Two Weeks of In-Person Learning

 Last week was Catholic Schools Week, complete with days to appreciate families, teachers, students, and the larger community that supports each Catholic school around the world. It's a fun week with spirit days, gifts, and activities. I was overwhelmed with the amount of cards, candy, flowers, and Starbucks gift cards I received from students on the day designated by my school as teacher appreciation day.

On student appreciation day there is generally an assembly. After attempting to organize a drive in movie night that fell through, my principal was able to arrange for a Zoom interactive assembly with a local children's entertainer who calls himself the Zaniac. He put out a list of items the kids should have on hand to participate in the show: a light jacket or hoodie, a yardstick, a deck of cards, and a set of juggling balls (with a tutorial for making some out of household items). My fourth graders gave the show *glowing* reviews afterwards. 

Every single one of my homeroom kids came into the building every day last week. That makes my job much easier than that of my colleagues who must deal with online students at the same time as in person students. I feel very lucky that I don't have to host a Zoom as I am teaching, and glad that none of my nine and ten year old homeroom students have to sit in front of a computer from 8:30-3:00 every day. Indeed, online learning models that mirrored the school day is why one of my students was pulled from his local public school and put in mine shortly after the school year began. There are four students in my partner teacher's homeroom that are learning online. Two of them have parents that don't feel comfortable sending them into the building, one of them is suffering from extreme anxiety, and one's parents are worried that wearing a mask and staying six feet away from others will be too much of a challenge for their child who is on the spectrum. My partner teacher and I agree that the last of these kids probably wouldn't have more trouble with masks and staying six feet away from others than the average fourth grader, and that we are up to the task of building good COVID safety habits in all of our students. But given the craziness of the world, we respect all of the different reasons families are keeping their kids at home or sending them to school

The switch to in person learning has shifted my locus of concern from the quiet kids to the ones who lack impulse control. I am no longer worrying about the student who refused to turn on audio or video and concerned that the majority of my students were happy to let one or two classmates answer every question. Now that we are in the building they are all finding their voices and raising their hands to participate. Different concerns have come to the forefront. I have spent two weeks dealing with recess problems spilling into instructional time, and continually re-teaching the rules to four square. One of my students drew blood from another during one of our first recesses. 

Did you know that four square must be played underhand? Did you know that fourth graders don't really know the difference between underhand and overhand? I took screenshots of both hand positions from a video of four square rules and told the kids that raising your hand is overhand and sticking gum under a desk is underhand. The idea for the second example came from my 18 year old. Four square has taken a surprising amount of my time and energy over the past two weeks.

I was super excited to wear my Donald Duck hat, complete with tiny body hanging off the back of the oversized head on crazy hat day. When my principal saw it, he said he has the same one! I enjoyed Catholic Spirit Wear day, when I wore my Seattle U sweatshirt and one of my current fourth graders wore my old school spirit sweatshirt that I gave to her mother after leaving the school three years ago (and gaining weight.) But the best spirit day was crazy hair day. I am usually stressed by crazy hair day because I have lots of hair that I should be able to do something very crazy and fun with... it's too much pressure for me. I have great hair, but I am not great with hair. I can't even French braid. But the student teacher has a daughter who loves cosplay, and she had the best idea. It will be my go to crazy hairdo henceforth.

I Love My Job

 

The last 10 months have been crazy for everyone, no matter their industry. As my husband reminded me at the start of the school year, everyone is at their wit's end. Schools are in a very difficult position these days, possibly more so than most other industries because of competing concerns regarding online learning vs. returning to buildings. 

Many students are learning less of the curriculum designated by districts, states, and the country. Most parents are more responsible for helping their kids with learning those prescribed curricula. Teachers are dealing with students not showing up to Zooms and getting little to no response when they send messages or make phone calls trying to chase work or offer assistance. Everyone wants kids back in classrooms.

But teachers and school staff are understandably nervous. COVID numbers are much higher than when schools shut down in March.  Many people who are making decisions about re-opening schools are still working remotely and will continue to do so. The science has progressed and we know more now than we did when everything shut down, but there is still so much we don't know. We don't know how well kids carry the virus even if they don't show symptoms. But most of us work in old buildings with ventilation systems that are in various states of disrepair.

I'm back in the classroom, four days a week. I am excited to be back. Someone posted to one of the teacher groups on Facebook this weekend this question: "If you consider yourself a pretty 'happy' teacher, what's your secret?" This is a common theme in these groups, even pre-pandemic.. Teaching is a hard job, and often thankless. Parents send emails at all hours of the day and night, and a few of them act like they expect immediate responses. Questions that have been answered over and over again are asked again and again by students and families alike. Outside of planning, teaching, and communicating with parents, the number of job requirements seems to be climbing. In the best of circumstances, it's a lot. With the demands of providing a hybrid learning model and the increased stress of society as a whole, this year has taken the expectations to a while new level.

