This has not been a great week of distance learning. Zoom keeps crashing, I can’t share audio when I’m sharing my screen, I can’t get any grading done, and I just hate it all.
Yes, I’m being extreme. Yes, it could be worse. Yes, I’m still annoyed and frustrated and tired and I can be all of that at the same time.
I almost lost my mind yesterday. I spend all of Sunday making a weekly slide that is embedded on my Powerschool page. I have the whole week laid out. Links to videos and documents, links to flipgrids, links to the Zoom call.
Students in 6th grade, for example, are writing a compare/contrast essay about the books we read this year. I made a document explaining the essay and with an outline of what needed to be in each paragraph. Underneath the outline is a sample essay that I wrote.
But wait, there’s more! I made a video where I walked through the outline, then read my essay sample, pointing out key things.
And then, in my Google chat pops this message: What is the second paragraph supposed to be about?
I’m about to go Office Space on my computer.
But then, I felt better when students said in my class today that my weekly slides are so organized and helpful and everything is right there. One student wrote in the chat, one word at a time: I. LOVE. THE. DAILY. SLIDES.
It isn’t all bad. But until I get purposeful messages like that from students, there’s not feedback! There’s no room to read, no heads nodding or kids falling asleep.
David and I keep saying that we’re shouting into the void. No idea if any of it is helpful or heard. It’s so demoralizing. Teaching is hard, but it’s also so rewarding when it clicks. When our teaching works, the relationship and moment of connection with students is so amazing.
So, here we are. There are no other choices. The whole world is like this. That’s almost worse. The feeling of being stuck is so loud.
Man, I feel like I’m in my 20s again, unsatisfied and unhappy and trying to find myself. I just want my job back. I know what I love to do. I know what makes me feel stimulated and happy. It’s so sucky and unfair. I want my job back.
I haven’t written in a while because life is absolutely batty, which I don’t even really need to say, I guess because we are all living it. It’s weird. Normally, you’d have to compose a blog post or a social media post about going through some stuff, and sorry that I’m absent. Ha. No explanation needed. We all understand.
But, I wanted to give you an update on our lives. I’m going to start doing some more blogging about my teaching and things I’m doing to survive my teaching. But first, a personal update.
Our school works with a team of filmmakers and they asked me if I would be interested in working with them. They dropped off tripods and steady cams and an iPhone at our apartment. We spent about a week documenting what our life was like, teaching online and raising 3 kids. The film team, The Filmistas, edited it into this amazing final product:
I got so many amazing messages from parents, students, and other teachers. I basically cried every time a message came in. Every time I watch the video I cry. I cry a lot.
About a week and a half ago, we got the call that our school would not be reopening during this school year. David and I had been talking about next steps. It’s so hard to know what next week will bring and how I will feel about it. There are about 100 scenarios of what might play out, and I’m never sure how I’m going to feel.
We happened to have the May Day holiday coming up, which gave us a 3 day weekend to travel. We got yelled at by doormen for letting our kids play in the sand below the roped off playgrounds in our condominium. We both realized it was time to go.
I felt some guilt about leaving. Staying was a point of pride at first. Maybe I shouldn’t have felt pride at staying, but I did. Deciding then to leave felt a bit like abandoning ship.
But my admin was really supportive. They understood and they knew that we needed to do what was right for us. That gave me some peace. Just the idea of being somewhere different suddenly sounded amazing.
We have a key factor in place for us to leave: a place to stay. We have a townhouse in Minnesota that technically belongs to my in laws, but we’ve made it ours for the summers. We spent nearly 3 weeks here last year, and we put bunkbeds in it, beefed up the kitchen stuff, stocked it with art supplies.
So now we are hunkered down in Northfield, Minnesota, an incredibly cute and cool college town. It’s small, it’s quiet, and there’s lots of open space. There are only 2 cases of COVID here as of my last reading, and the governor is making thoughtful, careful decisions–in my opinion, at least.
Brazil is also getting bad. The cases are rising, the deaths are rising. More scary to me is the number of people facing starvation because of the shut-down economy. The government is not providing significant support. There is a quarantine in place, where only essential businesses were supposed to be open, but right before we left, we noticed lots of businesses on the street open.
