With a nod to my friend Amy, I appropriate her lament for teachers on Spring Break this year. I didn’t have any money to spend on a trip to the Bahamas or Hawaii, which has turned my holiday into an inexpensive, productive, and fun week.
Being broke has an upside. I reached out to friends I haven’t seen in ages – including Amy, who I ran into while walking her dogs in Wheaton Regional Park. Then I met her for drinks at a sponsored event that several local elected leaders attended. Free food! Great way to catch up on each other’s news. We also shared our diverging answers to the question, “How are the kids these days?”
The kids are definitely better this year than last, but a lot of my seniors simply didn’t submit the in-class essay, the biggest grade of the marking period, even though they were given plenty of time, advance notice, and open-notes formatting. Several sat in class for two days with their heads down instead of writing. Amy teaches middle school and has different issues – disrespectful behavior from dysregulated students and social promotion policies that thwart any efforts to hold students accountable for showing what they’ve learned.
It’s been rewarding to cross items off my enormous To Do list. Dentist appointment, filing taxes, dealing with my son’s car insurance and maintenance ($$$). I’ve also spent a lot of time on school work: creating materials for a MCPS curriculum-writing project, meeting with that team, and grading student assignments. But the most rewarding aspect of my Spring Broke has been reconnecting with friends. Cherry blossoms, museums, and hiking don’t cost much in the DC area. I feel so lucky to have friends who like those activities, too.
A long-term sub in my department was asking about entering grades in Synergy (our online grading platform), and when I showed her what I do, she responded, “That’s so much work!” With just two more days left of spring vacation, I turn to all the unfinished tasks. Fortunately, my stay-at-home plans this year have allowed me to save money, make huge progress grading essays, and share many little fulfilling conversations that will sustain me as we push to the end of the school year. Oh! And I got to see some provocative art!
For nineteen of the past twenty years, I have woken up at 5:00 am every school day. By 7:00 am I was in my classroom welcoming early students who needed a place to put their heads down or eat breakfast until the bell for first period rang. High schools in MCPS usually start at 7:45. Not any more, not with Covid-19 keeping us all connected by computer. Most of my professional life has been measured by bells ringing, 10-week marking periods, testing schedules, holiday breaks, and seasons. This year has disrupted the usual rhythm and made me much more aware of what I have lost, and what I have gained.
My schedule is still segmented into hour-long periods and 10-week quarters, but there are no bells ringing. Just my alarm, which now goes off at a reasonable 6:30 am. This is how I begin my day: yoga stretches, shower, walk in the neighborhood, coffee and breakfast, read emails & news, and talk to my husband. My duty day starts at 8:15, but virtual classes don’t start until 9:00. I begin by checking online work platforms, chatting with co-teachers, checking which students handed in assignments the night before, and planning for the day’s instruction.
A lot of people don’t understand that teachers working remotely are still teaching. Here’s my weekly schedule:
I teach four hours a day, four days a week, live on Zoom. On Wednesdays, we have meetings from 9:00-10:30, then meet with small groups of students – if they show up – for check ins. My camera is on, the lesson uploaded, and we deliver instruction to groups of 28 at a time. I say we because high school ESOL teachers have moved to a co-teaching model this year, so I support 6-10 English Language Learners in Honors English 10 and Honors English 12. There are no regular English classes (we’re all above average in MCPS).
In our district, we have to record every lesson, which is posted to Canvas (our platform), and self-destructs in 72 hours. Students are not required to turn on their cameras so we teach to a screen of black tiles with the student’s name written across it in bold, white Arial. With so many students and two teachers, everyone has to keep their microphones muted, or the feedback noise distorts our voices. Fortunately, we have the chat feature, and high schoolers know how to use it. Some days we’re lucky if we get even that much participation. We put students in breakout rooms with instructions to discuss a reading, and when we pop in on them, black-tiles and silence. I really miss seeing their faces and hearing their voices.
Co-teaching has been a huge adjustment for me, since every lesson takes twice as much planning and I work with four different teachers across two grade levels. The curriculum is new and has to be pared down to the bare minimum. We are getting the revised curriculum materials just a week before delivering instruction, and there isn’t sufficient time to prepare alternate readings or provide appropriate grammar and language support for English Language Learners during the whole-group meeting. With some of my co-teachers, I play an active role in class. With others, I am a silent observer delivering ESOL support through Zoom chat. Focused Intervention groups are put in place to help the at-risk students, but the neediest ones never show up at that designated time.
And yet, we have made it through the end of November somehow. What seemed unsustainable in early September has become routine. I’ve learned how to engage in careful dialogue with my peers about instructional materials and methods of delivery. They have learned how to simplify their assignments and the importance of using visuals when speaking. I’ve reached out to struggling students – not just those learning English – and gotten to hear the voices of parents, guardians and the students themselves. Most are really appreciative to have a phone call and a compassionate listener.
My duty day ends officially at 3:30 pm but I am never off-duty in a virtual world. I constantly check email, Synergy mail, Canvas mail and platforms where students might have questions or submit late work. Every two weeks, I follow up with students who have zeros – sending explicit instructions with live links of how to complete the assignments. Where co-teachers are comfortable with shared responsibility, I grade papers and make comments. I create rubrics and slides to share with colleagues. It’s nonstop, but it’s rewarding. Most students are showing up. Most students seem to be okay.
This year, I have gained a huge appreciation of the natural world around me. I am so lucky to have rowing (even though the season is officially over), and I’m lucky to have the woods near my house. Every morning, I walk through the neighborhood or hike down the path. I listen to the birds, I breathe in smells of damp leaves on the forest floor, I focus on the seasonal changes around me, and enjoy this rare moment to walk in the early-morning sunlight before school starts.
I’m sure there are other professions with such extreme highs and lows, but I can only write about the one I know. Today was one of the lows. Don’t get me wrong. I love my job. I love teaching. I love my students. But this afternoon I spent three hours in front of a computer screen for “training” on the new test that I will have to administer in January. The WiDA ACCESS test is moving online this year and I fear for my students. We’ve only been to a computer lab twice this year — and I learned that some of my Level 1 and Level 2 students didn’t know that if they hit the RETURN key, their cursor would go down to the next line in a document. How could they know this if I didn’t teach it? Just because they’ve got smart phones constantly plugged into their ears doesn’t mean they know anything about creating an essay in Microsoft Word. They’ve become experts at texting under their desks while pretending to look in backpacks, but how will I teach them to navigate a page of instructions written in a language they are just acquiring? I’m frustrated because I know this move to online testing will cause some students to give up. We don’t have access to computers on a regular basis, so my students are not developing the computer literacy skills that will measure their academic success. My school and my district will be judged by how well they do. I’m all for moving into the digital age, but what are we really testing? When lack of access to basic computer instruction creates a huge gap, what can the test possibly accomplish?
Maybe I’m approaching this all wrong. Maybe so many students will fail to meet exit criteria that my district will be forced to hire dozens of new ESOL teachers. And they’ll make sure we have enough access to computers so that scores will improve. That would be awesome. I already feel better.
Eva K. Sullivan 