Still, I had no hesitation answering the question posed to those who consider themselves "pretty happy teachers." I love what I do. It helps that I have a supportive husband. Another factor that I believe has saved me from teacher burnout is the number of times I have moved to a new school and a new grade level. I have made the choice to leave schools twice and was pushed out twice. I have taught every grade level 4-8 and worked on teams that value my input and with those that seemed to ignore me. I have also worked without any real team, at a school that was small enough to have only one class per grade level. 

Moving between schools, teams, grade levels, and subject areas has been challenging and stressful. But it has kept me actively, continually choosing to do this this job. When I try to imagine myself outside of this profession, I can't. It's a part of my identity and a source of inner pride. I love my job.

Back to the Classroom

I have taught students inside a classroom this week for the first time since the middle of March 2020. My school is offering a remote option for families who are not ready to send their kids back to school, but only one student in my homeroom is using this option, and not because of a fear of the virus. Her older sibling's grade has not yet returned to in person learning, and her family is keeping all the kids home until they can all return to school. As far as I know I'm the only teacher in my building who has such a high percentage of in person learners..

These kids are so excited to be back in the classroom! It's visible in their sparkling eyes and the tone of their voices. It's only been two days, but they are working hard and following every rule to the best of their ability. It is very hard for them to stay in their own space, especially when walking to and from recess, but even in the classroom. They keep forgetting that they are supposed to stay at their desks and have me bring the trash can around for their lunch garbage or take their pencil to the sharpener and back for them. (I had 10,000 steps before 2:00pm both days.)

It's only been two days, but I am exhausted. It's a good kind of tired, but if I'd been out of the classroom for six more weeks, it would have been a full calendar year. The extra safety measures add to my daily tasks, and I haven't had a single moment where I've had the time and brain space together to grade anything since the middle of last week.. Did I mention how tired I am?

By and large the students are doing great with their masks. I have one student who has trouble keeping his face covered. I have to continually remind him to cover his nose or pull his mask up. But he's also the kid who bounces in his seat or gets up and stretches or does a little dance every so often. I sat him in the back of the room by the door where he would be able to move without getting into someone else's space on purpose. I was forewarned by his previous teachers and saw his wiggliness first hand via Zoom.

My husband asked me tonight how I feel about everyone's safety at school. Everyone (students and staff alike) certifies their symptom status on a jotform before coming onto campus and everyone's temperature is double checked. The kids have plastic shields that they sit behind when they take their masks off to eat. They are cleaning and I am disinfecting their desks before snack and lunch every day. They have a specific area of the playground to use and their own set of color coded playground equipment to use and keep separate from the equipment of other classes. (My class has purple playground equipment.) The hallway is marked in six foot increments and everyone's hands are squirted with sanitizer before they enter the building, every time.

I don't think there are any more COVID safety measures we can take, but if someone thinks up some more, I'm sure we'll implement them. But to answer my husband's question, do I feel everyone is safe? Well... as safe as we can possibly be. I try not to think about the threat of asymptomatic carriers or shedding the virus prior to showing symptoms. I know that's how this virus operates and the reason it's still wreaking havoc across the globe a year after it was discovered. I try not to dwell on the what ifs and what I can't control. This is a big uncontrollable mess.

Here's to hoping the 2021-2022 school year is easier to navigate and much less anxiety provoking.

Reopening Plan

 My school has released an updated reopening plan. It is still subject to change, but if all goes according to plan, my fourth graders and I will return to the classroom by the end of the month. I am nervous about the possible negative outcomes, but the preschool students have been in my building since the first day of school, and the K-2 students were in for several weeks before the holidays. There haven't been issues, in part because our community of families is largely adhering to guidelines. While I do know of families of my own students who have traveled, I haven't heard of any COVID cases among them and I would hope that travel would diminish with a return to the classroom.

Instead of worrying about the idea that I might have to deal with having a student, co-worker, family member, or myself becoming part of a statistic, I want to focus on all the positives that will happen once I am teaching in the classroom again. 

First, I will be better able to elicit student participation. I have three students who always participate and the rest stay muted, waiting for one of the three to respond. A couple do put relevant comments in the chat, but a solid class discussion is very difficult over Zoom. I have one student who claims his camera is broken, even though his parents did get him a new computer early in the school year, and I have seen his camera on for a few minutes here and there. Technical difficulties are the biggest challenge: audio quality during student responses, unstable connections that have kids re-joining all throughout the class, videos buffering on my end as I try to show them, videos that are laggy or have poor audio quality on the student end even when they are smooth on my end... the list goes on and on. But I also have a student who hit a huge milestone when she participated in a class discussion with a direct message to only me during class this morning, and then wrote "bye" for EVERYONE to see after 90% of her classmates had dropped off the call at the end of class today. Her camera is never on. I can't wait to get these kids back into the building!