I don’t want to get into a whole big debate, but let me tell you where I always go first: the children. Bear with me while I explain. When you shut down all retail–all malls, bars, restaurants, stores, etc–that is a huge segment of the Brazilian population. They live hand to mouth. And they have children. What happens when the money and the food run out? If you want to keep the economy closed, then the government has to feed those kids. I don’t see that happening. (To be clear, I am not minimizing the death toll. I am just afraid of those other deaths, the children facing malnutrition.)
Okay, so, on Friday night, May 1, we flew out. We snagged a cheap upgrade to business class and jumped on it. Business class was full, but the seats are very separated. In coach, there were empty rows between passengers. The airports were ghost towns. There were maybe 40 people on our international flight, and 20 on our domestic flight.
As soon as we rented our car and got the house, our kids hopped on the bikes in the garage and went around the block. We walked to a playground that wasn’t roped off with caution tape. I almost cried watching them play.
I have more to say and more stories to tell, but I’ve got to go teach my 7th grade class via Zoom.
Let me back up. I read this article in the New York Times about stylist Jayne Matthews. It was fun and interesting. I followed her on Instagram. I found myself pining for a haircut like this. Funky, fun, playful. I have wavy hair and she talks about helping girls with thin wavy hair shape it, reduce frizz, frame the face. This is what I need! I love her ethos about wash and wear and respecting a hair’s natural style.
I haven’t had a haircut I like in Brazil yet. I’m busy, I don’t live in the hip neighborhood, and the list of excuses goes on. Right before quarantine, I got the name of someone, but that obviously never happened. In general, I find that the assumption in Brazil is blowouts or serious levels of work each morning. Ha. That’s not me. 3 kids, a teaching job that start at 8:00. Nope. I’ve had a hard time finding someone who understood my personality and my desires. Not that they don’t exist, I just hadn’t found yet.
Cut to a few weeks ago. Jayne announces she’s doing video call haircut and bang trim tutorials. I knew right away I wanted to do it. I ordered the feather razor she recommends and a nice comb. I booked a slot. I am going to be video coached through cutting my own hair.
I probably wouldn’t have done this before quarantine. But no one really sees me, I have nothing to lose, and this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I don’t think stylists really offered video call self-haircut tutorials before this. Let’s hope this opportunity never presents itself again! So, here we go. I will video it and take before and after photos, of course. I feel positive and confident. I’ve gotten into such a rut with my hair. I just whip it into a ponytail and make videos. I’m bored. I’m tired of having long hair just so I can pull it into a ponytail.
I also need some diversion. This feels like an authentically real experience and I haven’t had many of those in a few weeks. Honestly, if you asked me about the past few weeks, what I remember is playing the mandolin more, teaching Matilda to ride a bike, and this! This has given me energy and hope. I seriously can’t wait.
I will write a post in the coming days with the results. In the meantime, I hope you all find something exhilarating to look forward to. What do you have to lose? The bigger question is, did you ever have something to lose?
I wasn’t sure what would crack me, but it was hot water.
Let me back up. Yesterday, as we were running the kids’ bath, the hot water shut off. We had enough for their bath, but we spent the evening playing around with the water heater. E4 was on the panel, which a Google search revealed meant faulty sensors. More searching hinted that that meant some major repairs were needed.
We had what looked like two leaky toilets, and one that was also leaking from the bottom–ew. Now we had a broken water heater. Oh, and there are dry wood termites in one bathroom cabinet. In the new apartment we moved into 10 days ago. During the coronavirus lock down.
I seriously started to plan in my head for having to boil water to make hot baths. We put in a maintenance request with our school’s HR who helps with these kinds of things. But my hopes were low. Who would be willing to come do the service? Should I break some social distancing rules for this?
Right away this morning, I got an email from the woman in HR who mainly handles issues like this for foreign hires. She was sending over the maintenance man from school. She asked me to take a picture of the water heater, and then I was bummed to learn their technician doesn’t fix that brand.
