Matching Tracksuits

2020 school year

Endings and Circles

Tuesday 8 June 2021

Today was the last day of the 2020/2021 school year: we had a faculty breakfast, acknowledged and expressed our appreciation for the faculty members who will not be returning to the school next year, and packed away the last of our materials, closing up our room for the summer.

Endings used to bother me as a kid because I never could be sure that what came after would be as good as what I’d just experienced. That’s no longer the case because I realized as I grew older that, as long as no disaster strikes, there’s no better or worse — just different.

Awards Night 2021

Thursday 27 May 2021

It’s been two years since our school held an awards night. This year we held a drive-by awards night.

First Day Maskless

Thursday 13 May 2021

How many kids would come to school with the required parental consent form and no mask? It was the question on my mind the whole way to school. The answer:

Eighty students out of 655 enrolled in person. That’s about 15%, which is the district average:

With 87 schools reporting, 7,877 students have opted out of the mask requirement, Waller said. That’s 15% of all Greenville County students. (Source)

And then today, the CDC says that vaccinated individuals can, it seems, go back to business as usual.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can forgo their masks and social distancing in many indoor situations.

“Today, CDC is updating our guidance for fully vaccinated people,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Thursday at a White House COVID-19 briefing. “Anyone who is fully vaccinated, can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing. If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic.”

It makes me wonder — will teachers be able to go back to maskless normalcy soon? And how exactly do I feel about that? I was fussing this morning to a colleague that our governor seemed to say “CDC be damned — we’re going our own way.”

“I will do what the CDC recommends,” I said.

And then today, the CDC relaxes the guidelines.

Ready for Covid-Era Testing

Wednesday 28 April 2021

Last year, we didn’t conduct the end-of-year, state-mandated, federally-mandated, all-but-teacher-student-mandated testing because of the blossoming pandemic. This year, we’re having it.

But that presents a new problem: how to keep kids who are facing each other in plexiglass pods from cheating? (Do many of these kids really have an interest in cheating? I find that hard to believe. This test has no immediate effect on their lives, and the only time I see cheating is when a grade that will land in the grade book and affect the report card is at stake.)

The solution: the district bought thousands of sheets of poster board and even more clips so that we can attach blinders to the plexiglass.

The result: pockets of invisibility throughout the classroom. In fact, as the proctor, I won’t be able to see most of the kids at all at any given moment.

If kids are interested in cheating, the powers that be just made it a whole lot easier for them.

Opłatek 2020

Thursday 17 December 2020

It’s always the highlight of the school year for me, introducing American students to the lovely tradition of sharing the opłatek wafer. The kids love it; the administrators and counselors I invite in love it; I love it.

And I thought that we wouldn’t be able to do it this year. But I’m not one to give up easily when I think it’s something valuable for my kids, so I came up with an alternate plan.

Instead of sharing food, I had kids bring in their own snacks.

“What are we doing, Mr. S?” they asked.

“You’ll see.”

It’s important that they have a bite to eat during the process because that’s what the tradition is all about: breaking bread together.

So the kids divided into two groups, with the inner group rotating in sync, always maintaining social distance, and never touching any other seat.

I showed them pictures from previous years.

“That looks really fun,” one girl said.

Well, it is more fun than what we did today, but perhaps they got a little glimpse of the perfection that is the sharing of the opłatek.

First Impressions

Tuesday 8 December 2020

“They actually kind of make me dizzy.”

It wasn’t what I was expecting when  I asked Ms. Butler about how things were going in her newly-podded classroom with each student seated in a little box of plexiglass. Perhaps I was expecting something more like, “It’s even more difficult to hear students,” or “It’s weird seeing students through so many layers of plexiglass,” or even, “It’s just weird.” But not dizziness.

“What do you mean,” I asked.

“Well, with all these panels of reflective plastic,” she began, feeling her way through the explanation carefully as if she hadn’t really hadn’t tried to put it into words before. “There’s just all these weird reflections that shift and move as you move around the room.”

“That sounds awful.” I get dizzy easily, and it had me a little concerned about how I might react to it myself.

When I got into the classroom this morning and started placing name tags on everyone’s seat, I saw immediately what she meant. The clear plexiglass that divides students into little almost-self-contained cubes reflected images from around the room. These reflections were, in turn, reflected off the black plexiglass bases on which the whole dividers sat, and the play between these reflections and reflections of reflections had me feeling a little woozy within seconds. It was as if everything were somehow in the matrix film, with solid reality turning into liquid, flowing reflections of reality. What’s worse, the whole broad clear barriers reflected again their own reflections from the black bases and also refracted the images of other tables so that we had reflections of reflections of reflections, all moving and shimmering at different speeds and frequencies.

