Make a list of things you’re self-conscious about or vigilant about now that you never had to think about before. Now focus on one to write about or tell me about many. Or write a piece about your hands and what you can and can’t touch during this time of pandemic.
You can share your response to this prompt below.
What used to be easy and done without regard-
I can’t say teaching is easy and I can’t say I do it without regard, but after years in the classroom I do have comfort in the teacher rituals and think I know what to expect, at least I used to. Back a thousand years ago, when things were normal. They may never be again…
The daily regime begins at 5:00 am, fueled with caffeine, planning for my English classes, I teach 7th and 8th grade. The morning zips by adjusting deadlines, marking missing assignments, reading an array of student essays filling my inbox. In the interactive program of google docs, I insert necessary praise, some questions, my own confusions, a few suggestions, and encouragement to continue tinkering.
By 8:20, arrival at school, go to my classroom- The Learning Playground, a title I forever share with students about my room, C13. They chuckle and smirk. Playgrounds are for elementary kids, Corey, the 12 year old diplomat, tells me one day in confidence. I thanked him for the insight.
After setting up my computer on my standing desk, putting graded papers in the outbox, I head to the office to make xerox copies of stories and assignment pages to pass out. By 8:45, I put the agenda for the day on the white board, my illegible handwriting a class shared joke.
8:55, outside room C13, by the door waiting for the 7th or 8th Graders depending on which day of the week. I watch the migration towards my room, backpacks on hunched backs, or dragging roller suitcases, some kids with heads down, others in social upheavals. I great each student as they pass by me. Some mumble a hello back, others nod, a few smile back at me.
Once inside the classroom, bustle and banter ensue. With the setting down of backpacks like weightlifters dropping barbells, social groups share gasps and guffaws, others in soft nose to nose conversing or side of the mouth secrets. The dutiful ones remember to pick up the xerox copies on the front table, others will need reminder later on.
9:00 hits, I intone under the ruckus: “Let’s get started.” This sets off final seating scurries and scuttles. While I don’t have assigned seats, they are creatures of routine like me, they gravitate to the same spots unless too much socializing demands I separate them.
I repeat “good morning” until all eyes look up. It is the rarified air of momentary focus. I must be worthy of their attention. Hook them and they’re mine, at least for a bit. How? I must love them, be entertained by them, care for them, savor the journey, or I shouldn’t be there. And I do. Love them…mostly… when I’m not irritated, too Jewish mother concerned or just plain frustrated.
Is anything of teaching easy and done without regard? Never easy. Certainly invigorating, though. Particularly, seminar discussions on literature being studied or current events or about writing. The grasping, muscle stretching of intellect. Vigorous give and take, the spontaneity, the call and response of discussion. All this has kept me in the fray for so long now, close to 40 years.
Nothing more humbling than teaching adolescents, however. Best laid plans fizzle, jokes bomb, stories don’t inspire. But hopefully there are enough good moments to show up the next session to give it another shot. Truth is, I relate to my students. Like many in the room, I talk fast but I think slow. I often share their confusions and furies at certain characters in the stories we read doing dumb things. I rage and tear up at times. Stories I’ve studied with countless classes over and over still get me. I sometimes don’t believe I can write.
What is easy to love is their lightning perception, some startling insight about life or into a character motivation from a story we’re studying. I love their stunning innocence at times to the gravity of life, and yet other times their honesty about the fright of mortality. Their percolating passions. For horse riding, for skateboarding, for art and drawing, for volleyball, for singing and dancing, for teasing, for playing hard and enduring the cruelty of adolescence. Sometimes, God help us, in excited voices and proven on the page itself is their investment in their writing as avenue for their creativity. I fear stifling that part of them when I edit or grade their work. It is a precarious tight rope, building their confidences, to see writing as possibility and not a chore. Yet I want them to honor the craft and I lean on them sometimes too roughly. Yet as fellow struggling writer, I must remember what it is like to sit in those seats.
I continue to hold onto teaching as a lifeline, but now I wonder. This pandemic has disrupted school life, taken away my rituals. As we approach the new school year, if kids return to onsite learning, I won’t have my classroom, my learning playground; we’re going to try outdoor classes, tables and benches under tent tarp, tree stumps for chairs (we’re a mountain campus). Even if we went inside, the new paradigm is students stay stationary while teachers rotate. If we’re together, I will be in the presence of possible virus carriers. Any physical interaction, even handing out papers, has to be thought out or eliminated. I can’t physically touch or get close enough to really check in with a student, to assure them, to unite us quietly. At least we’ll be in proximity. Yet, is it worth it all?
If, however, things unfold like the end of the last school year, when we’re all online, that seems equally problematic. From March through June, my years of experience meant little when it came to Zoom and Google Classroom and teaching online. No buzz of the room, no percolations of knowledge and creativity. Luckily, last year we had time together pre pandemic to set the routines. I know my sessions online were static and uninteresting. They lacked human dynamic, of paying attention to the stillness and the noises, the gestures, the breathing patterns in the room. It was so much harder, so much more alienating, so not inspirational, not tactile, not heart reaching. Get it done and quickly, that was my approach to my sessions. I was given 2 hours, I’d take 20-25 minutes, review the assignments, ask questions. We’d read something and discuss it, though most of the times the students barely responded, they too eager to be offline to do something else until the next class captured them in small boxes.
I took an online design class this summer to try to improve my approach, to try to honor my profession and my savvy kids. I learned all kinds of terms and new toys of technology, like Loom and names I can’t remember. I learned you can insert video into the text. I was told that I should have more interactions in small groups, and projects that involve more modalities of learning. We also have a new head of school, and she’s also trying to pump the excitement for the faculty through frequent townhall meetings on Zoom and emails. I’m told we’re getting rid of Google Classroom and have a new learning platform, Schoology. That means starting from scratch, technically.
What used to be easy was calling myself a teacher. Now, suddenly, I feel such strange aversion, such disinterest and I wonder, am I done, is this it? And if so, then what? Life without teaching makes me uneasy. I’m a person of routines. What would I do without that huge component of time and investment especially during a pandemic when I can’t travel, can’t act in shows in town, can’t go out to restaurants? I’m at home and my mental health may not prosper with too much time on my hands. Teaching is a like rope of survival to drag me from the darker caverns of depression and sadness. Hardly an inspirational choice. But that may be the motivation to give this teaching thing another year, online or in tents. And, maybe, even more than that…it is the enjoyment of my kids, my students, to be an involved witness to their learning journey. In some shape or form. Maybe that’s the real lifeline.
Martin, I love your honest exploration here. I could imagine your voice in my mind as I read it….such real issues you’re grappling with here.