Good morning!
I want to make sure you know that I have nothing but deep admiration for all of you who teach. This is not about the teachers. You have stepped up and been there. This is about the kids and the district.
This is, by far, the most complicated situation most of us have ever been in. The world has ground to a halt. The news is a mess of death and destruction and the supermarket shelves are empty. For many, income is gone. For others, like Rhoda and I, income is still there but the tradeoff is sending her into the hornet's nest every morning and watching her come home exhausted. No one is experiencing normal.
You know how badly kids need to feel control over their lives. In a situation like this, they need it more than ever. I've been working hard to create a space for them to have some version of that control.
It's woven into every aspect of their day with the exception of the giant pile of paperwork I have to give them daily. They hate those packets, man. And I don't blame them. I do, too.
Here's a few reasons why...
• It robs the kids of their agency. They didn't choose this situation. They love to learn, and they love to please their teachers. They WANT to do good on their assignments, but they have no control over this workload. It's a burden they don't wish to have. It's making them dislike school because school is the last thing taking their time away from them.
• It's paperwork, man. These are the school-age equivalents of TPS Reports. So much of this is busy work. They are already busy enough trying to redefine their current situation into something they can make sense of. They shouldn't have to spend a few hours a day doing paperwork...
• They are being graded during a pandemic. This one I don't understand. At. All. How do you, with good conscience, grade the performance of a child who is 1) under massive emotional stress due to this situation and 2) is now being taught by parents who might not have any ability to teach. The district has repeatedly stated that these assignments will be graded by "district standards". This makes no sense at all and it deeply unfair to students with already shaky home situations.
• The world hit pause and yet, for some reason, AISD won't. I want to take my kids on pirate adventures through the neighborhood. I want to teach them to cook better. I want to teach science at the Bluff and art in the studio. I want to teach math and astronomy through the telescope. These packets take up more than just time. They add stress to learning and then learning becomes stressful.
• We could be streaming the Met Opera for music class. We could be watching the San Diego Zoo do live animal meets. We could be turning the swingset into the mast of that pirate ship and sailing our house into the great unknown... But we're doing pages from workbooks.
And when we are stressed out about all of this... We get another polished video telling us to be compassionate.
Compassion is also the district letting go of the need to manage this for us. Compassion is building a bridge between teachers and parents that allows us all to teach the way we are able.
We should be prompting kids to explore the way this impacts us all.
I know I'm being long winded here so I'll get to the points...
• This model sucks for us and I'm sure it sucks for you as well. I have a pile of emails from teachers expressing just how stressed out they are. But… most importantly, it sucks for the kids. This is creating performance anxiety when we need it the least. If parents are unhappy, if teachers are unhappy, and if kids are unhappy... then why?? What good is this doing?
• The entire world is going to be behind the curve of this thing when we are finally freed from quarantine. Next year is going to be weird for everyone. Instead of force-feeding these poor kids in order to get back to some test-based timeline, why not focus on rebooting next year with a few weeks of extra effort to catch up? Why force this stress on you, us, and the kids?? Who is benefiting?
• I want to keep teachers involved. I want the kids to have a way to engage online with their classmates and adults who care for them. I want learning to continue. It just can't look like this. If the grades don't matter, say so. Be honest. Let us go do something else with that time. If we need some metric to grade on, we're doing this wrong. There is no valid metric to grade student's "success" during a global pandemic. It is unfair to ask them to perform this way right now.
• Send prompts, not paperwork. I would rather you send me a provocation to do a science project. I would happily do those projects with the kids and send you the results. I would happily submit a set of journals from the kids documenting this experience, showing they are applying their knowledge to real life, and demonstrating that they discovered new things while we have the time.
Which brings me (finally) to my last point. I am pretty good at this stuff. I have a college degree in Fine Art. I was certified to teach high school. I was an educator in the art and science museum worlds for years and years. I am good at teaching. And this sucks.
I don't need another video telling me to control my anxiety. I need the school district to let go of their own. I love what is being attempted. It means a lot. But even with my ability, my access to tech, my well behaved and self-contained children, this is the one thing we do every day that causes stress and frustration.
Time is the one gift we are given in this weird situation. I want to stream all of the amazing new creative content with the kids. I want to have them read, hear, and write poetry. I want them to paint and draw and get dirty and have this be a strange and positive experience in their later lives.
I don't need to manage my stress better. I need less stress. There is no real reason why these kids are being subjected to such a heavy load that I can find. I know we are unique as parents. But I know that all parents are equally stressed, and this design is adding to it. For all of us.
I love you all, I truly do. Now is the time to try new ideas and pursue teaching from a new direction. We have the chance to try everything we ever wanted to try. Because honestly, none of know what is coming next.
Instead, we're doing work like we would if the kids were suspended. And I know, I spent a big chunk of my Junior year doing these kinds of packets waiting for my expulsion hearing...
Thanks for doing what you do, teachers. You are amazing people. The district is making a massive mess of this, though. For all of us.
And seriously...those videos have to stop. They are demeaning, a waste of time and resources, and to the point now where I just ignore them. You can polish it all you want. But when you take 10 minutes to tell me nothing at all, it doesn’t matter to me that you got the lighting right.