On One Year of Pandemic Teaching
It was exactly one year ago that life changed as we knew it. March 13 was the last day of school in my district for the 2019-2020 school year. There was a two week “break” scheduled. Of course, I woke up with a migraine that day, but I had to come to school because I had the most important meeting of my year scheduled for that morning. It went really well. I spent my lunch break sitting with a student in the music room so he could have supervised time to play the piano, because it was his birthday, and all he wanted in the world was time to play the piano. I used half a sick day to leave early. I think we all have our stories from that day, as we inevitably do from any given day of teaching. The thing that sticks out most to me is that as I walked out the door of my classroom, head pounding, just trying to get out of there, one of my more thoughtful and anxious fifth graders stopped me, looked at me with wide eyes, and said “What if this is the last time I ever see you? What if we don’t come back this year?” I looked right at her (and I’m not proud of this), laughed and said “Don’t be ridiculous!” It just seemed so impossible that anything that unfolded over the next three months could actually happen to us. I was naive. I think a lot of people were naive.
Looking back, it seems like almost every single day over the next few months was unbelievable. When they told us to come collect our materials because we’d be working from home for the foreseeable future, I couldn’t believe it. When they announced that yes, we would stay working from home for the entire year, I couldn’t believe it. When they cancelled our big field trip and end of year celebrations - including graduation - I simply could not believe it. When they cancelled state testing, you could have knocked me over with a feather. These poor kids. Their fifth grade year, cut short in a minute. We did what we could to make things normal. We learned how to use Zoom, we created tech-based lessons to push out multiple times daily. I recorded myself sitting on my living room floor reading books and frantically solving math problems on a giant dry erase board that I borrowed from my school building. Some teachers thrived. Some teachers felt scared and unsure about “Zoom bombers.” We all adapted. One of my absolutely favorite teaching experiences ever was the 3-day “graduation parade” that we took around the state, driving to all of our students homes, delivering their certificates. Seeing the looks on the faces of those kids when 10+ cars came honking down their streets with streamers and balloons is something I will truly never forget.
It’s truly amazing that a year has gone by, and things are still not back to normal. Personally? I’ve been teaching in person since September, but I’m so lucky to have a very small class to ensure social distancing, so I can really focus on their wellbeing and progress even more than in a normal year. We’ve had to switch to distance learning on little notice because of quarantines. Not just for me, but for all teachers, there have been tears, frustration and outright anger, but in many ways, a year of pandemic teaching has given us the gift of important lessons that we can carry into our future teaching. Here are 3 things I learned as a teacher during the Covid-19 pandemic that I will never forget:
1. Never Say “Never”
When I think about the way that I brushed aside the real and ultimately accurate concerns of a student who was facing uncertainty on the last day we would all be in person that school year, I feel foolish. On the other side of all this, I see how fragile our society and our individual lives can be when faced with something unknown and unexpected like Covid-19. This works both ways, though. This experience has taught us about the resiliency that we didn’t know we had. So, while I think that teachers are the resilient type anyway, now we can look back on this year and realize that we can all truly do nearly anything we put our minds to. I’ve taken the word “never” out of my vocabulary.
2. Be Kind to Yourself
Working from home is not a new concept. People have been doing it for decades, and successfully. It was not, however, common for elementary school teachers before March of 2020. In the beginning, it was extremely difficult to get started. What were we supposed to do? Were we even allowed to have a live video call with students from their homes? (What a funny thought now, huh?) Could we call parents from our personal cell phones since we weren’t allowed in the building? Did we give out our personal numbers so they could reach us...at any hour? The boundaries were blurred, and that was hard. Teachers are notoriously not great at work-life balance, and when they began streaming from their living rooms, it became harder to maintain that balance. It’s okay that it took some teachers time to effectively figure out that balance, but it’s more important than ever to instill and maintain clear boundaries. Student mental health is more important than ever, but so is teacher mental health. You can’t be the best teacher that you are capable of being if you don’t take care of yourself. So shut the computer off on Friday night and don’t open it again until Sunday (I would have loved to say Monday, but let’s be real!). We do important work, but our families and our own lives are important, too. So now, and in the future: set boundaries, stick to them, and be kind to yourself.
3. Be Kind to Others
Something that has become really obvious to me recently is how the burnout is really getting to all of us, and we are beginning to take it out on each other. From an educator’s perspective, this can take many forms. For example, it looks like those teachers who are working completely remotely talking about how their jobs are so much harder than those working in person, and those teachers who were made to go back to school in person talking about how much harder their jobs are than those who are privileged to teach remotely. Then there are those teachers who have to simultaneously teach in person and online, during the exact same class period, with a livestream of whole group lessons...well, can we all agree that those teachers actually do have it the worst? I’m super grateful that I haven’t had to do that. Some parents, who recently called us “heroes,” seem to have turned on teachers and are complaining on social media and on Zoom calls about how whiny and lazy we are. Classroom teachers, special service/special education providers, and specials teachers all think that THEY have the hardest job, and the other “category” of teachers have it so much easier this year. In some places, administrators are under an inordinate amount of pressure from school boards and governments that have determined that a global pandemic is a great time to double down on expectations, and that ends up on the backs of the teachers in those schools. I do believe that everyone is guilty of this, in some way or another. Heightened expectations, high stakes (our students deserve the best we can provide all the time, especially now!), and constantly changing needs have nearly broken many of us at some point in this year. I think we all need to stop, step back and realize that none of us truly understand what the others are going through. In a normal year, principals or district administrators or instructional coaches can very clearly put themselves in the shoes of a teacher - they used to be teachers! But, here’s the thing - until March 2020, no one had been a teacher in a pandemic. We have faced a lot of challenges in our time, but this is, in many ways, different. As we close out this 2020-2021 school year, I think it is in everyone’s best interest to take a step back, recognize that this is not normal, that it has depleted so much of what we have to give, and to be kind to one another. We are doing wonderful things this year, even in a pandemic. We are changing the landscape of education. When we show kindness to each other, and support each other within our school communities, magic happens.
