Old Dog
I retired from public school in 2017, but that was a long time after I left the classroom. From 1978 to 2006 I was a high school and middle school social studies teacher. I then became the Dean of Students at Watkins Memorial High School for the last eight years of my career. And I was always a track coach, my last job in public education. I retired from that after my 40th season in 2017.
So when Jenn and I decided to stay home for the winter of 2020, I thought it would be good to do some substitute teaching. It wasn’t just to make a little extra money, it was also to do something more than workout and write essays through the long winter season.
The classroom changed in the fifteen years since I left. When I cleared out my room in 2006, the main visual presentation mode was called a chalkboard. Today, that board is still there, but usually covered with posters and materials. Instead, you have a “Smartboard”, a video projection device attached to the computer. It’s remarkable, you can project anything from the computer to the board, and you can write on the board as well, and save the “notes” back to the computer.
It took some getting used to, especially for an old “I forgot the chalk in my pocket and washed my pants” guy.
New Tricks
But the real change in classrooms today is that every kid has a computer. The long lecture I used to give, covering the battle of Gettysburg from the railroad cut to the charge on Cemetery Ridge, won’t fly today. The kids want to hear the story, but they also want to see it, to hear the bugles and the cannons, to see the movement of the troops. And they can, on the computer, through YouTube videos and snippets of any of a dozen Civil War movies. Good teachers today still teach, but they also are adept at directing their classes to resources on their individual computers.
So subbing classes was a big change for me, pushing me to adapt to “modern” education. But that was “all good”, and I decided to signup for a long-term sub job. A wonderful teacher, great with students and highly knowledgeable about modern technology, was having her first child. So in I went, starting the second week of March, ready to teach Middle School social studies for the rest of the year.
And then corona-virus hit. The schools closed. And everyone, from the veteran to the rookie, became a first year teacher.
No one planned on learning “online” for the last quarter of the school year. And for those who say, “Well, there’s been online education for a while,” I’d counter that the kids on online education in the past were willing participants. No one gave the students of Watkins Middle School or all of the other public schools a choice, they went from the classroom on Friday, to spring break, to life on a computer monitor.
Brand New World
The teachers didn’t plan on being online for the last quarter of the school year. Those veteran teachers with years of experience in the bag, were thrown right back into the first year again. Nothing was planned, and every interaction was a brand new experience. And for that poor first year teacher; all of the confidence gained through March was gone.
Great teachers find ways to reach kids. It’s personal, a one-on-one outreach to each of the one hundred and fifty in their classrooms. Great teachers watch their kids come through the door, and know, just from the face, the walk, and the look, what’s going on. They know it’s time to reach out and ask, “What’s up”? They even know when it’s time to leave that kid alone for the day, let him or her “slide” for this class.
But the classroom door and the visual check are gone. If a kid comes in without a pencil, a good teacher makes sure she has one. If a kid fails to sign onto their computer, “skips digital school,” it’s much harder to make that intervention. The linkage over the Internet is tenuous, ethereal, and all the visual and emotional cues a teacher depends on are gone.
First Year
Everyone is a first year teacher right now. All of the planning and experience they depended on are gone. And even more importantly, many of the things that made them great teachers are gone as well, cut off with the loss of direct personal contact.
So the great teachers are going back to the beginning, erasing the chalkboard of their experience and writing in new lesson plans. They are searching for ways to reach their students, even the ones who fail to “log-in”. Yes, they’re teaching in their pajamas, and even attending staff meetings without pants on. But they are still doing everything they can to find that connection, to motivate “their kids” to learn. And they’re doing even more, using their digital “classrooms” and assignments to learn how those kids are doing, worrying as much about their students’ isolation as the are the completed assignments.
It’s that “first year” all over again. It’s all new: all on the job training. But as I listen into the meetings, and as a “sub” watch what these “pros” are getting done – I know one thing for sure. They’re doing the job.
