If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound? If a teacher has no one to teach, are they a teacher?
The short answer is yes. To which one? Both...sort of.
This whole #AtHomeLearning thing is kind of a struggle, but not for the reasons you may think if you are not an educator. I know the tech. I can use iReady, ScreenCastify, FlipGrid, IXL, GoogleClassroom, GoogleMeets...the whole shebang. I can see what my kids are working on and see where they need to go next. I can see their progress, but I can also see what their progress should be...you know, like in my classroom.
There are few things as hard for a teacher as not being able to help our students. Yes, I can video chat or send them a screen cast. It's not the same. Yes, I can point them to a Khan academy or BrainPop. It's not the same. Yes, I can send them a hug or high five with my Bitmoji...You guessed it - not the same.
I miss the hugs, the high fives, the smiles, the laughs. I miss being tapped on the arm while I'm talking. I miss my chatty students who never stop talking. I miss the rambunctious kids squirming around, trying their hardest to keep it together until we have a movement break. I miss averting potential emotional crises because kids haven't fully developed ways to deal with emotion. (I don't miss tears. Mr. S doesn't do tears ) I miss trying to make subjects that I don't even like fun and interesting. In case you didn't know, teachers are the best actors. Some of the best math teachers I have met grew up HATING math.
This is a pretty negative and depressing post, huh? Well, that's because teachers aren't #ReadyforSummer. We are ready for #BacktoSchool - but, like this year...not in August.
Many of us feel robbed of time with our class; cheated out of the closure of a proper send-off. But in total honesty, this isn't a negative sob-story of a post at all. It's a testimony. It is an illustration of a teacher's love and compassion. It is the story of how each and every called educator cares for their students.
This is not the end of a story, but the beginning of a new chapter - for us, our students, our schools, our communities, and our world.
And as with every good book, the whole story can't be all unicorn vomit and rainbow bunnies. There has to be a dragon to defeat; an adventure to go on. We teach our kids that a good story has a beginning, middle, and end. The somewhere in the beginning, a problem should be introduced. We have a problem and we are dealing with it. That just proves that we aren't at the end of the story yet. Oh yeah, and as for the tree thing - it has something to do with it still producing vibrations in the air even though you aren't around to perceive it...but if you came here looking for a science lesson... #OccasionallyOpinionated doesn't sound like the place to find it.
Peace Out,
CShel