Teaching Thoughts

 How did the first week go? I told Kristie after the second day of school that it felt like I had taught two full weeks!

 

The theme for our staff is “patience,” and I don’t think we could have chosen a better one. I had a wakeup call about the importance of that theme this week.  For starters, for our hybrid model I have my students divided into three groups: blue, gold, and white. These groups will rotate attending school. That means I will have 1/3 of my students in class and 2/3 of my students Zooming in from home. On top of that, I have a handful of students who have opted for the Family Flex Option, so they will totally be remote learning all semester. To try and pull this off I’m working with a couple different platforms that stretch me pretty thin.  

 

On any given class I will have these apps/websites up and running and in full use (to name just the ones that came to me off the top of my head) -

 

Zoom

Google Drive

Google Docs

Nearpod

Keynote

Youtube

Synergy

Google Classroom

Loom

 

But not all of those apps/websites play well together. On Friday, I was planning on presenting one of my favorite lessons of the year: a Keynote introduction to our first major essay in College Comp. I love using Keynote as it allows for me to build in multiple images and videos onto one single slide. 

 

As class started and Mrs. Weets read the announcements, I plugged my MacBook Air into my overhead projector to display the screen. Then I opened up Zoom and began adding students to the lesson as they showed up in the waiting room. Once everyone was able to get in (which is often a miracle), I went over the lesson plan and learning target. Great. Then I shared my screen with everyone on Zoom and in the classroom. I began working my way through the Keynote slideshow. 

 

Then my computer locked up. Nothing worked. I was only four slides in. I couldn’t exit Zoom. I couldn't exit Keynote. We were stuck. So I bit the bullet and restarted my computer, which kicked 24 kids off Zoom.

 

Mercifully, we were up and rolling again after about ten minutes. However, my computer locked up again after only a few minutes. Everyone at home was kicked out of the Zoom again. I had to punt. So much for the day’s lesson plan!

 

I emailed everyone at home what would be due on Monday and that I’d share the Keynote slideshow with them soon.

 

But that was just the beginning. After an hour of trying to find a way to export the entire Keynote to an efficient format (PowerPoint doesn’t embed the videos correctly. Exporting it as a .mov file is too large. And neither of those options allow for me to talk my way through the slideshow so students can hear my commentary and suggestions for their essays). 

 

(And I know some of you are saying, why don't you just use PowerPoint? I have been through a thousand PowerPoint sessions. Only a handful have been engaging. And those were only due to the sheer charisma and passion of the presenters, not the PowerPoint itself. And don't get me going on Google Slides. They're worse than PowerPoint.)

 

Back to the drawing board. That’s when I tried a third (or is  it fourth option by now?) option: Loom, a screencasting app that I began using last March. This allows me to bring up my Keynote and present it while also recording it and even having a small video of me as I talk my students through the Keynote, sharing advice, tips, tricks, and adding in some humor. Great!

 

Once I exported it to video, I was able to upload it to Google Docs and then share it via Google Drive. Problem solved. But by this time it’s almost time for third block. Not one thing has gone the way I expected it to.

 

That is the new reality of teaching in 2020.

 

Inside this week’s Teaching Thoughts –

 

Book of the Week – Tom Romano’s wonderful memoir, ZigZag. Romano, a retired English professor from the University of Miami at Ohio, was also a high school English teacher for several years, so his advice and stories are totally relatable and inspiring. The pain of him recounting his father’s death stings, yet there is always hope – hope in his family, in his profession, in his students, and, perhaps best of all, writing.

 

Why I Teach – I can’t believe all of the students we produce who go into teaching. If I begin counting past students who are now teachers, it’s not that hard to rack up two dozen! That’s a testament to how big of an impact you all have on your students.

 

Podcast of the Week – Shifting our Schools – “Preparing Students for Their Future not our Past.” Talk about a relevant topic for hybrid learning in 2020. This podcast is full of so much information that I could spend ten pages writing about it. The thing I took away from this – our students are “prosumers.” When we were students, we tended to just ‘consume’ information and content (and usually regurgitate it on a test). Or if we did ‘produce’ something it was usually meant just for an extremely limited audience (usually the teacher). Today’s students don’t do that. They ‘prosume’ information and content, which simply means not only do they consume information and content but they just as easily produce it – and not just for a limited audience. Here is a wonderful example of what it means to “prosume.” We need to ensure our students are producing just as much as they are consuming.

 

Video of the Week – You will never forget this firefighter’s tribute to his peers he lost in 9/11.

 

I truly hope you had a great first week. I know it’s just the second week of school – even if it feels like it’s been a month – but it’s clear, more than ever, how much our students need us and how much we need them and each other. And when things don’t go as planned, have patience. Have a great second week!