I felt like I was in a hall of mirrors, a corridor of reflections that caved in on themselves, like waves riding on waves that then crash into other ripples, transforming all of reality into a dancing mirage, a dizzying visual cacophony.

“Dear God, what if it’s always like this?”

As I walked around the room affixing the place holders to their right locations, I realized it wasn’t an issue if I didn’t pay attention to it or even think about it. Like baffles in a large gas tank, I thought that perhaps having people in those seats might draw more attention than the reflections themselves.

As the first period with students began, I apologized for some of the changes the new format necessitates — no real…

Written in creative nonfiction class as students worked on their own accounts of the first days in the new pods.

The Challenge

Monday 7 December 2020

I texted a picture to K this morning: “This is what my classroom looks like now,” I said.

“Wow — no more rearranging rooms, I guess,” she replied.

I know a lot of teachers are concerned about the impact this will have on their teaching style, on the types of lessons they can do. I for one am not terribly worried about that because this year I’m teaching only honors classes, and most honors students are relatively mature and somewhat adaptable. There are some things that will take getting used to — not as much motion, more teacher-based lessons, etc. — but overall, I think they’ll do fine.

When I got home, I noticed a little paper with Shakespearean insults on the table. Remembering that L’s class has just started Romeo and Juliet, I thought it might have been from her, but the Boy filled me in when he got home from swimming lessons: “The kids in challenge today were working on Shakespearean insults,” he said. He told me about how funny it was when his friends who went to challenge shared it with him, and I’m assuming he got K to help him find a list of insults on the internet and print them out.

It was only then that I realized: E didn’t get an invitation to join challenge when he started this year. The invitations are based on standardized test scores from second grade, and I immediately thought that the Boy must feel a little left out, a little, well, stupid compared to the others.

K had the same concerns, and we talked about it in the evening when the Boy was sound asleep. “He wanted to know if we could sign him up,” she said forlornly, “and I had to tell him you don’t sign up for it; you get an invitation.”

I remember seeing the challenge kids leave — our district was a little worse in their naming: it was the “gifted and talented” group, which makes everyone else feel less gifted, less talented, and that’s exactly how I felt. I watched them troop out of the classroom in elementary school, wondering what they do there, wondering why I wasn’t a part of it.

I got an invitation at the end of fifth grade and spent sixth grade with the GT kids who’d been doing it for several years by that time. I didn’t feel any different, really, and I don’t really recall doing anything all that spectacular. Of course, that was over 35 years ago, so I can justifiably be a little fuzzy on the details, I’m sure.

Throughout high school, I was most decidedly average. I was in the “advanced” classes only insofar as I was not in remedial English or remedial math. I didn’t take algebra until ninth grade; I never took a single AP course; I had no “Honors” affixed to my class names; I didn’t graduate anywhere near the top 10, and I highly doubt I was even in the top 10%. And yet for high school superlatives (how I loath to this day that idea), my peers voted me “Most Intellectual.” (I was tempted to refuse the award during the senior luncheon, but my mother convinced me it would be rude to do so.) So the recognition for my academic achievement was a mixed bag — conflicting signals. In the end, I just didn’t put much stock into what people thought of my intellectual abilities.

But somehow, when it comes to my kids, I feel a little differently. I want them to be geniuses, above and beyond even those who are above and beyond. What parent doesn’t?

The Boy is starting to realize some people work faster than he does, maybe a little more accurately, K and I concluded. And that’s fine. We’re all different. We all have different gifts. But still, I felt the Boy’s sting just a bit, so I went back to his bedroom and cuddled with him a little more.

“You’re very gifted in many ways,” I told him.

“How?”

“You’re a very good reader. You’re an excellent drawer. And you’re very kind and sensitive to other people’s needs and emotions.”

A pause. “Thank you.” He snuggled in a little closer and went to sleep.

The Unknown

Tuesday 24 November 2020

I first heard the rumor when the Monday night phone call from E’s school’s principal came through. He began explaining how it is theoretically possible that we might not be back in school next week and might instead go back to 100% elearning for everyone through Christmas break. Then today, the teacher in the room next to mine said that there’s a rumor bouncing around Hillcrest High that everyone should take all their materials home for the weekend because it might last until after Christmas break. In the afternoon, no word from the principal about that, and he’s always very good about communicating things like that to us. No word from the district, who is often not the best about communicating things like this. (They should address the fact that there are so many rumors roiling around like this. And I would think if an elementary school principal were to include such a comment in his weekly phone blast that there is some legitimate basis for it.)

