One Remaining Braincell
·I said goodbye to the few students remaining in my last class of the school year and pressed “End” on the video call. Final Report Cards were already done and submitted. In theory it was time to relax, but I couldn’t really do anything except feel exhausted, and a little overwhelmed as I continued to process “what just happened”.
I finally started to process the events of the past year last week. One evening, it just sort of hit me: “This is almost over. Look at everything that happened!”
The truth is, I didn’t really take much time to slow down this past year. I started Virtual School in September teaching two sections of the same course: TEJ4M, Computer Engineering. I was grateful for this- I’m not entirely sure how I would have managed if I was teaching two different courses, virtually, for the first time. My students in these classes were the unfortunate guinea pigs, and I will always be grateful for how gracious and patient they were with me while I figured things out.
Then in Quad 2, I was teaching a new course: Grade 11 Robotics. Virtually. Due to understaffing I picked up another section of TEJ4M. So in back-to-back quads, my plate was pretty full. I didn’t have time for a lot of things besides grading and planning, and no time during the school day to do it. I also moved houses and started moderating a club after school three days per week. Mental health-wise this probably wasn’t the best strategy, but I made it through the same way I make it through a lot of difficult things: by telling myself that better days are surely coming, and that the stress wasn’t going to last forever.
On the first day of every class, I introduced the idea to my students that Virtual School was an “experiment”. Necessitated by the pandemic, but an experiment, nonetheless. What we were trying to do wasn’t quite asynchronous e-learning, but it also wasn’t going to be an exact replication of “in-person” school either. It was a mixture of the two- and as much as I tried to draw analogies between Virtual School and in-person school, changes (particularly in terms of assessment types) were required.
For me, seeing Virtual School as an experiment was helpful in terms of shifting my assessment practices and I also believe that this mindset helped me easily adapt to change. None of my classes included tests or quizzes because I don’t believe that they are particularly useful in an online setting- the temptation to plagiarize is too strong (particularly in a senior class, when grades matter more than ever…). I could attempt to combat it by reducing the quiz time, randomizing questions, making multiple tests… but it doesn’t solve the issue entirely, and the setup is incredibly time-consuming. Instead, a lot of my assessments focused more on enabling student creativity, choice, and reflection. This helped me see how well they were connecting our course content to themselves and their own context, which was much more enlightening than having them complete a test. It’s a realization I intend to take with me.
The novelty of this experiment, however, started to wear off for me by February. By the time Quadmester 2 was over I was feeling pretty burnt out, but I didn’t want to admit that to myself. There was still too much to do- I only had one course, but it was another new one- Grade 12 Robotics. I feel like I struggled a lot with this course and I’m still not entirely happy with how I rolled it out. At least, in hindsight, I know what I would improve on. I was also starting to really miss a lot of things about traditional school: moving between classes; the noises of a busy hallway, faces of colleagues and students, voices. The kids were tired, and frankly, so was I.
During Quad 4, and my fourth time teaching TEJ4M this year, I decided to make some changes and pull out some assignments to try and ease myself and my students through the final stretch of the year. It still ended up being a tough quad. Motivation, all around, seemed like it was at an all time low. Yet the days flew by just as fast as they did in the previous terms, and suddenly it was over. I still hadn’t begun processing very much of everything that was accomplished, until this past week.
A lot of students liked Virtual School. Many of the comments I’ve gotten from students is that it does provide them with some flexibility. They like that they can revisit lessons and content whenever suits them best. As much as some of them miss their peers, the pressure of being judged by others is relieved. But there are also some pretty important factors they dislike…
As much as I enjoyed my time teaching with the Virtual School, I’m glad we’ll be going back soon. My students raised a lot of great points: this is hard to do for an extended period of time. The quad format also makes it very difficult to build lasting relationships, one of the best parts about teaching.
One of the biggest themes over the course of this year was that of “giving grace” to students. Be lenient with deadlines, exemptions, and provide whatever space and resources are necessary for students to succeed. I don’t disagree with any of this, and in a lot of ways I hope this mindset in education continues moving forward. One thing I’ve learned is that I still have a lot of work to do to extend that same grace to myself.