This piece in progress was inspired by What I Learned this Week by Angela Narcisco Torres. While it doesn’t yet feel finished to me, it does have some ideas that I am happy to have captured.
What have you been learning as we all do our best to shelter-in-place? Those of you who are teachers, what are you learning as you work to support students through some kind of remote learning?
What I Keep Learning
What matters when your students are names on a screen
Rather than physical beings that you see and interact with each day?
When you hear the echoes of their voices
Through typed comments
That pop up continuously throughout what used to be the school day.
Quiet students are still quiet
Rarely leaving a trail of their thoughts or needs
And body language is no longer
A text to be read
The chatterers still chat
Loud and long, filling my inbox
With every possible question, ‘sup, and emoji
They tap their chat to me, to each other, to themselves
Filling empty ears with imagined sounds of school
Assignments matter now more than ever
I see the ways the mundane
Assignment-for-assignment-sake
Deflates, dissipating energy
Leaving us all unsatisfied and wrung out
Like that washcloth left on the edge of the sink
We need learning opportunities that connect us
Build on experiences and passions
Each student holds close
Allowing ideas to soar and words to take flight
Writing matters, that’s what I keep learning
®Douillard
Your account tells me so much about your experience – each little line evokes an image and a feeling.
I teach high school seniors, which means when I saw them before spring break, it was probably for the last time, and we are a close-knit family. I felt everything in your post. Sigh…
Heartbreaking! But I have such faith in our young people. How will their graduation be handled?
Graduation is still up in the air. 😦