Going back into the classroom will give me my evenings back. I am done with teaching Zooms at 11:30 every morning. However, I have scheduled 1-1 meetings with students or staff meetings on my calendar until 3:00 or 4:00 every day. I also meet with one student and her family *every* evening at 5:00. In between scheduled meetings I am fielding Google Chat messages from students and trying to stay up to date on my email. There have been many days when I haven't had time to eat lunch. Grading and planning don't even begin to happen until after I eat dinner, and there have been evenings when grading and planning have been interrupted by a slew of email. During a normal year I don't respond to emails that come in after about 4:00pm until the next day, with very few exceptions. But this year, everything is different. In order to make the next day run more smoothly or alleviate family stress, I find myself responding to certain messages until 8:00 or 9:00pm.

It will be cold. We will be teaching with our windows open and air purifiers running. My classroom's vent is LOUD, and hearing timid fourth graders with their masks on or even ensuring I am heard in the back of the room with my mask on and students spaced six feet apart, feels daunting. But my school did purchase air purifiers for each classroom. I did get new bulletin boards installed and aides looking for additional hours are putting up butcher paper and borders for me. My principal got a grant for technology and new Smart Boards that don't use projectors are on order, and should be mounted in place of the old model before I return to the classroom. In working to make my seven year old school issued laptop work with the new Smart Board, my principal sat on three tech support calls with me today, and even though we did eventually get my computer connected to the sleek new board, promised to order me a new computer. 

I can't leave without saying that cutting the parents out of the loop on some assignments will make teaching things like pre-writing much easier. I have spent more time than I could have predicted this week explaining free writes to parents and reminding students of what they already know - free writing is about the flow of ideas and not about worrying about spelling, grammar, or structure of any kind. Over my 20 year career, I have learned to live with the reputation I earned in my first year of teaching, expressed by a student in my second year with the words, "Mrs. Conrow assigns a boatload of homework!" But the problem with remote learning is parents don't see the distinction between what would have been assigned as in class work vs. what would have been brought home to finish if their kids were coming into my classroom. Free writing would never be an at home assignment if we were in the classroom. I wouldn't have parents sending me emails about how much time they spent helping their child edit and revise the free writing assignment or asking for examples of free writing (which were provided in videos the students had access to watch again and again, but parents didn't "have time" to watch to see what I was looking for).

It's important for me to remind myself that the parents of my students are awesome. They are very involved and want their kids to succeed, even as we are redefining what it means to "go to school" during the pandemic. I'm grateful for their support and the fact that they care so much about the success of their kids. But writing instruction would still be easier for me if the students' writing notebooks resided only in the classroom.

I wish I was in line for the vaccine earlier. My state released guidelines this week that put me in a group that they hope to get to by April. It's disheartening but doesn't change my school's plan to bring me back by the end of January. I'm doing my best to remain positive even in the midst of an ongoing pandemic during the week that saw the second ever attack on the U.S. capitol. There is something supremely surreal about living in the midst of historic times that seem to be continuing to unfold.

Conrow Christmas Vacation

 

For only the second (third?) time in my teaching career I am neither traveling nor hosting family for my two week Christmas break. One year my husband was consulting, and had a gig across the country between Christmas and New Years. There might have been another year in there when we stayed home and no one came to visit, but if so, I can't remember it.

In recent years, we've traveled much more than we've had visitors. My brother and sister in law have six and seven children each. Even when we had two foster children, it was much easier for our family to find place to sleep in their homes than vice versa. My parents usually come up for Christmas when we're not planning to be with my in-laws, but I'm glad they are choosing their health over holiday travel this year.

This year, we are adhering to government guidelines and having Christmas at home, just the four of us. My husband is taking the second half of his sabbatical this month because we couldn't travel last summer when we had originally planned to visit Europe, Australia, or my dad's native Peru. So the four of us are home, with no schedule to adhere to for the next two weeks (my husband and college student have five and three weeks, respectively, but my high school student and I only have two weeks off).

Today is the first official day we have all had off, though the break mentality did begin on Friday when I drove to school to pick up Christmas gifts delivered by my students' families. Friday also included my virtual staff party, complete with a door dash delivered lunch and Zoom games. The party was completely different from previous years, and not as much fun for me, a decided introvert in large group settings. But my school's "sunshine committee" did an exceptional job given the constraints of 2020.

