Day 21: Vacation!
This is officially spring vacation week, and per edict of the Governor's office, we are expected to keep to this schedule, although it's a little hard to tell how it's different from non-vacation week when sheltered in place.
What's different for me is the more immediate work related to school has slowed down (especially after hearing our "Continuity of Learning Plan" was approved by the Agency of Education, through a review process I assume was not super detailed given the piles of these they must need to review).
What had become a fairly effective routine of dedicating most of the morning to school stuff (with appropriate distraction to sifting through emails and news, as well as time for some kind of morning meal) is now thrown amiss a bit. I still get on the computer and sift through news and email, but the work stuff is less pressing, which leaves me a bit more adrift.
With a bit less immediate demands on my time and inertly tied to my computer (at least when the weather outside has been less than inspiring), I've been trying to work through the endless emails coming from countless providers of educational tools, digital content, advice for these uncertain times, and information from state officials.
I'm sure there's some expertise on how highly effective people makes sense of all this incoming data. In the normal world, I was pretty good on ignoring the vast majority of emails and feeling comfortable with the sources I deemed useful to my work and the school.
In this new world, I feel torn. My inclination is to think I and the school don't need all these "new fangled" shiny objects. I think there is wisdom in saying now is not the time to add a bunch of new apps and tools beyond the many new things we're being forced to undertake on so many other aspects of our lives. But there is also the idea that crisis can be an opportunity.
I'm sure these computer companies certainly see this as an opportunity to build market share, so my anti-consumerism side wants to reject that marketing scheme, but then again, it's a unique opportunity to try some of these resources for free.
I don't know if other teachers have considered this but it could be possible for teachers to majorly cut back on their planning. Just find some great 3rd grade teacher in Montana or Missouri who is doing serious, high quality planning for her class, and voila, you could have the plan for 3rd grades nationwide. Even just putting one's own class into a replicable digital platform could save a teacher tons of time in the future. Classes could be repeated in future years, or for multiple preps, let alone possibly shared with students well beyond your school.
The possibilities here are endless for reducing prep time or increasing lesson quality, and this could give teachers more time to devote to what for me is the real art of teaching as facilitators of learning and supporting kids, not delivering content. At the same time, there is also the possibility of more top down, nationalized curriculum that could have some advantages in terms of equity and opportunity but also could reduce responsiveness to individual students and local opportunities.
No doubt lots of possible unintended consequences but for the world of education, which is typically glacially slow to change, this is an extraordinary time (a trite observation that can be applied to just about everything in the world now:).
Beyond the educational tools, there is the whole realm of potentially useful information, from how to help kids deal with stress to college admissions information to financial markets advice to the endless covid related news that seems worth following. Almost all of this seems at least mildly interesting to me but I have no idea on how to prioritize any of this. So in this vacation week, I think I'm jumping around topics until I get fatigued or distracted with that. I don't think this is the best process imaginable and if I figure out something better, I'll share it here. But enough for now, I have endless emails of potentially useful information awaiting (which, in a surrealistic insight I just realized, I am contributing to with this blog--my apologies for adding to the glut).
Be patient and kind.
What's different for me is the more immediate work related to school has slowed down (especially after hearing our "Continuity of Learning Plan" was approved by the Agency of Education, through a review process I assume was not super detailed given the piles of these they must need to review).
What had become a fairly effective routine of dedicating most of the morning to school stuff (with appropriate distraction to sifting through emails and news, as well as time for some kind of morning meal) is now thrown amiss a bit. I still get on the computer and sift through news and email, but the work stuff is less pressing, which leaves me a bit more adrift.
With a bit less immediate demands on my time and inertly tied to my computer (at least when the weather outside has been less than inspiring), I've been trying to work through the endless emails coming from countless providers of educational tools, digital content, advice for these uncertain times, and information from state officials.
I'm sure there's some expertise on how highly effective people makes sense of all this incoming data. In the normal world, I was pretty good on ignoring the vast majority of emails and feeling comfortable with the sources I deemed useful to my work and the school.
In this new world, I feel torn. My inclination is to think I and the school don't need all these "new fangled" shiny objects. I think there is wisdom in saying now is not the time to add a bunch of new apps and tools beyond the many new things we're being forced to undertake on so many other aspects of our lives. But there is also the idea that crisis can be an opportunity.
I'm sure these computer companies certainly see this as an opportunity to build market share, so my anti-consumerism side wants to reject that marketing scheme, but then again, it's a unique opportunity to try some of these resources for free.
I don't know if other teachers have considered this but it could be possible for teachers to majorly cut back on their planning. Just find some great 3rd grade teacher in Montana or Missouri who is doing serious, high quality planning for her class, and voila, you could have the plan for 3rd grades nationwide. Even just putting one's own class into a replicable digital platform could save a teacher tons of time in the future. Classes could be repeated in future years, or for multiple preps, let alone possibly shared with students well beyond your school.
The possibilities here are endless for reducing prep time or increasing lesson quality, and this could give teachers more time to devote to what for me is the real art of teaching as facilitators of learning and supporting kids, not delivering content. At the same time, there is also the possibility of more top down, nationalized curriculum that could have some advantages in terms of equity and opportunity but also could reduce responsiveness to individual students and local opportunities.
No doubt lots of possible unintended consequences but for the world of education, which is typically glacially slow to change, this is an extraordinary time (a trite observation that can be applied to just about everything in the world now:).
Beyond the educational tools, there is the whole realm of potentially useful information, from how to help kids deal with stress to college admissions information to financial markets advice to the endless covid related news that seems worth following. Almost all of this seems at least mildly interesting to me but I have no idea on how to prioritize any of this. So in this vacation week, I think I'm jumping around topics until I get fatigued or distracted with that. I don't think this is the best process imaginable and if I figure out something better, I'll share it here. But enough for now, I have endless emails of potentially useful information awaiting (which, in a surrealistic insight I just realized, I am contributing to with this blog--my apologies for adding to the glut).
Be patient and kind.
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