A teacher in South Dakota writes here about her love of teaching, her love of her students, and how she is handling the current crisis.
She writes:
Let me preface this by saying that I am passionate about education. I enjoy being a student, and I love being a teacher. Of all of the things that I joke about in life, my job as a teacher is taken very seriously. Also, I love my students. LOVE THEM. Would-bring-them-all-home-with-me-without-calling-my-husband-first kind of love.
Right now, I can’t sleep at night. I have this turmoil built up inside of me that physically hurts. If you are a teacher who can say with 100% certainty that you are not worried about any of your students or their ability to do learning from a distance, then you are blessed and this isn’t about you. I am not that lucky. I didn’t really feel like going out and gathering numbers but just knowing what I know, I have to assume that there aren’t many teachers out there who can say with 100% certainty that their students are just as fine at home as they would be at school.
You have to love the zealousness of teachers across the nation right now. Admire it. Be inspired by it! Governors across the country said, “We are going to close the schools.” And teachers said, “Have no fear! We have never done anything like this and no one has any idea what they are doing, but we got this!” But, why? I haven’t heard any direction from Dept. of Ed on the national or state level which is why every single school has been left to navigate this on their own. There is no consistency between schools. The ENTIRE country is in the same exact boat, so how can anyone possibly expect us to be held to the same standard of teaching and expectation of time as if school was in session? Teachers are just supposed to naturally sacrifice themselves in a time of crisis? Do we really feel like we have to validate the paycheck that badly? Asking our families to adjust to us doing our jobs from home has been one wild experience for me, personally. Requiring teachers to report to their buildings during regular contract hours is ridiculous and kind of defeats the purpose of closing the school buildings. As far as I know, teachers are not immune to COVID. (Would be cool though, huh? Add that to our tool belt of superpowers!) Now, I am not saying we sit around and do nothing and treat this like a vacation. But lesson plans? Standards? Taking grades? It shouldn’t even be part of the discussion right now.
One little word. Equity. I can not even touch on any other topic without coming face to face with that word. Packets, online discussions, chats, phone calls, videos, all the bells and whistles… doesn’t matter. Nothing that you do outside of your classroom can be considered equitable. You can not require work to be sent back for grades and you can not expect new learning to take place. At best, you can hope that our students simply retain the things they have already learned. Distance learning in this specific situation is not an equal opportunity for every single one of our students. No one signed up for this and no one was prepared for it. (Also, side note, I am not a scientist but are we sure sending packets back and forth is really the smartest idea??)…
I am blessed to teach in a student-centered district that isn’t requiring anything outlandish, so really I could just sit down and shut up and not worry about it. But so many teachers and students that I love have unreasonable expectations strapped to their backs right now. Do what you feel you have to do to appease your administrator, but please stop stressing yourself out over something that really doesn’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things and fight for those students that need you! This is scary. People are sick and dying. I am not worried about standards and actually teaching right now. I am worried about my fellow teachers, my students, and their families as humans! I hope they are safe and warm and being loved. The best thing that I can wish for is to see all of my students again and to see their smiling faces because their families are still intact.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Teachers and students are both strangers in a new land due to the pandemic. The only thing we can expect is that many of them will be fine when this is over, and we can also expect that the inequity we live with will continue in quarantine. Poor students that live with single mothers and ELLs will continue to fall further behind.
Peter Greene’s latest post expresses many of the same sentiments as this teacher. His tone is bitter with good reason. Peter worked in Pennsylvania where the public schools have suffered greatly due to reckless privatization. As a result, his tone is much more militant. He expresses his frustration at those that have questioned the motives of teachers so well that it is well worth reading, especially for those of us that have witnessed how horrible education policy has worked to make public school teachers the national whipping boy. Greene writes:
“I don’t want to hear from these people (disrupters) any more. I don’t want to hear any more baloney about the already-disproven notion that human beings are motivated strictly by economic incentives. I don’t want to hear any more about the only way to whip those damned teachers into shape is to find ways to hold their paychecks hostage. I don’t want to hear any more about how the unions exist to protect millions of fat, lazy slackers who thought teaching would be an easy way to live high on the government hog.
Teachers do the work because they want to do the work, because they even feel born to do the work, and will keep trying to do the work even when unprecedented obstacles are thrown in their way. If you think the only reason anyone ever does anything is to get paid, then I am sad for you. But keep your sad hands off education policy. When this storm has passed, sit down, shut up, and let the teachers work.”http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2020/04/of-pandemics-and-teacher-motivation.html
Wanking to Infinity (and beyond)”
The think-tank wankers won’t shut up
Cuz wanking is their trade
And though we say “we’ve had enough”
The wankers will be paid
I’m glad this teacher doesn’t have any requirements, but a lot of us are being micromanaged from on high. And she’s right. Some kind of expectations from the state or even district level would be nice. The article about the teacher showing up with his whiteboard and teaching the girl math through her front door is inspiring, but I have over 200 students. That isn’t going to happen.
The fact that you are serving over 200 students is incredibly sad. How far can school districts expect teachers to extend their reach?
In Utah? Teachers are expected to teach an infinite number of students.
