My district has chosen to put the high schools on a crazy 20 day online session arrangement. We are virtual until October, longer than any other Colorado school I believe, with the very strong possiblity that we will stay online through the fall. With all the Covid spikes in schools, I'd say we made the proper choice. I was able to write a blog about the first week, and then I went under. Our model means I see kids live for three hour blocks--you read that correctly, one class is three hours--- four days a week and I have to load a plan into Google Classroom for Fridays, which are not live. It's the planning that is so exhausting.
There are so many teacher voices out there right now that I am just white noise. Please listen to those who are being forced into their buildings. Please listen to those who are now doing double planning duty in a hybrid universe. They have real problems that their school boards need to address.
I have no real problems, I'm just tired. I do not believe I have worked this hard since I was a first year teacher. To paint a picture, I was a first year teacher wtih two small children. I had to learn how to teach while teaching, as I was in the TIR program. I was in two departments, language arts and theatre, neither of which was "part time" as far as the time spent planning, teaching and directing went. I started tapping my nose when I picked up a sixth class in the building and students began to mock me by tapping their own noses. My blood pressure skyrocketed. I could feel salt in my eyeballs.
I am working harder now than I did then.
At least, when I started 18 years ago, I was in the building. I taught in a theatre and a classroom, and my TIR classes were in a building downtown. I was blissfully unencumbered by technology other than my beloved red slider phone and of course, the usual theatre stuff, which can be trouble shot on site with a little patience and a lot of name calling.
Google Suite cannot hear me when I call it names.
There is a section of our evaluations as teachers on technology. I refused to even use the laptop and projector in my room until I was bullied into it by a low mark on my eval. No matter how hard I argued, they would not acquiesce that untangling a light board issue--which is a computer --counted as technology. So I would show You Tube videos on my projector/lap top rig:check this box.After seven years, I was bullied into creating a website that I never used in the name of checking a box on my eval. I would use Infinite Campus for attendance and grading, and...that was it.
My struggle with tech has been documented for years. I was world famous in my previous district. There was a tech guy who had been working for the district for years but had never set foot in our building until me. Even he was impressed when he sat down to untangle something that he figured would be easy. "I have no idea what happened," he mumbled. I laughed. "Nobody ever does. It's just me."
When I switched districts I had to at least learn the basicis of google classroom, as the kids were all using it with the sub. I used it sparingly until the shut down, at which point I had no idea how to do...anything. I was using google chat to text because I had no idea how to schedule a google meet. I still do not have a clue, the district drops the meet link into our classroom for us. THANK GOD.
I spent the summer in google classes honestly working through all of this "interactive" stuff Google Suite has to offer. First of all, it's not interactive. Moving a word on a virtual sticky note to a virtual white board isn't interactive. Which is pretty much what all of the Google Suite stuff boils down to. There are a lot of teachers who love this stuff, it makes sense to them and they wield it like I wield verbs on stage,and good for them. But it isn't interactive, please stop calling it that. Theatre classes on stage performing improv, combat and mime is interactive. I invite you to prove otherwise. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
My first issue is that I don't want to do any of this. I Don't Want To. I teach theatre. I can teach online and create a theatre history, lit or appreciation class, but that is not going to engage freshmen in high school. They signed up to fake fight, play improv games be silly. That isn't happening in front of a screen at their kitchen table, no matter how many jamboards or pear decks or screentastifies or flipgrids you throw at them. They're still alone, creating alone, performing alone. They can't even meet in a park and film a scene with their phone because they don't know anyone else in the class.
Then there's the fun internet connection issue. Not for my kids, again my district is the bomb and everyone has a chrome book and access to the internet. I mean my internet, my service that I "bundle" and pay many hundreds of dollars a month for the privelege. I'm teaching from home, and clearly, nobody else in the Green Mountain area is teaching from home (I live near two other teachers in another district, also teaching from home, so this is sarcasm) so weekdays at 9.30 am are the perfect time to shut it off for maintenence. Without warning. Just...blip. I'm out of the meeting. Mid sentence. Much to my surprise, when I got the connection back thirty minutes later, the kids were still in the meet. They were just chatting each other up and one said "It's OK Miss, it was like a real class. We just got to know each other."
Aweee....
The first week I tried all of the technology I had learned over the summer. None of it worked. See my shocked face? I was suspicious of the jamboard, so I contacted the Google Goddess in my building. I told her I suspected that it worked, they just weren't using it. I could not discern which which. I was right. I had to babysit them as they took fifteen minutes writing four words on a virtual sticky note and placing it on a virtual white board. No wonder classes are three hours. Sheesh.
At first the whole whining over not being on stage was getting in my way. But after the first week, once we all just accepted the reality of a Theatre Appreciation and History Course From Home, it was fun. I adore teaching this aspect and I never get to do it, because I've always had ravenous beasts in front of me chewing their way to the stage. But now we have no choice but to learn history and analysis and they're digging it. Usually the hook for Intro is combat. I do that first, because that gets them into class. Who doesn't love fake fighting? But this time, the hook was learning that the Romans used to throw Christians to the lions. Apparently, none of these people go to church, or have learned any history, because none of them knew about it. We spent twenty minutes looking up other sources to prove I wasn't lying. You can imagine how much fun boys playing girls in Elizabethan theatre was to learn about. When we did Kabuki and the suicide plays, one kid interrupted and said "Now that ain't no real reason to kill yourself, man. Why they do that? That's just crazy, Miss." Which prompted a bit more research into the Shogunate and another round of "No way, this was real?"
Somehow, I made it here. We have six days left. These sessions are three hours long, four days a week live (say "synchronous" one more time) and Fridays are A Synchronous (you said it, I have to kill you). So In a week, I see them for twelve hours.
For a theatre class that does not have a stage.
And I have to teach this class two more times.
I have somehow managed to get this group of 24 freshmen through a speech, the Greeks, Romans and Elizabethan history, Kabuki, mime, performing two characters in one body ("One Man Show" like John Leguizamo) , poetry interp, reading The Odd Couple, breaking down a monologue and writing a critical review. In six days we will perform the monologue, teach the class A Thing They Can Do and perform a sock puppet scene from The Odd Couple.
I only teach for three hours a day, as I only have the am class this session, but I stay in front of the screen and plan until at least one pm every day. Then I have to grade, track down missing kids, give feed back on their flipgrids, stay in touch with Thespians, feed all the animals in my house, clean the cat boxes, mop the floors, grocery shop, make dinner...because I can't sit in front of a screen for eight hours a day as it is,but this model has me on call 24/7. Next session I will be setting stronger boundaries.
Which is why I stopped writing. I can't sit in front of the screen any more. I had to force myself this morning.
Every year there is some new thing, some new acronym that's going to revolutionize education, or hold us more accountable shoved down our collective throats and I say "That's it, this is the thing that is going to drive me out of teaching."
I was wrong in the past...
We'll see.