But, the school handyman was coming, and he would at least take a look. He is the nicest, most versatile guy on the planet. He can fix anything, like an angel with a multi-tool. He came over and I walked him through the leaking toilets. Turns out that it’s probably just bad plaster work, and not active leaks. He said he would try to tighten the toilet to the floor to prevent that leaking. He took a look at the termites and said that probably the best idea was a new cabinet. As for the water heater, he messaged a friend who knows the brand. The friend messaged back that the electrical panel needed to be replaced.
My worry was growing, but I didn’t really notice it. How can you notice one worry among so many right now? But I got a text an hour later from HR that she was going to contact the real estate company that worked with the landlady. It would obviously be their job to fix the water heater.
Then another text that a technician was coming at 2 pm! He arrived early and traded out the panel. Voila, hot water! He told me to go to the bathroom and turn the shower on full blast hot to check it. It was so hot and steamy. I will confess I have not had a shower in at least 2 days. As steam filled the room, I started crying.
This is such a hard time. I feel so lucky to have a job, to have an HR team to support me, colleagues to video call with, technicians willing to come in and let me give them a wide berth. I didn’t realize how much this was all building up.
I sat down at my desk, and I heard Calvin in the next room having a Zoom call with his teacher. “Distance learning is now fun. I miss school so much,” he said. Then I started crying more. Oh man. I’m grateful for everything we have to help us, but I wish this wasn’t happening.
In all of this lockdown quarantine life, I am left feeling stir crazy. I am busy. I channel my energy, which is very high, into work. It’s why I love teaching. My energy is called on. Long ago when we were still in school (has it been a week? two? a millenia?) someone saw me at the photocopier at 7:57 and said, “Whoa, you have way too much energy for before 8 am.”
I’d been up since 5 am that day. Making hay while the sun shines–figuratively because it was dark in my apartment as I did some creative work of my own in the silence of my apartment.
That’s just me. That’s who I am. My 9th grade history teacher, a pretty wretched woman if you ask me, kept asking me all year if I’d been “tested.” Wink, wink. ADD. Hyperactive. I do not have ADHD, I am just wired to burn one click below a supernova. I exaggerate.
So, I chose a profession that keeps me busy, that wants and needs and appreciates my 8 am energy.
Being a work-at-home homeschooler is NOT what I was built for. I need to be doing stuff, and not just banging away at my keyboard. I need to be moving, creating, interacting.
So, when I got a frantic text from an American friend in her condo that they were being flown back and had 3 hours to pack, I switched on. Instead of my energy being sent as rage at the throw pillows that my kids keep throwing on the floors, or the dirty socks they hide behind furniture, I could do something. I went straight to her apartment and asked how I could help. Sometimes people say they don’t need help and you aren’t sure what to do. But there were real things I could do.
In addition to adopting Chester the bunny, I started taking pictures of all her furniture. She had hoped to have time to post things and sell them. Now, she was packing a few suitcases and leaving it all behind.
I started a list. I pulled things out of closets and piled things up. We cleaned out kitchen cabinets. We stacked up library books that needed to be returned.
Here was a way to be of use. To move stuff, to think, to move, to talk. I made a spreadsheet, set prices. I sent out items. I helped friends carry their purchased furniture to their apartments. We bagged up garbage and recycling. We bagged up clothing donations.
There are many hard things about social distancing, lock down, quarantine. One of the hardest is not being able to venture out into the world and move stuff and make myself useful. It doesn’t feel the same to send a kid a video or type a comment, as when I sit next to them with their writing and provide feedback. It’s not the same to answer an email as it is to point at a raised hand.
I considered being a doctor in college. Took all my premed classes during the first year. I think about the parallel life where I was a doctor now. Now that would give me a sense of usefulness. And it doesn’t scare me to imagine working in healthcare right now. I think I’d savor it.
So what happens after that is done? Should I ask the gardeners if I can help mow the lawn? Paint our bedrooms? I need to find tiny ways to be useful, to move things forward in some way, in some tangible, physical way.
