Episode 2: Jeremy

Under joyless COVID conditions, a teacher figures out how to bring joy back.

Transcript

Jeremy is a mensch. He’s been teaching for 22 years. Middle school math. And he’s really good at it.

His classes are rigorous yet full of humor. Students feel seen and cared-for. This might sound contradictory, but Jeremy is the guff-giving type, the kind of guy who expresses his affection by giving people a hard time. With dry, wry humor.

If you are not this type of person, here’s what’s great about guff-giving: It both acknowledges and forgives foibles – that is, it sees clearly and doesn’t mind what it sees; it channels aggression into humor (and that’s better than channeling aggression, which exists in us whether we like it or not, into nasty barbs); it connects people the way in-jokes do but does not exclude; it embraces and normalizes the shadow side; it only works if there’s already a high level of trust – and, weirdly, it deepens that trust.

I love to give guff. I love it when a friend is comfortable enough with me to give me guff back. Because it makes me laugh. And that brings me joy.

A quick caveat: Guff-giving is like teasing, but it’s not needling. And it’s not bullying. If it feels like bullying, the conditions for guff-giving are not met and the guff-giving must end at once.

OK, so Jeremy is one of these people. He’s got an imp in him, this mischievous leprechaun that loves to give guff and have fun. He’s also got a big heart, which his students (and colleagues) know. His big heart keeps him tender and alert to signs that the conditions for guff-giving have not been met. So he can be very serious and responsive as well. A great combination.

This combination means that Jeremy is really hooked into his students. As he puts it, he “feeds off the kids.” Like a performer, maybe. He’s good at completing relational circuits in his classroom so his energy mobilizes the students’ energy, which mobilizes his energy – a positive feedback loop.

So here’s the story: It’s COVID times. Early spring, 2020. Jeremy’s school has taken a short break and returned to classes fully remote. Jeremy, like every other teacher on the planet, has scrambled to move his teaching online.

And he’s not liking it. 

“The hardest part is that I’m not getting as much satisfaction out of my teaching,” Jeremy told his Teacher Support Group in mid-April. “Today’s class was awful. I felt really bored and the kids seemed really bored. I feel like I’m not doing a good job of it. I’m not quite as joyful when I wake up as I used to be. Will I get better at this? Not being in the room with the kids is really hard for me.”

I don’t know about you, but he had my attention at “not quite as joyful.” Well, actually: He had me at “satisfaction” and “awful” and “bored.” But “joyful”: That’s a big, important word. If a teacher feels joy in a classroom, all’s well, in my opinion. If a teacher is joyless? Or “not quite as joyful”? Alarms go off in my head.

So, in the Teacher Support Group, we focused on joy.

[break]

Remember, this was early COVID times, early zoom-teaching times. What someone called “Emergency Remote Teaching” as opposed to “online” or “remote” teaching, which is a thing, I guess, with its own rules and recommendations and practices. Maybe by the time you’re listening to this podcast these are long-gone times. I can only hope (not because, btw, I want schooling to go back to the way it was pre-COVID. No no. But because I want COVID under control. And I want teachers and students back together in person.)

So my interest in this story is not so much on the pivot to online teaching, though that is, of course, a huge part of the story. It’s on the joylessness of that pivot and the promise of pivoting to joyfulness.

What I call turning the impossible – in this case, teaching joyfully online – into the possible, or teaching joyfully online! Figuring out how to make it so!

Need I say more about joy? Maybe not, but I’m going to anyway. Joy, like guff-giving, is one of my favorite things.

First, not every teacher feels joy in her work. Joy is not required. I would hope teachers feel enjoyment in their work, but joy is asking a lot.

Which (second) makes those teachers who do feel joy all the more precious. Because joy is a precious feeling, a priceless gem of a feeling.

And joy, I think, might have the potential to be contagious. Like a smile. As Thich Nhat Hanh says. The great Vietnamese Buddhist monk. Smile, he says, and you can’t help but feel the feelings that usually make you smile. And people can’t help but smile back. Which makes them feel the feelings that usually make them smile. What an amazing and sooper easy trick!

