As a teacher, I understand that I need to prepare for the unexpected. Maybe it's an unplanned fire drill interrupting a lesson. Maybe my students just don't understand a unit and I need to do an extra review. Maybe my class is having problems being kind and I need to stop for a class meeting. So many maybes... I never would have thought I'd be delaying our routine for two weeks for a pandemic. I just wasn't prepared. There are just so many uncertainties. We were able to release some suggested activities for students, and we did. However, what the general public doesn't understand is why public school can't make those activities requirements. The law says that there must be equal opportunities for all when it comes to education. As it should. Which means, we must think about our students who don't have access to online platforms for instruction. We also must account for our students who have Individualized Education Plans and need differentiated instruction. All things that we know how to do in our brick and mortar schools. Unfortunately, education has not been able to keep up with how fast society and technology changes. Do I think that we will see a shift now? Absolutely. Do teachers wish we were teaching instead of holding our breathe with the rest of the country/world? Absolutely. Would I rather this blog be about my reflections about doing daily quick writes with my class? Absolutely. Please know this, teachers are not sitting around doing nothing. We are worrying about our students, we are researching what lessons we can prepare for when we return to school, and we are hoping to be back in our classrooms as soon as possible. But right now, there are just so many maybes...
Writer's Notebook: This year, I decided to try the March Challenge and write with my students every day. I wrote with them in the beginning of the year a few times as a model, but this is the first that I'm consistently writing. In fact as I'm typing this, my students are writing in their writing journals. For my journal, I've mostly been keeping a diary of my observations about the daily quick writes. I am trying to make sure that our five minutes is well spent in regards to building writing fluency. Something I've noticed and mentioned in one of my entries is how quiet the majority of the students are at this time. There a a few that whisper occasionally, but not disruptively. Even when I notice a student stop and appear to be thinking, they usually aren't stopping to chat with a neighboring student. So what is it that has them so engaged? Is it because of the choice they have in picking their own topic? Is it because it's really the onl
So many questions unanswered. So many unknowns. Complicated. We will do what we can, the best we can, under these circumstances.
ReplyDeleteYes, so many maybes. Eventually we will have answers, and somewhere down the road we will look back on all this and be glad that it's over. We will make it through! :-) ~JudyK
ReplyDeleteMaybes can be a space for possibility and dreaming big. Maybe that's a creative synchronous learning exchange is let's think of wonderful possible maybes in the world like "Maybe we can move all the homeless people to golf courses in Florida."
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