[Y’all, I’m wiped out. I just made 2 videos and updated links and made Flipgrids, so I had no time to even re-read this. Forgive any typos or thoughts that went a-wandering.]
A coworker and friend used the “s*** or get off the pot” metaphor to think about our current situation. The State department sent out an email to Americans living abroad. The message was that you should not do any optional travel, but you should hunker down where you are or return to the US. There’s talk that the borders might get sealed.
Families were left with a choice. We can still do our online teaching as long as we have internet, but some are choosing to do this from the US.
It’s such an uncertain time and I’m asking questions every day that I’d never considered. My instinct kept telling me to stay. We have an apartment, a community. We live in a beautiful condo complex with wide open spaces for outdoor play and a trail for hiking and pretending we live in the Atlantic rainforest.
In the US, we’d have to crash with family or go to the condo we use in Minnesota, but we’d have to rent a car and figure life out there. We have family, but no friends. Where will things be worse. Brazil is still under 1000 cases (probably not for long) but the US (as I write this) is at 21,000+ cases. So, right now, it’s better here. Where is it better? I don’t know. No one can know.
And what does this mean for our home leave next summer? Great question. No one knows. We have plane tickets to the US in June. Will we be on that plane? I don’t know. There’s a scenario where we don’t leave Brazil this June/July.
We are choosing to fish instead of cut bait.
It’s okay. I’m feeling okay with that gamble. I have a family that is healthy. I have a job. We are okay. And, for whatever reason, here feels better. There’s a sense of solidarity. I can’t really explain it. About half the teacher families left, about half stayed. I think and hope we will all be okay.
We are staying.
Am I overwhelmed. Hell f-ing yes. I keep asking what happens when starvation spreads through Brazil and the US. When all of the hourly workers living paycheck to paycheck now have no paycheck and no food. Seriously, what happens to all those kids?
I know that I speak for a lot of educators when I tell you that we are all thinking about the kids. We give kids a safe place with food every day. When we are closed…what then, for them? Consider that seriously.
I think of those photos of the Great Depression. 25% unemployment. Families abandoning children because they couldn’t feed them. Those stories haunt me.
I also really love our life and I’m clinging to it. I want to hold on to all this as much as I can. Not that people who left don’t. I know that we all have our situations–newborn babies, elderly parents, social isolation.
I’m grateful for David and these three crazy kids, because at least we have each other. If I was alone in NYC like I was in my first year of teaching, this would be a really hard time. I’m grateful for this crazy big family of mine.
I just want the time machine so I can jump ahead 3 months, see that everything is okay and come back. We keep facing situations every day that we didn’t see coming the day before.
A family in our condo who aren’t teachers but sent their kids to Graded got the call that they were flying home tonight. They had 4 hours to pack. That’s it. They have an apartment full of furniture and belongings, and they had to pack whatever they could fit.
And they have a bunny. Chester. Matilda is obsessed with Chester. So, when the message went out that they needed to find a home for the bunny, I looked at David. We were thinking the same thing. We will take that bunny.
Oh my god. I’m exhausted. But! I had 100% attendance. Every kid showed up to my Zoom meetings. They participated in the Flipgrid and Padlet activities. We survived.
That’s only half the story, though. I had 3 kids in my apartment who wanted snacks and games and butt wipes. David and I have 3 common periods where we both had to be “teaching.” That about pushed me to the edge. Our whole home life needs to be revamped. Routines, organization, schedules. Ish is about to get REAL. I lost my temper too many times today.
We started with daily chore breaks in the day and that has to get formalized.
We need a snack drawer they can access on their ownw.
We have to make a schedule for each kid each day because they have their own Zoom class meetings and one-on-one check ins.
We need 4 offices, one for David and I, one for Calvin, another for Matilda. We can hear each other and our microphones pick all the noise up.
Our wifi doesn’t reach everywhere (see previous paragraph). So, I spent most of the day in kitchen.
We did not build in enough move breaks.
I have officially lost my planning and preparation periods. Those are now filled with cooking, cleaning, snacking and butt wiping. This perhaps sucks the most. There is no quiet period at my desk getting work done. Not unless I let the kids watch TV all day. I had two kids in two rooms doing two different math activities. That was one of my free periods today.
The win of today was that the kids had 1 hour of screen time in the afternoon. Everett had a book reading to him during the period when David and I both taught. It reads and turns the pages. Calvin did lunchtime doodles with Mo Willems.
I’m totally spent. I’m both relieved I survived and stressed for tomorrow and the future of this. I am every emotion at once. People have been so nice today to ask if there’s any way to help or anything they can do. Do they want to come and parent my kids? Teach all my classes? No? Well, I guess I’ll just have to do it all better and more efficiently. [Lays face on keyboard.]
My workspace in the kitchen. That’s a Zoom call with my advisees.This was the rough schedule we made today. It was not enough! We weren’t able to totally stick to it and it wasn’t specific enough. But the paper calendar with check boxes was a good idea. We just need more specific times and planning.This Pete the Cat book was reading to Everett and turning the pages.Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems
I’m taking a Global Online Academy (GOA) course called “Designing for Online Learning,” and the second Module was about student wayfinding. How do students and teachers find their way through online course content and projects? How can we help students find the content they need and how can we track their progress?
This GOA article offers some ideas for how students navigate through the content. One cool one was about “Greenlight Spreadsheets“. (Search for those words, that part comes late in the post.)
I made a video about how I’m adapting my physical tracking chart for my middle school journalists to a greenlight spreadsheet.
Here is what my tracking chart normally looks like:
First off, all is well with me. I am in school today, my family is well. Anxiety and tension is high. Yesterday Brazil had 55 cases, today it’s over 150. A week and a half ago, we had under 5 cases. Every day is new and unexpected. My students keep asking for predictions, for answers. Let this be the first time they begin to learn this: your teachers don’t have all the answers.
As soon as the first case appeared in Brazil, my school started talking about possible futures. I appreciate how pro-active and clear they’ve been. Our communication as a school has been really good. A lot of daily emails, meetings multiple times a week to talk in person. It’s a lot, but I would prefer the over-communication over the alternative.
Last week, we started talking about what our teaching would look like if we had to go virtual. Our admin was in close communication with peer schools in China, Japan, Korea and Hong Kong. Our main goal became learning from them. They had no one to turn to for advice, but they could help us prepare.
I’m taking an online course about digital/virtual/online teaching. That’s been really helpful. We’re preparing students by getting them all signed up different web platforms: Zoom, Flipgrid, Padlet.
There’s no chaos or panic. And yet, I feel like I’m working an extra job. I’m teaching face to face, and then I’m learning how to teach digitally. And I feel like a first year teacher again. I don’t know how the tools work, I don’t know how much to assign, how to present it, how to collect and assess. I’m learning and stumbling in all normal ways, but I haven’t felt like this since I started teaching.
So the main feeling I have is exhaustion. I’m supporting my students through this as well as dealing with my own emotions. My brain has so many pots on the stove, they are all boiling over a bit. I’m forgetful of little details.
But to reframe it, maybe those little details weren’t essential. Moments like this teach you what really matters.
I have to say that I am sad about the possibility of virtual teaching. I love spending time with my students each day. I love the one-on-one moments. I love the way they crack me up. That is going to be mostly lost online. Yes, we will find ways to check in and connect, but I can’t pretend it will be the same.
And, by sheer coincidence, we are moving to a new apartment today. This began a month ago! We started the process in January and now here we are. So, I go home after an exhausting day to pack more of our stuff and mop the floors of the new place. Luckily it’s in the same building, so it’s just an elevator ride away.
Beyond all of that, if school is closed, then my own 3 children will be at home and learning virtually as well. While I’m trying to run and manage an online classroom. Are you feeling queasy yet?
Add that the potential reality that we can’t go to public spaces because of social distancing.
Oh sweet baby Jesus. This is gonna be a great story we tell in the future.
For now, continued gratitude for my job, for my health, for the support of David, and the love of those little mess-makers of mine. We are strong and smart and resilient.
As of now, I don’t know if or when the school will close, but my bet is that we close. I’ll update here with more news at that point. And if you’re interested, I’ll be recording some read alouds for my students of novels and putting them on YouTube. If anyone finds themselves in a similar situation and would find that helpful or beneficial, help yourself.
In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, we had an assembly today and I was asked to give a speech about gender equality. I’m a talker and a writer, so being asked to give a speech is something that really energizes and fulfills me. Below is the text of my speech, delivered to about 300 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. The images were projected behind me.
When I was in elementary school, my mom taught aerobics in the evenings and I would go and hang out in the kids play area at the gym. I remember playing with two little kids, maybe they were 4 or 5 years old. I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. The little boy said, “I want to be a ballerina.”
The girl turned to him. “You can’t be a ballerina, only girls can be ballerinas.”
The boy shrugged and said, “Okay, I’ll be a dinosaur.”
It’s a funny story, but I’ve remembered it for 30 years. It was the first time I was aware of gender inequality. It was just a little moment, sure, but I saw it happen in front of my eyes. How might the path of that boy’s life have been different because of that interaction? Maybe that future–the one where he becomes a world famous dancer, travels the world, starts his own ballet school in Moscow or New York City–that future may have just closed forever to him in that moment. And he didn’t even notice. That seed was planted so young: he learned that as a boy some doors were closed to him. He probably didn’t even remember that that was the moment he learned to accept that reality.
We talk about gender inequality on large scales, and that is an important part. 56% of US college students are women, but only 24% of congress members and 18% of governors are women. Women are only 5% of CEOs of major corporations. We should also be concerned that men have shorter life expectancy and men and boys are more likely to be the victims of violence and suicide.
But we have to think of the small personal ways that someone is treated differently because of their gender. The moments in classrooms, on playgrounds, around dinner tables.
But who cares? Maybe you agree that boys shouldn’t dance, or care for children, or design clothing. What’s the harm in that?
Well, as a teacher, my goal for students is to open as many doors as possible for you so that you get to have as many choices as you can. If you never learn to read, your choices are limited. If you don’t practice public speaking, then some doors will be closed to you. Don’t we all want the most choices possible? Don’t we all want to grow up to do the work our hearts call for? The kind of work that makes us feel energized, alive, fired up?
Think for a minute about the thing you love the most. Maybe it’s painting, or video games; soccer, or math puzzles; building stuff, or making up stories. So let’s imagine for a second that you lived in a parallel world where the thing you love is done by almost no one of your gender. Other kids laugh at you when they find out you like that thing. They tease and make jokes, they whisper and snicker.
And now, imagine that because of all that, you abandoned that thing you love. It’s no longer a choice for your life. You decide maybe it’s better to be a dinosaur.
Okay, it sounds crazy. It sounds silly. But could it have already happened to you? When did someone say something about gender expectations to you as a kid? Do you even remember that moment? Do you like the things you like because you actually like them, or because you saw all the people of your gender doing it?
Are you freaking out? Maybe, maybe not. But you should be asking yourself all the time if your thoughts are your own or if they’re a reflection of the limits placed on you by the world around you. Ask yourself if you are limited or lifted up. If you are limited, shrug it off.
But wait, how do we undo this? How do we show that little boy that he can be a ballet dancer?
I think the answer is that we surround ourselves with models. Have you heard the phrase “Representation matters”? It means that what we see has a big impact on us. Seeing people that look like us in the world and on TV and social media help us imagine what’s possible. So I charge you to open your eyes and seek out representation that opens all those little closed doors. For example, this photographer completed an entire exhibition of Swedish dads taking 6 months off of work to raise their children.
You don’t even need to look that far. Look around this room at the adults who teach and coach you every day. They set amazing examples of strength, dedication, and passion–regardless of gender. We are men of science, and women of science. Women who love poetry and men who love poetry. We are shy men and women, outgoing men and women. Let these adults show you the possibilities for your future. I know that I speak for all of your teachers when I tell you that we believe in you. Our hope for you is that you believe in yourselves enough to tear down all barriers and accept no limitations.