(Try it now. Don’t just turn your lips up at the corners. Really smile. I just did it. It is impossible not to feel a lift of the spirit! A teeny giggle in your chest! It’s amazing!)

So joy is worth cultivating.

And, when you’ve lost your joy, it’s really worth wondering where – and why – it went.

So I asked Jeremy. In the group, he said, “I feed off the kids and can’t do that now. I have to teach differently and don’t know how to.”

Later, Jeremy reflected on this moment in his COVID learning curve. I asked him what the change from joyful to joyless was like for him. He told me,

“Uncertainty was my first feeling, which led to self-doubt and self-consciousness. The idea of being on a camera was not a comfortable proposition for me. It also took more time than it should have to realize that if I was uncomfortable, the students probably were, too. Not being sure how to get the content to the students in a completely new format was also challenging and worrisome.”

I asked Jeremy when he realized he was “less joyful.” He said,

“Week two or three. After getting over the camera piece, I began realizing – while speaking with a colleague – that I wasn’t teaching well. In some ways, I thought I was taking the easy road (more of a lecture style). Although I have some lectures in my day-to-day class, I try to spin a lot of humor and examples into our discussions, which require student feedback and input. I wasn’t getting the feedback and input. The result was what I call a lecture, in many cases, much like me talking to an empty room. I left these classes feeling unsatisfied and a little numb. I have to admit that I was starting to doubt my ability to teach in this format.”

For those of you in COVID times, and for those of you who survived COVID times, does this sound familiar? The not getting the feedback and input you need. The unearthly silence that reigns when everyone but you has muted their microphone. And/or turned off their videos. The sealed-off, alone feeling of talking into that eerie silence, that “empty room.” The numbness and the self-doubt.

The feeling that you can’t do this. That you don’t have the “ability to teach in this format,” as Jeremy said. The creeping belief that online teaching is impossible for you.

This feeling, the feeling that, as Jeremy put it, “I have to teach differently and don’t know how to,” seemed almost universal when COVID first hit. You might still feel this way. If you do, this story is for you, because Jeremy BUSTED OUT.

[break]

In the Teacher Support Group, Jeremy’s colleagues shared their own experiences of adjusting to COVID teaching: figuring out how to work with students whose videos were turned off; coming up with ways to get every student to chime in; stepping the students, each in their own home, through a science experiment using kitchen pantry ingredients – but, as the teacher put it, “I can’t do that every class meeting!”

Eventually, I went a little meta. Lifted up over the specific ideas, looking for an overarching way of thinking about the problems of COVID teaching before touching down on concrete ideas again. I asked the teachers to consider what the different purposes were for their contacts with students. That is, what were they hoping to accomplish in each class meeting? For the students, certainly. But for themselves specifically?

For example, I offered, if Jeremy needed to feel a connection with the students that he could “feed off of,” why not design some synchronous class meetings that would be devoted to this single purpose? To creating opportunities for him and his students to feel some joy together? Like a middle school type “happy hour” or a talent show. Not content-related but relationship-related. Something goofy. Fun. Or serious: asking students what was hard about COVID. Asking them what they were doing or could do to stay engaged in schoolwork. Acknowledging the sucky reality and thinking together about ways to manage it. Separately, of course, but together.

Did you hear me say “fun” just now? I ask because I’ve already forgotten I said it. But. It. Is. Crucial. Not just when you’re forging or strengthening your relationships with and among your students. It’s crucial, I believe, to make the relationship between students and the content fun.

Please note: I said relationship. I didn’t say you have to make the content fun. I didn’t say you have to make every lesson fun by entertaining the students, seducing them into liking the unlikable – that is, the content. I said, and I repeat, “It’s crucial, I believe, to make the relationship between students and the content fun.”

What do I mean by relationship here? A lot of things. I mean the ways students interact with the content. How are they looking at it? What are they doing with it? Do they know why they’re even bothering with it?

I mean how students are thinking about the content. What do they already know about it? Right or wrong? What are their assumptions about it? What do they expect from the content and, therefore, how are they interpreting it from the get-go? Are they welcoming? Dismissive? Critical? Indifferent? Do they want to get to know this content? If so, why? If not, why not? 

I mean who the students think they are in relation to the content. How confident are they as knowers of this content? What do they think it takes to be a knower of this content? What kind of person knows this content? Are your students that kind of person? What’s facilitating the students’ connection with this content? What’s hindering it? Have the students already decided there’s no way they will be able to know the content well? Have they already decided they know it all and don’t need to know more? Where’s their sense of authority? If the content were a person, how would the students describe that person?

I know: That last bit is getting weird. But think about it. In my view, learning is NOT simply taking information into your brain and, I don’t know, letting it sit there. Until you dump it out in a test and then, blessedly, forget it. (That, as many of you recognize, is the famous banking metaphor of education. Thank you, Paolo Freire.)

In my view, learning is building relationships with information. Figuring out what the information means to you and figuring out what you can do with it that excites and interests you. Building relationships with information involves activating and dwelling in your curiosity and developing skills and reorganizing new information and integrating old information and changing – or deepening – your beliefs and worldview and developing a sense of confidence, competence, and authority over what and how you know. All that stuff is relational. All of that stuff can be fun. None of it depends on the content itself. It depends on the ways teachers set up their classrooms – or their zoom meetings, or their asynchronous assignments – so that students can forge relationships with the content. Do stuff with it.

Like, for middle school and high school students, composing intro and outro music for a particular lesson or unit. Can’t create relevant music – how it should sound, what feelings it should inspire in its listeners – without knowing a little something about the content. And your own feelings about it. Or maybe videotaping advertisements for concepts the students are learning. Which would mean the students would have to understand the concept and its importance so they could pitch it, actually pique their peers’ interest in it. Now there’s a fun challenge for ya! Or writing an essay that totally pans a specific reading or concept. Channel your students’ passions! Even when they’re negative! For pre-schoolers, having parents videotape the little ones “reading” stories out loud (did you hear my quotes around reading? – meaning telling the story while randomly turning pages – fun!!). Or acting the story out. Which students of any age can do.

Back to the TSG, where I made some of these suggestions. The teachers had some objections to my admittedly bizarre approach – which, just to remind you, was aimed completely at the notion of having fun while teaching (and learning), even setting up the conditions for joy. Since you might be having the same worries and objections that the teachers in the TSG had, I’ll briefly share them with you. And I’ll bat them away just as I did in the TSG:

The teachers: What if students aren’t engaging or turning things in?

Me: What about calling the student into a one-on-one zoom meeting or a small group meeting of students with similar behaviors, describing what you’re seeing (in a totally non-judgmental way), describing what you need to see, and wondering with the students what they – and you – can do differently to bridge the gap? No guarantee this would work, but could be worth a try.

Purposes of this activity? Cultivating self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-change in students.

The teachers: What if students are asking their parents rather than teachers for help on assignments?

Me: Maybe design a fun lesson around how to ask a teacher for help. Role-playing do’s and don’ts. Drafting acceptable and unacceptable emails (having established hard rules around where students may not go). It’s hard for me to imagine a student who wouldn’t love to role-play how not to ask a teacher for help – which, of course, implies that they know, at least in principle, how to ask a teacher for help. But giving students a chance to practice doing it, not just knowing, in theory, how.

Purpose of this activity? Developing self-advocacy skills – that is, the ability to do self-advocacy, not just to hear about it.

The teachers: What if students don’t listen to or read the instructions for doing an activity?

Me: Give them the outcome you’re looking for and ask them to write down or record the instructions they think that outcome requires. That is, ask them to reverse engineer the assignment. What a fun challenge! “Can you figure out what you’d need to do to get to this end result?” Or haha! “Can you write down what you’d need to do to get an A (or a B, or a C) (or, hell, a C plus) on this assignment?” Students could even try to follow each other’s instructions (much more motivating than following yours) and would have to explain where they tripped up and why. Or why they found the instructions easy to follow. Good information for everyone, including you.

Purposes? Engaging in task analysis; writing detailed, step-by-step procedures; practicing following instructions; accomplishing the end result ass-backwards.

Now back to Jeremy: Somewhere along in here I noticed Jeremy’s face change dramatically. He noticeably brightened and said, “I’ve got an idea I’m going to try this week.” He laughed and had this delightfully sly look on his face. The old look he had before COVID. I said, “That’s the face you should be bringing to your work every day!!”