Looking back, it seems like almost every single day over the next few months was unbelievable. When they told us to come collect our materials because we’d be working from home for the foreseeable future, I couldn’t believe it. When they announced that yes, we would stay working from home for the entire year, I couldn’t believe it. When they cancelled our big field trip and end of year celebrations - including graduation - I simply could not believe it. When they cancelled state testing, you could have knocked me over with a feather. These poor kids. Their fifth grade year, cut short in a minute. We did what we could to make things normal. We learned how to use Zoom, we created tech-based lessons to push out multiple times daily. I recorded myself sitting on my living room floor reading books and frantically solving math problems on a giant dry erase board that I borrowed from my school building. Some teachers thrived. Some teachers felt scared and unsure about “Zoom bombers.” We all adapted. One of my absolutely favorite teaching experiences ever was the 3-day “graduation parade” that we took around the state, driving to all of our students homes, delivering their certificates. Seeing the looks on the faces of those kids when 10+ cars came honking down their streets with streamers and balloons is something I will truly never forget.
It’s truly amazing that a year has gone by, and things are still not back to normal. Personally? I’ve been teaching in person since September, but I’m so lucky to have a very small class to ensure social distancing, so I can really focus on their wellbeing and progress even more than in a normal year. We’ve had to switch to distance learning on little notice because of quarantines. Not just for me, but for all teachers, there have been tears, frustration and outright anger, but in many ways, a year of pandemic teaching has given us the gift of important lessons that we can carry into our future teaching. Here are 3 things I learned as a teacher during the Covid-19 pandemic that I will never forget:
1. Never Say “Never”
When I think about the way that I brushed aside the real and ultimately accurate concerns of a student who was facing uncertainty on the last day we would all be in person that school year, I feel foolish. On the other side of all this, I see how fragile our society and our individual lives can be when faced with something unknown and unexpected like Covid-19. This works both ways, though. This experience has taught us about the resiliency that we didn’t know we had. So, while I think that teachers are the resilient type anyway, now we can look back on this year and realize that we can all truly do nearly anything we put our minds to. I’ve taken the word “never” out of my vocabulary.
2. Be Kind to Yourself
Working from home is not a new concept. People have been doing it for decades, and successfully. It was not, however, common for elementary school teachers before March of 2020. In the beginning, it was extremely difficult to get started. What were we supposed to do? Were we even allowed to have a live video call with students from their homes? (What a funny thought now, huh?) Could we call parents from our personal cell phones since we weren’t allowed in the building? Did we give out our personal numbers so they could reach us...at any hour? The boundaries were blurred, and that was hard. Teachers are notoriously not great at work-life balance, and when they began streaming from their living rooms, it became harder to maintain that balance. It’s okay that it took some teachers time to effectively figure out that balance, but it’s more important than ever to instill and maintain clear boundaries. Student mental health is more important than ever, but so is teacher mental health. You can’t be the best teacher that you are capable of being if you don’t take care of yourself. So shut the computer off on Friday night and don’t open it again until Sunday (I would have loved to say Monday, but let’s be real!). We do important work, but our families and our own lives are important, too. So now, and in the future: set boundaries, stick to them, and be kind to yourself.
3. Be Kind to Others
Something that has become really obvious to me recently is how the burnout is really getting to all of us, and we are beginning to take it out on each other. From an educator’s perspective, this can take many forms. For example, it looks like those teachers who are working completely remotely talking about how their jobs are so much harder than those working in person, and those teachers who were made to go back to school in person talking about how much harder their jobs are than those who are privileged to teach remotely. Then there are those teachers who have to simultaneously teach in person and online, during the exact same class period, with a livestream of whole group lessons...well, can we all agree that those teachers actually do have it the worst? I’m super grateful that I haven’t had to do that. Some parents, who recently called us “heroes,” seem to have turned on teachers and are complaining on social media and on Zoom calls about how whiny and lazy we are. Classroom teachers, special service/special education providers, and specials teachers all think that THEY have the hardest job, and the other “category” of teachers have it so much easier this year. In some places, administrators are under an inordinate amount of pressure from school boards and governments that have determined that a global pandemic is a great time to double down on expectations, and that ends up on the backs of the teachers in those schools. I do believe that everyone is guilty of this, in some way or another. Heightened expectations, high stakes (our students deserve the best we can provide all the time, especially now!), and constantly changing needs have nearly broken many of us at some point in this year. I think we all need to stop, step back and realize that none of us truly understand what the others are going through. In a normal year, principals or district administrators or instructional coaches can very clearly put themselves in the shoes of a teacher - they used to be teachers! But, here’s the thing - until March 2020, no one had been a teacher in a pandemic. We have faced a lot of challenges in our time, but this is, in many ways, different. As we close out this 2020-2021 school year, I think it is in everyone’s best interest to take a step back, recognize that this is not normal, that it has depleted so much of what we have to give, and to be kind to one another. We are doing wonderful things this year, even in a pandemic. We are changing the landscape of education. When we show kindness to each other, and support each other within our school communities, magic happens.