kelley, we are all learning together.”
What I learned along the way:
- Nearpod is awesome
- Cambridge Elevate is awesome
- Supportive friends are awesome
- Don’t compare yourself to other teachers (who seem to have it all together but probably don’t)
- Say “No!” to extra duties and commitments
- Say “Yes!” to taking that walk in the sunshine, actually making a “real” dinner, and getting to sleep on time (that episode of The Great British Baking Show will still be there tomorrow).
Phew! I think I’m through the worst. I can sit back this weekend, perfect my Nearpod skills (acquire them, really), figure out how to access Kami through Canvas and, no, wait, next week is virtual Back to School Night! Eeek! What would Grumio do?
Nora Kelley has taught Latin at Washington-Liberty High School in Arlington, VA for the past 13 years using the Cambridge Latin Course. Her mission is to make Latin fun and accessible for all students, and she is an enthusiastic believer in exploring a wide variety of approaches in the classroom, including elements of spoken Latin, active Latin, and comprehensible input and, of course!, the reading method. She holds a B.A. from Cornell and an M.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
