Categories
What I’ve heard from teachers this week seems to fall into two categories: teachers who
want more information
about students
and teachers who are
overwhelmed with information.
Rough division. But interesting to consider.
Teachers in the first category — those who want more information — tend to be college faculty who aren’t hearing from some of their students. They want more data about how much work is too much or whether they should be bothering certain students or what help their students need and in what form. They want to know why they’re not hearing from certain students.
And, of course, they want to know how to help students they have heard from who are suffering.
Teachers in the other category tend to be elementary through high school teachers. They are the teachers who are managing their own children’s online learning at home and teaching other people’s children online. They are being super-parents and super-teachers. And they seem to be helping to manage some parents’ anxieties as well.
“What should I do with my child all day?”
is a question some of these teachers have heard. They are overwhelmed by the responsibility they bear.
(A few pieces written by moms about parenting during a pandemic: here and here. And my personal favorite, here. And one written by a dad here.)
I have a couple of thoughts about these rough categories.
First: It might be helpful to think about how to
channel concern.
We are living with a great deal of uncertainty. For many of us, not knowing stuff — when COVID testing might begin, when we can get back to work, why students aren’t responding to our emails, how to keep students or children busy — is highly stressful. Feelings of worry and concern are natural responses to such uncertainty.
BUT worry and concern are not necessarily productive. They can actually be sinkholes of anxiety and powerlessness. How to channel them to your own and your students’ benefit?
I offer some instructional ideas below. Generally, though, I find myself suggesting that teachers (and parents?) get explicit at least with themselves — and wherever possible with their students and children — about roles and responsibilities. About the locations of garden walls and the scope of actions within them. About what they will and will not, can and cannot do. About the ground they stand on and the moves they are willing (and not) to make. About where they end and where others begin — and whether they can accept those boundaries and the uncertainty and limits they lock in.
This leads to a second thought about these categories: Our desperate need right now for
containment.
Obviously, we all want the coronavirus to be contained. That is why we’re quarantining and social distancing. And hoping like mad that these drastic measures flatten the curve.
But, weirdly, as we’re all confined in our individual spaces, there is the sense — heck, the reality — that we’re also far-flung. That our students are out there, sometimes way far away, living in circumstances we know nothing about (and, thanks to our worry and concern, can only imagine) when they would normally be contained in a room or building or campus with us. As teachers — as emergency remote teachers to boot — we are not all sure how to get our arms around our classes again. Not to mention how to feel held and connected within a palpable network ourselves.
These two categories — concern and containment — add up, for me, to the same thing: the question of how to channel our concern into creative containing spaces and activities that reflect our grounded commitment to our delimited roles and responsibilities and keep our students and children engaged, occupied, and learning. It’s a mouthful. Parse it out.
Here are some ideas for school-oriented activities students can undertake that will keep them busy at home and engaged in thoughtful, relevant ways:
have students make advertisements for each chapter in a book or section in a chapter or each math homework assignment (remember: advertisements are supposed to sell a product)
have students compose intro and outro music for their classes
have students form book groups that write or record book reviews
have students form video game groups that write or record reviews of games
have students become experts in different books or video games and meet in jigsaw groups to argue over which book or game is best (and, importantly, why)
have early childhood students read (or “read” — that is, pretend read) stories on video and post them for their classmates to watch
Here are some ways to invite students who aren’t showing up to maybe, just maybe participate in something:
Virtual Unhappy Hour (where students can talk about anything they want to, including their responses to remote teaching and learning — a great way to gather data about how they’re doing)
Group Office Hour (where students can ask the teacher and each other questions about homework assignments)
Study Groups (where students can meet synchronously at a certain time each week)
Virtual Talent Show (themed — “poetry we love and hate"; “riddles”; “funniest story ever” — or unthemed)
Wallpaper Exhibit (where students post pictures of themselves sitting in front of backdrops that they have drawn or painted and uploaded into zoom)
Who knows? What the heck? Bottom line? Whether it’s concern you’re feeling or containment you (or your students) are needing, please. Please.
Aim for fun.
In this terrible time.