So, here we are, four weeks in. I think it’s time to just stop and take a breath and look at what’s working and what’s not, and to look at some of the tremendous beauty that results when you ask 11 & 12 year olds to play with words. Being in the company of children is one of the great joys in my life. This extended isolation has made them eager to be in the company of one another and to assume their new roles as middle schoolers with an earnestness that is serious and exciting and precious all at the same time.
Parents’ Night was last week, and it was great to share all the things we’ve learned the first three weeks of school. Honestly, it’s a pretty incredible list of accomplishments: students have figured out how to navigate our learning platform, how to upload photos and hand-made illustrations, how to create and upload a power point slide with a 6-word memoir and a controlling image, they’ve dipped their fingers into the Library of Congress collection of posters from the WPA and selected 3 that relate to their lives; they’ve copied and pasted images and made personal connections to historic material, they’ve learned to navigate a building, find 6-10 different locations each day, run the stairs numerous times a day, carry their Chromebooks to each destination, charge it overnight and message teachers when they’re confused or locked out of a Zoom class. And every time they log in for a class from wherever they are—in their room, greenhouse, living room, kitchen—every time I think to myself: THEY CAME BACK!
What’s not working? There are lots of kinks, but we just carry on and make the best of what we have. Kind of like the kids in Uganda.
Splitting my attention between live children and kids on Zoom is really two different jobs that require two very different ways of interacting. The prep is brutal. With each class divided into two sections, there are really 10 different sections to plan for and implement. I feel a lot better today after giving the kids online a writing project while I read aloud outside with the students attending school. Building a reading community is at the heart of what grows in my classroom, and starting Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick is a ritual that initiates the bond we establish as readers and writers who are exploring the power of words together. I am trying to give myself the grace to explore how to most effectively reach every student in this new arena. Not everything is going to work, but I’m gonna keep trying. Thanks for being on this journey with me. To all the students, families, colleagues, administrators, support people, custodians and nurses and guidance counselors who are in the trenches with me…we’ll just keep holding each other up and making the best of the circumstances. Enjoy this in the meantime:
