Dear beautiful wonderful educators (talking to you too college professors) – you have been thrown into chaos and asked to rise to the occasions in an impossible situation. Your world has been upended, your school kids are not there and you miss them, and the school/district administrator has asked you to figure out, in no time at all, how to suddenly do distance education. You are doing you absolutely best to rise to the occasion, figuring out how to plan 6 -8 hours of curriculum to be delivered through google classroom or Moodle. You are mentally trying to figure out how to explain new math to your students and trying to create an amazing experience because that is what you do. As a parent and a fellow educator I ask you:
STOP!!!
Seriously – just stop. I just got an email from my kids’ school with a plan for 45 minute educational blocks to fill up their day from 8 am to 2 PM including lunch time – ARE YOU HIGH???
You are planning a 6-8-hour school days for kids in the middle of a crisis. They know about this virus, they are scared mom, dad, and grandma are going to get sick and maybe die. Some of them are facing homelessness, violence, food scarcity, and, even if they are in a good secure safe place, they are trapped at home with their parents who are on the verge of losing it and without TP. They are not going to be able to learn like they normally do. They are stressed and in transition, and they are also going online. They miss their friends, their routine, etc. There is no way they are going to get through 6-8 of classes during the day – NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
And the idea that mom or dad (but probably mom because gender), is going to have time to teach them this content (yes we, the parents, are now going to be the teachers) is just not reasonable. We are still working, often full time (or more – or worse yet we are laid off or our hours were cut back), trying to hunt to TP and bread (WTF people – you never needed that much TP), probably trying to also look after our parents who are still trying to go grocery shopping even though we said we would do it so they don’t get sick, and chasing after our iGen college student who took off to go to the beach because its early spring break and they are probably going to end up killing grandma with this disease, taking care of all the normal things in our life (which was already over scheduled and stressful), and now you want me to figure out how to teach 6 hours of 5th grade to my twins???? I come back to ARE YOU HIGH??? Can you share – shit is getting real out here!
In my other, other, other job (I now have 3), which just got started because of this crisis, I am teaching college professors how to figure out how to put their classes online for the rest of the year. The first and more often thing I tell them is this is NOT going to be like at school. This is NOT going to be normal day. And most importantly, LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS!!!
Here is the advice I am offering as both a parent and an educator:
- KISS – keep it simple (stupid – but you are not stupid — but is the other S). If it is going to take more than 30 minutes to complete- it is taking too long. For college students – maybe push that to 45 minutes. Kids under stress do not have long attention spans. Have you not noticed how you seem to be scattered all over the place – now try being 9 and doing a 45 minute math lesson with parents who they need to teach new math to! Seriously – MATH is Math and why did you change Math?
- Only do the MOST important things they need to know – especially you college professors! Pair it down to the essentials! What are the few key concepts you want to drive home – focus on that ONLY. Anything else is just not going to be relevant. Also, profs – all that other content you threw up online because you thought it would be interesting but didn’t require it – only that one really nerdy overachiever ever glanced at that content and it was at the beginning of the quarter and they never looked at it again – so do not include it. It is making your course shell hard to figure out.
- Be creative. Taping a 45 minute lecture you expect students to watch is BORING! Its boring for you, for your students, and is taking up WAY too much bandwidth on the internet and your campus system is already maxed out. Keep lecture and videos short if you do them (15 minutes – think Ted Talk). See if there is content out there already and post a link (like Ted Talks (I have no affiliation with Ted Talk – I just use them in a lot of classes)). Have students be creative. Make them leave the house (with proper social distancing) to go find stuff out and share with others in a small group.
- Find a way for them to work in small groups to figure problems themselves – flip the classroom and cut back on your own workload (but you are also going to need to teach them how to video conference – half of them do not know that). Group work can suck but it does not have it, but you are also facilitating connections to others and we are all stuck in place, so this could be very important for those not doing so well – like all the extroverts – we are not ok.
- Be gentle with grading – everyone is in crisis and handing out a ton of Fs is going to crush them (and I HATE grade inflation – but still be gentle) especially with your Seniors – it would suck to be a HS or College Sr in the middle of a pandemic trying to find a job or figure out college for next year. Give partial credit, let them redo things, etc.
- Find ways, when appropriate, for them to express their experiences. Maybe organic chemistry class is not the right place, but every English, LA, social science, and humanities class can figure out how to stick this in. If I can figure out a way to fit this into a class on serial killers, you can figure it out too! (I asked them to think about how serial killers hunt for their victims and imagine how it would be different in our current situation – feel free to steal this if you want 😊 ).
- Do not expect parents to know how to teach – not even if they teach - I have no idea how to teach 5th grade that is why I send them to a professional. I am not a homeschooling parent. Those people take time to make that decision, explore and choose curriculum, and often have a stay at home parent dedicated to this process. I work full time from home and now I have two new co-workers who are running around with nerf guns in their underwear asking for snacks while I am on a conference call. I am not prepared for this – so do not expect me to be able to drop everything and start running a school in our dinning room. I fed them and they are not dead yet – so as far as I am concerned I am doing great at parenting. My goal in this crisis is to not get fired and not have to hide any bodies!
- Finally, lower your expectation for yourself. You are on as steep of a learning curve as they are. This does NOT have to be great – it just needs to be ok.. and that is ok.
We will get through this – it’ll suck – but we need to be gentle with each other, with our kids (school and our own), and we need to have realistic expectations of what the next few months are going to be like. They are NOT going to be 6-8 hours of school.