So we all go home in uncertainty…

Thursday at Home

Thursday 29 October 2020

We stayed home today because of potential high winds due to the remnants of Zeta. Since we’re all so used to it, switching to online learning was a snap for everyone. K pointed out the now-obvious: they’ll be more willing to do this in the future with less risk because they know we can do elearning.

No more snow days. More wind/rain/inclement weather elearning days.

Unfortunately, the neighbor up the street with the trashy Halloween decorations suffered little damage to his display…

First Day at 100%

Wednesday 28 October 2020

We go to school five days a week now, and this has advantages and disadvantages.

First, I get all my friends back. A and O are my two best friends, and because of Covid, I didn’t have them in class since we went to school in different groups. Today, though, we go five days a week, and we don’t have two groups anymore. We talked about the surprise I’m going to do for their mom. I’m going to take a Dobby mask and try to surprise her and maybe spook her a little bit with a fake knife.

Next, I feel better having a big group of twenty people. I think that everyone in one class should be together and not split up into two groups.

However, I have to wear a mask all day, and this is a disadvantage. A mask is uncomfortable because it rubs on your mouth, and it itches. Even though it’s uncomfortable, I have to do it because covid is bad, and we have to stop the spread. Masks help stop the spread.

I think that it’s very much better than two groups because I get so many people to be with.

Birds and Testing

Tuesday 20 October 2020

The kids are all taking a benchmark test. We’re spending two hours of each of the two days students will be in school taking a district-mandated benchmark test, which, truth be told, will be of little to no value to me. I know where my students are; I know where we’re going; I know what I haven’t covered. Further, I know the students better than a benchmark could show

In the midst of all this, a bird flies up to the window and perches on the sill. It cocks its head as it investigates all the humanoid forms on the inside, all hunched over glowing boxes, almost all oblivious to the bird’s presence. Except Anna. She’s sitting next to the window and has watched the bird flutter up. She takes a break from her test and looks over at the bird, smiling and likely grateful for the break the bird’s presence has brought.

Birds come to this window regularly, but their presence injects a bit of tragic chaos into the class atmosphere. Twice this year, birds have flown into the window with a sickening thud, only to lie outside the window slowly dying of the blunt force trauma the window and physics delivered. They flap about just outside our window as if they are trying to distract a predator to lure it away from its nest. Those times, though, the bird was not faking.

There’s an analogy there, I think. The window is our education system: it can either offer a glimpse into a new world, inviting participation and fascination, or it can just break students, often with rigid testing systems and the one-size-fits-all mentality they can engender.

During this highly stressful year, I think testing is more the break-students type of experience than anything else. Why are we spending two hours of each of the two days this week testing? Our students are in the classroom two days a week. That’s about fourteen hours a week. And we’re four of those hours (about 28.5%) of that time administering benchmark tests? Benchmark tests?! I can tell you just have close my students are to any given benchmark without taking nearly thirty percent of my week’s time with students to do it.

On a positive note, though, the assistant principal came into my room about ten minutes into the lesson with the district’s assistant superintendent so he could see how I’m streaming my class. Apparently, I’m something of a trailblazer with this in the district. I, for one, can’t understand why more teachers aren’t doing it on their own: it returns my planning to normal, pre-covid dimensions. I no longer have to create something separate for the kids at home. I do, though, have a unique situation in that I teach only honors kids, which means that most of them are motivated to log on and follow along from home. Other students might not be so willing. (Still, said students — at risk, we would call them — are not necessarily doing the elearning anyway. What difference does it make which type of online learning they are neglecting? I’m fortunate that most of the kids follow along.

Today in School

Wednesday 14 October 2020

We had the PSAT today, so many students were out during class. No matter — it’s recorded and posted on Google Classroom.

We began the day with a short open-note quiz on the two poems we just finished and on poetry in general. We followed that with a short viewing (about a minute) of the Stanford Viennese Ball’s opening waltz:

This was in order to provide students with some perspective about what a waltz looks like when we read “My Papa’s Waltz.”

Our reading of “My Papa’s Waltz” was a cautionary tale. At first it seems like so many words have connotations of abuse that the poem is actually about an abusive father.

  • The “whiskey on your breath” line makes us think he’s inebriated.
  • “Death” has obvious bad connotations.
  • “Battered” and “beat” are abusive words.

The problem, though, is this is not a close-enough reading.

  • Notice: his knuckle is what’s battered. Along with the “palm caked hard with dirt,” this suggests he’s a man used to hard manual labor.
  • He’s beating time and nothing else — he’s tapping the boy’s head 1-2-3 to help him keep up with the waltz.
  • The text shows he’s had something to drink; it doesn’t say he’s inebriated. (“Remember what that waltz looked like?” I reminded the students. “Do you think he could do that if he’d been inebriated?”)
  • Note who puts him to bed: the father.

