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A Rant on Connection and Autonomy During Emergency Remote Teaching


Like I tell my husband as a caveat before I vent, please don’t offer me solutions. I want to vent because I have many feelings that I’m trying to work through. I want to purge because I feel losses that I wish I didn’t feel. I know, in my mind, that it’s okay to feel tired or unsure or frustrated, but it doesn't feel right to feel this way either because I worry. Among the growing list of things that I worry about, I worry about my students and how to best support their needs at this time. Like Wemberly, I’ve worried about a lot of different things, and I know that, just like the character from the Kevin Henkes’ book, I need to dive in and find comfort in those who share my worries.

I get a lot out of connecting with my PLN. Even though we’re navigating through the unknown, with very different messages across each board or district and many diverse tools to use and “school’ experiences, it feels better to travel “together”. When my head stops spinning, and I am able to capture the essence of my concerns, they really boil down to: autonomy and connection. This is the focus of my first public rant.

I want to decide how to best connect with and attempt to teach all of my students. I am not allowed to video conference with my students. I understand that the boards and districts wants to focus on safety and equity, and they are making various rules for the greater good. Part of my job, however, is to understand my class community and reaching out to them to meet their needs. My students are begging for a video conference. In their Friday letters to their parents we call a WHOW (What Happened in Our Week- the h is silent so it’s pronounced WOW) my Grade 8’s have cc’d me sharing feedback from their first official week of emergency remote distance learning. I don't feel that I have the choice or autonomy to meet many of the needs shared by my students because the board's focus is on the overall population and not on mine. As a professional educator, I wish I had the freedom to make a professional judgement for my class. Hearing from my students that they need to connect with each other as much as I need to connect with them makes me feel even more incapacitated.

Learning skills are a key part of what I explicitly teach. While I will pull down my magnetic learning skills categories during a lesson to activate schema around what skills are being targeted in a learning experience, I use Homeroom time to explicitly teach those skills, So many of my students are having difficulty organizing their week, especially considering all of their teachers are sending the work for Monday due by the end of the week (except the WHOW letter which is due back the first school day of each week). Knowing that all of my students have access to devices and writing to all of their parents about the week so that everyone is in the loop, I wish I had the autonomy to decide the best way to teach my students: a whole-class lesson, sharing the different ways that works best for them, and then a smaller group or one-to-one scenario. Because the rules are made for the many, I am trying to find the best way to respond to student needs while also following the rules of digital engagement. I have no issue with deferring to authority except when it makes me feel unable to do my job.

I also feel handcuffed in regards to supporting my students emotionally. A few students shared, through different tasks, that their Being Well Toolkit (something they were asked to share in terms of the tools they are using in their self care that week) could not include going outside because they were afraid to leave their homes. If I could video conference with my class, I know that I could gauge the best entry-point into a more supportive discussion to help each one of them consider the tools they need and help them develop more. It's challenging to connect with parents to further explore how I could support their children's needs because some are dealing with existential realities or have no idea what their children are experiencing. This is exacerbated by my own search for answers as a mother and as a person navigating this strange new world. I'm not sure what I have to give, but I know that I want to give it. There are many boundaries on our work now, but they feel less confining than the inability to really connect with all of my students. I have learned that, as a teacher, I need to share space in order to do my job as effectively as I believe I can.

My saving grace in all of this has been my ability to hear from my students. Through their WHOW’s, their blog posts, their thoughts on Padlet, conferencing with them, and their emails, I feel like I am beginning to get my finger on the pulse of many of them. I worry about the ones who haven’t engaged and wonder what I can do to help without adding more pressure on them. I am hopeful that I can find new ways to build outside the blocks of this confinement, and do what I love- teach and support my learners. It’s a delicate dance. I’m searching for the heart of what I do within the science of online teaching.

It's a tricky time to share these opinions. I'll figure it out. Thanks for letting me vent.

My saving grace in all of this has been my ability to hear from my students. Through their WHOW’s, their blog posts, their thoughts on Padlet, conferencing with them, and their emails, I feel like I am beginning to get my finger on the pulse of most of my students. I worry about the ones who haven’t engaged and wonder what I can do to help without adding more pressure on them. I am hopeful that I can find new ways to build outside the blocks of this confinement, and do what I love- teach and support my learners.It’s a delicate dance. I’m searching for the heart of what I do within the science of online teaching. Thanks for letting me vent.


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