What many parents don’t realize is that this is test prep season. All the real learning has already been done in most states/districts. Mid Feb-March is nothing but test prep for whatever test is to be given by the state and now the states have waived the almighty tests this year. The kids aren’t learning anything new….just practicing the format of the test. The SAT/AP/ACT folks are busy trying to put a scaled down test online (with video cameras enabled so that students can’t cheat!….privacy issues galore!!) for the HS students, yet many colleges are writing off these scores for the following 2 years. The testing industry may be coming to a screeching halt (YAY!) and it wouldn’t hurt me one bit to see the College Board go down like a plane struck by lightning. The packets that teachers are putting together and the “lessons” that they are conducting on line should be nothing but review of concepts already taught and maybe some simple projects to keep kids occupied during stressful times.
The college Board won’t go down.
If they have not already done so, they will certainly ask for a bailout claiming that they are too big to fail. That the country can simply not survive without AP and SAT.
And they will never return any money that has already been paid or AP or SAT
an interesting moment: so many districts will now have huge testing bills already paid but no one taking the tests….who gets a refund
Very well said, LisaM. Yes, many parents don’t understand this, and the think tank wankers certainly don’t. Ever since Disrupters made the standardized tests the be-all and end-all of elementary and secondary schooling, the last two months of the school year have been a wasteland of test prep and testing, anyway. A complete waste of time.
Thanks to the teacher way out there in South Dakota for your very thoughtful comments about not just your own students but all of our kids.
I also looked at the blog she posted on New Year’s Eve 2020. Wow, was that only three months ago?
I rented a car and drove out to the Dakotas back in 1996 to see a longtime friend of mine who was in the Air Force. It’s a beautiful part of our nation.
I have to wonder if I could even make half that journey now -for a lot of reasons.
It’s troubling to see walls being built between and even within our states. Rhode Island stops New Yorkers, Delaware pulls over people from Jersey. I’ve heard from Upstate New Yorkers who are mad at Governor Cuomo and the people downstate.
Yeah, I get the social distance thing and stay at home etc…. But we don’t have the money and time to waste on unnecessary walls.
A lack of equity, the lack of equal opportunity is an age-old wall in our nation. Anyone who reads this blog gets a sense every day of how that looming wall of injustice towers above our country.
It’s great to hear the common sentiment on here about teachers around the globe who give a damn about their towns, their schools and their children.
That and the good, old-fashioned scientific method are what give me hope.
No worries- South Dakota students can get into Harvard without required grades. Jared Kusher, Trump’s man (son-in-law), is handling the Covid crisis for the nation. His Dad, reportedly bought his way into capital H, harvard with $2,000,000.
BTW, USC has another admissions scandal- the employee pled guilty.
I understand if teachers themselves are too stressed to do e-learning/packets/etc. And I agree with all who are saying not to force kids to do worksheets or whatever.
But at the same time, I am utterly grateful for my daughters’ teachers who are continuing to teach online and sending over work to do, especially for my older two as it’s keeping them connected to their friends and classmates and giving them some semblance of normality and a schedule for their day. I couldn’t give a rat’s patoot what, if anything, any of them are learning right now (my little one has pretty much rejected the whole thing, which is fine), but for those students who enjoy and feel connected to school, e-learning and packets and phone calls are a lifeline right now and those teachers providing such things are just as much heroes as healthcare workers.
Beautifully said, South Dakota Teacher!
I have always lamented the fact that I have to assign letter grades. They’re far better than standardized test scores, but grades as rewards and punishments are still poor motivators. Real motivation comes from lighting curiosity afire and making connections with subject matter, classmates, parents, and teachers. It doesn’t come from carrots and sticks. Carrots and sticks are for mules—we don’t need them. Neither do need any stinking badges. Or points. Or video game armor upgrades.
During the pandemic, assigning grades is a particularly unfair and therefore onerous act. Setting up WiFi hotspots and passing out laptops is not the great equalizer, so making students accountable during this time with grades as rewards and punishments is flat wrong. Instead of doling out work — worksheets, packets of work, or online work — we should be passing out idea sparks. We should give information, and then ask questions and invite answers rather than demanding them.
We teachers want to help our students during this time, but we are hamstrung by our local and state governments that insist we keep “continuity of instruction” without relaxing the grading requirements. It’s good that they put a moratorium on testing this spring; it would be better if they put a moratorium on grades and report cards. But what we have here is a failure to communicate: Leaders are unwilling to admit that “continuity of instruction” is a fantasy-based fallacy, and so are unable to communicate with teachers and let us help students instead of pretending nothing is different and assigning work for grades. What else should we expect from people who battle test score windmills.
They will enforce their rules in the race for scores, but cannot stop teachers from caring about our students, and many of us teachers are finding ways to help our students without making their lives more difficult while we wait to return to school.
(With apologies to Dr. Seuss & SomeDamPoet andS.D. Teacher:
I will NOT be sending any packets.
I will NOT be confined to brackets.
I am home and NOT at school.
I am NOT the System’s tool.
If “they” keep giving teachers flack-ets*
I will suggest they wear straitjackets!
Poetic License #007 (my word is my Bond)
We were immediately told we could not take grades I our system due to inequitable access to internet. My own access to internet prevents such things as Zoom or videos. We have enough internet to do things like this, so I have been posting some specially made Power points.
My daughter’s teachers are going like a house afire. she is having a blast, reading and writing. I am having fun teaching her radicals and quadratics. She is a way better math student than she will admit.