I'm doing my best to enjoy this low key holiday season. I did all of my shopping online, mostly on Thanksgiving weekend. The delivery boxes stacked up under my desk until this weekend when I finally wrapped everything and set up a little indoor holiday display. With the addition of two kittens to our home this month, we opted not to bring our whole artificial tree inside. I was worried that the kittens would trash our display overnight, but so far they have totally ignored it. 

Staying at home makes for a much more relaxing break for me. I like not worrying about when I will grade the assignments that were turned in during the last days of last week. I felt this over Thanksgiving as well, when I was able to write my report card comments from my at home work space without worrying about how much time they were taking or who I was ignoring while I was working. 

It's only Monday, and I am not sure how I'm going to fill my time over these next two weeks. I have an itch to travel, and would love to have a tropical locale booked, on the calendar to look forward to in the near-ish future. But sitting with a napping kitten in my lap, thinking about holiday movies to watch, and the possibility of baking some ill-shaped holiday cookies this week feels quite relaxing.

Even in the midst of a pandemic, I am blessed. I am truly lucky that the biggest disruption to my life has been to curtail travel. Teaching from home is a pretty big difference, but it's not a disruption.

Teacher Grief

 Today I attended the funeral of a former student, who was in my fifth grade class four short years ago. It's only the second time I've attended an end of life celebration for a former student. Even though I attended today's Mass via Facebook Livestream, it was just as emotionally gut wrenching as the first.

Amos* passed away on the first Sunday of Advent, after fighting leukemia for over a year. I thought I was fine, that his death really didn't impact me because I had been outside of his community for the past three years. Even though I vividly remembered his bright smile and positive leadership as a ten/eleven year old, I felt on the outside. I hadn't been a part of the school and parish wide prayers for him or even known much about the progression of his illness. 

Of course my former co-workers (who are once again my current co-workers) had told me when he was hospitalized and gave me sporadic updates. When I came back into the building for the first time after getting re-hired this summer, his class photos were in every room with the caption, "Praying for Amos*." I think that's when I started to feel "outside" of the ongoing community wide support system for him and his family. While I had been his fifth grade homeroom teacher, I had missed his seventh and eighth grade years and his illness had not been a part of my daily consciousness.

Listening to his mom and sister, who is also a former fifth grader of mine, and his classmates, all former students of mine, offer up words of remembrance brought memories of his fifth grade year flooding back. I have been off and on crying ever since. This young man had his whole life in front of him, and by all accounts it would have been an amazing life. He was a talented soccer player, a natural leader, a brilliant student, who sang with a strong, confident, clear voice.

I don't know how parents cope with the loss of a child. I am barely functional and I hadn't seen this kid for four years.

*Not his real name.

December 2020

 Into this climate of fear and apprehension Christmas enters,

Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope

And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air.

The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,

Come the way of friendship."

~Maya Angelou (2005)

I am on the eve of the last week of school before the end of the calendar year. I have so many mixed emotions surrounding the end of 2020 and the start of a New Year. I know I'm not even halfway through the academic year. I knew I wanted to be a teacher from the time I started kindergarten, and I have a late summer birthday; the academic year has been a more important guidepost for me my entire life. But this year, the calendar year upstages the academic year. 

I have no way of knowing what 2021 will bring, and I am fearful that June will bring yet another transition in my career. My current school hired me to help reduce class sizes, enabling six feet of of distance between student desks in all classrooms. Thus far my grade level has not been in the building for instruction, but there are high hopes in my administration that we will be back in the building sooner rather than later. But come the end of the year, I will be a new hire in a school that will almost assuredly be looking to reduce the size of its staff. These thoughts had me scrolling through LinkedIn this weekend. But I cannot apply for jobs yet. I have to finish this school year for the sake of my students.

Building relationships with students has always been a huge part of my teacher identity. This year, building relationships has been markedly different, but it is still at the core of who I am as a teacher. I have introduced my students to my pets and used funny voices to introduce new topics and keep them engaged. I have scheduled weekly one on one meetings with each student and made sure to send missing work emails to students and their families as soon as I discover a missing assignment. I have sent postcards at least once a month with quotes and jokes to my students' homes.

I am rewarded with pictures of student pets, funny comments on assignments, and emails with information about their daily lives.

 

I have one student who sends me tens of chat messages a day and requires me to close my email when I am in meetings because my computer will ring with an invitation to a video chat. If I answer, the student invariable hangs up. But regardless of whether I answer or not, he will leave the Hangout and open a new one, and send another chat message, or even another request for a video call. It's draining. Incredibly so. But he is a very cute nine year old who is just reaching out for some contact, for a relationship with his teacher.

Students this year didn't do anything to cause the disasters that have befallen their communities or the additional stress that their teachers are facing. Even though 2021 doesn't look like it's going to be any easier than the current year these kids deserve the best I can offer. I'll deal with the next step in my career in a way that will not impact my current students.