Like so many teachers, I’ve been playing this game of hurry up and stop, very much like the children’s game Red Light, Green Light. On the one hand, I’m rushing ahead to try to learn four new software applications simultaneously that I think will make my students’ learning experiences better. I’m rethinking how I do everything and even what I need to accomplish with my students. On the other hand, I have to stop and wait for directives from my state to trickle down to my school district administration to further trickle to my building administration to get to me. I don’t know what is required of me until the state tells me how long I’m to spend with my students and parents and colleagues each day. I don’t know which standards I’m going to be required to emphasize for the rest of the school year, because I can’t possibly cover all of them in the allotted time. I just sit, hoping and praying they pick the same standards to label as “essential” as I would have.
In the meantime, my district has declared this week to be an SEL (Social/Emotional Learning) week. Our task as teachers is to call our students’ parents and inquire how they are doing, if they need anything like food, medicine, mental health services, technology services and/or equipment. I feel very uncomfortable with this task, because the questions imply that I can actually do something about their problems if they have any. I can make referrals and am happy to do so, but I don’t want to cause anyone to have misconceptions about the scope of my job. Despite dreading the calls and the need to block out my personal phone number to make them because the host calling platform that my school district was endorsing wasn’t working, I picked up the phone and dug in.
What I discovered was, not only did my students’ parents seem to appreciate the call, it made me feel better, too, something I wasn’t anticipating. It was good to hear their voices, to make human contact. In some cases, I even got to chat with my students briefly, and their voices, which before sometimes grated on my last nerve (c’mon, teachers, I know I’m not the only one who sometimes winced at their less-than-dulcet tones), sounded so sweet to my recently unaccustomed ears.
Often in the last several days I’ve heard people refer to our shelter-in-place order as “the new normal.” I tried to remind the parents, especially the ones having a hard time, that this is NOT the new normal. This, too, shall pass. It may last a lot longer than any of us would like, but it is only temporary.
In the meantime, can anybody teach me how to host a meeting on Zoom?….