Distance Learning: Day 1

On the first day of school, a day fraught with so many technical problems that our neighbors were actually interviewed by the local news about their woes, I stood after a tense 5 hours at my desk, stretched my spasming back, and then headed out the door for a quick walk. As I powered through the neighborhood I came upon a man pitching baseballs for his daughter of about 6. "You be the outfield," he directed his son, who was even younger.

"Is this PE?" I laughed as I trotted past.

"You better believe it!" he answered.

Duty-free Lunch

As the ever-earlier late summer darkness fell on this September evening, my thoughts turned to my colleagues. As much time as we've had to process the reality of our situation, how strange it still is to begin a school year away from school! I picked up my phone and sent a quick good luck text to the group that was our team last year.


And so it was agreed. We'll meet and debrief as we always did, although it will be virtually. And I'm not sure how long it will be feasible or useful or desirable to do so, but when I scheduled the meeting, I had it repeat for every week day until the end of the year.

But that's really how our lunches always were-- the door was open to anyone who could make it.

Out of Competition

Once, a long time ago, when Heidi was coaching swimming for our middle school, she asked an excited-to-join sixth grader what his favorite stroke was. "Underwater!" he told her confidently. He was more than a little crestfallen when he discovered that underwater was not recognized in swimming competitions.

We still giggle a little at that memory sometimes, especially when we're at the pool trying to earn our activity goal. Treading water is effective, but we like to mix it up a bit, too. Heidi will do a little breast stroke, or even butterfly when she wants to show off, and I rely on the crawl, that one solid stroke I have.

"I'm going to do 10 lengths with flip turns," I'll announce, "but it's going to be the short way."

"How about underwater?" Heidi will suggest.

And then there's the side stroke, the one our moms and all the pool ladies of the sixties and seventies used to do so that their hair would stay dry. "Scissor kick and pick a peach and put it in the basket!" was the way somebody taught me to do it, and I learned! Even though it's not a competitive event, I can still sidestroke like nobody's business, and I usually do, all the way to the ladder whenever the guard calls break.

A Working Salute

Teachers everywhere, I see you!

You are using this holiday weekend to develop your professional knowledge, plan your lessons, create your materials and resources, and optimize it all for the unfamiliar platform of online learning, so that on Tuesday things will go as well as they can for your students.

Now that's what I call labor.

Finding The Way

One of our neighbors has a cool Mandalorian sticker on their car: a white, stylized helmet with the slogan This is the Way. Back in the spring, Heidi and I watched the whole first season of the series, partly because after 40 years, most things Stars Wars are kind of a must, and partly because one of Heidi's students was a huge fan and she wanted to be able to carry on a conversation with him. Either way, The Way, a code of honor and behavior which to Mandalorians includes, but is not limited to, never removing their helmets in front of others, is something we are familiar with. 

On our way home from the pool this afternoon we relived our disappointment with the appearance of the Mandalorian when at last the audience sees him without his helmet.

"I feel kind of bad," Heidi said, "because there wasn't anything wrong with the way he looked."

'I know," I agreed, "but it was kind of like that thing when you only hear someone on the radio, and then when you see a picture of them you're like--"

"That was NOT what I was expecting!" Heidi finished. We laughed for a minute, and then I thought back to all the phone calls I had made this week to parents and their students who will be starting in my class next week. To them I was only a disembodied voice on the line, and although they will see me on camera on Tuesday, I may as well have been wearing my helmet.

We teachers have been given strict guidance that we cannot require kids to turn on their cameras during virtual instruction, and I understand why. Revealing yourself and your current situation to others you may or may not know can be stressful. There is enough anxiety to go around these days without adding to it, especially when our objective is for kids to be in both a physical place where they can learn, and an emotional one as well.

Even so, I hope my students will feel comfortable enough to show their faces, if only because it seems like the most direct way to connect with each other. In the show, the Mandalorian is a lonely soul, isolated from others by choice and The Way. (Okay, Baby Yoda may have changed all that.)

As for me, when I called one of my homeroom students this morning, his mother shared their disappointment and frustration with not being able to fully join the virtual open house our school conducted yesterday morning.

"But we saw you in the car parade!" she continued, mentioning the caravan of teachers who drove an announced route through all our school's neighborhoods yesterday, cars decorated and horns honking. "And that made us feel so much better!"

What Went Right

Sometimes when I sit down to write, all the negativity of the day floods my mind and I can't think of anything other than a rant. But while that kind of writing may be therapeutic in its own way, sometimes I prefer to spare my readers that dose of negativity.

Today was tough in more than a few ways, but here's the Pollyanna edit.

My coffee was perfect this morning.
Using chart paper to decorate my car for the Welcome Back to School parade was an awesome hack: it stayed on, and it peeled right off.
It was great to see my colleagues in person before driving through our school's boundaries and waving to kids and families waiting for us.
The grocery store wasn't bust at all when I went this afternoon.
The pool was especially refreshing, and I got 45 minutes of exercise.
Although it was thundering when we walked over to pick up Lucy, it didn't rain. 

Thanks to my friend, Joanne, I listened to the song of the summer insects in between the rolls of the thunder until the storm finally came. 
I'm feeling a little more prepared for school, and happy I have four more days to really nail that first day down.

I guess it was a pretty good day after all!

A Tale of Three Families

Three of our neighbors have school-aged children. One family is sending their daughter to private school, because they fear that she is regressing by not interacting with her peers to learn. The next family is keeping their daughter enrolled in our public schools, despite their dissatisfaction with the way her first grade teacher handled distance learning in the spring. Even though teachers received guidance to keep our instruction asynchronous, some of our colleagues organized a lot more in-person sessions than others, which led to perhaps unfair comparisons. The third family has let us know that although they are "fully committed" to our district schools, many of their friends are either choosing private school or full-on homeschooling, because "if their kids are going to be at home, they can at least control the schedule and curriculum that way."

Obviously? We are not all in this together.