Jeremy never did tell us what the idea was. Later, he couldn’t remember what it was either. But he did tell me that, in general, he changed his approach to homework. Rather than having students read and answer questions, he began asking students to do small, creative projects on their own. Then he started having students do small, creative projects in class – that is, during synchronous zoom meetings. “Get up and find this item in your surroundings then come back to the computer” – that type of thing. He told me that, when he gave this kind of instruction, “[t]heir energy level changed (they weren’t sure what was going on so their curiosity was piqued) and it broke up the monotony of the class. After spending some time playing around, the students were in a completely new place energy wise and it was obvious by their body language. It was much more like a ‘normal’ class.” “Normal” for Jeremy being interactive, suspenseful, discovery-oriented – fun.

[break]

This is a pretty simple story. Teacher feels joyless; teacher realizes he can change his teaching; teacher changes his teaching; teacher feels joy again. Even in COVID times.

But I feel as though there are a disproportionate number of axioms that apply to this simple story. As usual, I’m not going to spare you. If, in the next few minutes, you start feeling as though you’re awash in a tsunami, please relax and let the wave of my thinking pass over you. Just listen calmly. You can see what sticks – a starfish here, a piece of kelp there – when it’s all over. And, if you want to revisit any of these axioms later, know they’ll be on the podcast website for you to read and think about at your leisure.

OK, the first axiom: Don’t settle. Which is what Jeremy was tempted to do. As he told me afterwards, “Leading up to the realization [that I wasn’t teaching well], I felt I was spinning my wheels. I knew I had a problem but didn’t really know what the problem was, or was not really identifying the problem.” That’s what I call “settling.” Realizing you’re unhappy or bummed out or dissatisfied – or joyless – and just pushing through. NO.

This leads me to the second, related axiom: Shift in your seat. Change what you’re doing. Try something different. Don’t just sit in your discomfort and sigh that it is what it is. Why? First, because, as Jeremy says, “[h]aving figured out what the issue was was relieving and it eased my mind. Now the challenge was to try to solve the problem.” Shifting in your seat is relieving, pure and simple. Second, as Jeremy says, his reflection (which was helped along by colleagues, note) focused him on an actionable problem. He was no longer sitting in an impenetrable fog of joyless dissatisfaction but had a specific problem to solve, which motivated him.

Third axiom: Don’t talk about it. Do it. That seems to have been Jeremy’s solution to his problem of joylessness. He had been lecturing, caving to the online medium, talking at his students rather than generating life-giving energy among them. He needed to do rather than to talk about. And his students needed to do rather than listen to him talk about. I daresay this is always the better road for teaching and learning. It was the road Jeremy and his students normally traveled. COVID threw them way off. In this story, Jeremy got them back on track.

Fourth possible axiom: Work on the relationships. Work on the lines between people, between you the teacher and them the students, between them the students and the content.

And here’s the final axiom, one I feel is important at all times in teaching but is especially relevant during COVID times: Have fun.

I can hear the voice in someone’s head right now saying, “Have fun?!? When there’s so much worry and distress out there?!? What’s wrong with you?!?!!” Yet I stick to my axiom. Unless you change careers right this second, your job, let’s face it, continues to be to teach. That means facilitating students’ learning. About themselves, about each other, about the content. It means focusing on relationships rather than sheer information. It means, frankly, offering up fantastic distraction from the dreariness of lockdown (or just plain life). It means setting up the conditions for engagement and laughter. Great teaching technique.

Times of stress, it seems to me, call even more loudly than times of calm (if there is such a thing in schools) for fun. For creative instructional design. For doing rather than talking about. For student-centered teaching. For connecting. For enthusiasm and hope and – back to the original issue – joy. For self-reflection, self-care, and the important realization that there’s an issue you can do something about. Honestly, if you are teaching and are not having fun, please stop. Pull a Jeremy. Shift in your seat. What can you change so you, at least, can have some good old-fashioned fun?

Don’t stop at the smile. Go for the joyous belly laugh. As Maya Angelou has said, “People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”