A Year Ago
A year ago, we walked out of a building we had called our home base for the last 5 years together, only to return to clear out our desks. When we left, we thought, ohh, we will be back in a few weeks! Wowzers, were we wrong!
Like many people in the work, we didn’t know what was happening. One thing we did know, there were teachers, admin, and school staff who were looking towards us to help them along their way. We jumped with two feet in and worked around the clock! Our first goal was to create a bandaid, or supplemental resource, students could do in this two week break from school. We created packets that would keep them occupied, challenge them to use some of their science and engineering practices, and maybe learn a thing or two about pandemics and how viruses were spread.
We acted in crisis mode, as this continued well into the following school year. As we worked, we kept saying. “We are building the plane while we are flying.” This is what we were doing, and many of us are still doing with all of the transitions as we go from distance learning to in person learning, to hybrid learning, and around and around again!
A Year in Crisis
We, as an education community, have learned a lot in a year. We would encourage you to take a minute to reflect on all the things that you or your students learned this year that were not in the curriculum? For us, we navigated zoom, learned digital tools to engage teachers in professional development, learned how to screencast, collaborate across teams, and tried our darndest to figure out this little thing called work-life balance. While many of us sit there and dream of going back to the way things were, there is one thing we know for certain – nothing will be what we used to call normal!
What do we mean? We mean that we need to use all of the great and wonderful things that we learned over this past year and integrate it into our instruction. How can we leverage what we have learned about our students and ourselves to improve our instruction when we do return to “normal”?
This past year was hard. This school year has been hard. Each and every person had so many different experiences across the world, across the United States, and even in our own communities. One thing is true, many of us probably experienced some highs and some lows, but the light shining through classrooms, kids engaging in lessons on the computers, teachers’ creatively implementing new strategies needs to be celebrated. Below is a list of the top things we’ve seen this year that we need to remember when we return to “normal.”
Teachers and Students are Resilient
We have always known that this is true, but this school year, it has been put to the test. Regardless of changes to curriculum, changes to scheduling, challenging situations at home, mental and physical battles, and navigating a pandemic, every day everyone showed up! Teachers were teaching and learning and reflecting and then teaching and learning and reflecting all in a day’s work. Students were logging in, chatting in the chat box, muting and unmuting, reading and writing, and typing, and doing the best they could to learn in this new normal. You and your students are resilient! And you and your students deserve to be celebrated!
Adaptability is the Name of the Game
Through all the changes over the course of this year, adaptability was key! At first, we saw this with technology! Everyone felt like a newbie. Everyone was learning to navigate Zoom and Google Classroom. But, over time, we all became experts! And teachers kept teaching and students kept showing up to learn.
Not only did technology provide a learning curve, but so did the actual teaching strategies we are used to using everyday in class. We saw teachers using new methods all in an effort to best support their students. Teachers were getting very creative in their classrooms. Many teachers learned how to make virtual classrooms, decking them out with reading corners, colorful bulletin boards, and their Bitmoji selves. Other teachers created games and checkin wheels to make sure that students were engaged and heard.
How do you see yourself continuing to be creative and adapting in your classroom to the new normal?
We are all Humans
This year, we all got a new perspective on people’s day to day lives. When we were little, it was always strange when you ran into your teacher outside of school. If you ran into your teacher outside of school, you probably thought to yourself, “They have a real life outside of the building?” This year, we weren’t just running into each other at the store, we were literally in each other’s homes every day.
Teachers were teaching with dogs in their laps, art on the walls, books in the background, bouncing babies on their legs, and making lab experiments in their kitchens. Students were sharing their families for show and tell, having snacks with each other via zoom, and rolling around on the floor with their dog while the teacher explained the directions.
While we were all very present in one another’s lives, there were still times when there was a need to stop and turn off the video. Sometimes you may have not felt like being seen, or found it difficult to find a quiet workspace. Other times, there was just a sheer amount of being overwhelmed from trying to do all the things, all the time. There is no shame in this.
The saving grace to all of this, is that we are all human. We all learned empathy – both how to give empathy and receive it. We leaned in and leaned on one another to grow and connect. While these connections were different from years past, it is the human connection that lasts forever.
Connection
Connection to school is one of the top things that contributes to students learning. Students who feel connected to their school and have positive relationships with their teachers learn more. And teachers have gone above and beyond this year maintaining that connection to students through a screen. It is an incredible thing!
We would ask here: how can we, as teachers, maintain these great things that we have found in ourselves and in our students during this hard time to make our in person class time feel like it wasn’t a waste of year, but a celebration of the our lived experienced, acknowledging the hurt and trauma, and acknowledging the growth and lens we have on this whole new world?