So this was a cautionary tale about reading too much into the connotations of a poem. Don’t overdo it. If there’s no evidence in the text, it’s likely not a valid interpretation.

Streaming

Wednesday 7 October 2020

It’s taken a while to get everything lined up, to get everything prepared, to get all the kids set and expecting it, but today, I finally pulled it off.

I live-streamed my classes so that students at home could simply follow along. I used a bone-conduction blue tooth headset to hear questions from the online kids and to make sure they heard me clearly, and I presented the screen through Google Meet so they could simply follow along with the text as we annotated it. (And one of the administrators, knowing I was doing this, dropped by to take some pictures, which made it to social media.)

In the past, we’ve had material prepared for kids at home and material prepared for kids in school. I’ve been teaching doubled lessons: I teach the same thing on Monday to the students who attend Monday and Wednesday then I repeat it all Tuesday for the other group. But no more.

The parental response has been completely positive and overwhelmingly uniform:

  • This was great…my son really liked this
  • THIS IS AWESOME!! Would love to see y’all make this happen!!!
  • This was excellent! The most positive school response I’ve seen from my daughter since Covid began.
  • I have wondered from the beginning why this wasn’t done for every class.
  • Rave reviews from my 8th grader!
  • This was a huge help. Thank you, Mr. Scott! Would love to see this happen for additional classes.

So two things now come to mind:

  1. I must plan all my lessons so that they can fit into such a template. (Or almost all my lessons. I don’t know about Socratic seminars and other forms of discussion, but perhaps it’s do-able with a little ingenuity.)
  2. I must talk several teachers off the ledge when word starts getting around that this is going to be required (it won’t) and that it’s terribly complicated (it isn’t) and that it will require much more planning time (much less, actually).

Finally, it’s proved one thing to me as well: snow days are now completely obsolete.

Socratic Seminar

Wednesday 30 September 2020

We had our first Socratic seminar today. The other halves of the classes will have it tomorrow, but I’m not looking forward to as much as I would have thought I would. It’s just so much different in such small classes. In sixth period, there were only eight students, which means four pairs. Four people talking doesn’t allow for animated discussion amongst eighth graders, you would think, but they actually did the best among all the students. It helps to have naturally talkative students, I guess. Still, with eight to twelve pairs of students working, the seminars seem to produce more ideas and livelier discussions.

It doesn’t work as well when there’s only half the class in attendance, but that’s just one of the sacrifices we make in 2020. We’re there. We’re able to do it at all. That’s what counts.

Today in Class

Thursday 10 September 2020

Students have been spending the last two days working on how we can use plot and setting to analyze a short story. Each day’s classes came up with slightly different results.

Our first step was to explicate the plot and setting of our story:

We determined that the real heart of the story, and thus of the conflict, was the fact that the protagonist unknowingly kills his brother as he tries to escape from being pinned down on the roof. This is what gives the story its power; this is the heart of the story that cannot be tampered with.

We then began asking whether we could change various elements of the plot. We determined that it doesn’t have to be on a roof; it just has to be somewhere the protagonist can be trapped. We decided that it doesn’t have to be Dublin, though a historian of the Irish Civil War might tell us that snipers were only active in Dublin. (I have no idea if this is the case. I used it as an example.) At first, everyone thought it couldn’t be moved from Ireland because it’s set in the Irish Civil War, but we soon figured out that it simply has to be in a setting where a brother could kill a brother without knowing it. Civil war and gang warfare are the most logical locations.

From there, it was fairly easy to create a working TS for our paragraph. We added some CDs before we decided that we had them in the wrong order: CD2 was our first CD so we would actually reverse the order if we were to write this paragraph. Finally, once all the CM was completed, we saw that our TS was a little out of alignment with our chunks, so we gave it a whack to knock it over a bit, adding “In order for the surprise ending to work” at the beginning of the paragraph.

At this point, the majority of the work is done. We still have actually to write out everything, but the hardest part is behind us.

Schooling 2020

Friday 4 September 2020

Were this a normal week, I would have finished today feeling that I had laid the foundation my students for the rest of the year by teaching them the basics of the writing system we use. They would have practiced and planned with partners as I wandered about the room, listening to conversations here and there and intervening when I felt it was necessary.

“Please zoom in to 150% on Google Docs,” I would have said, “so I can get a peek as I walk by and see if you need direction or not.” I would have looked over students shoulders to see if their first attempts with this at-first bizarre system of writing I teach (and insist on students using) were developing according to plan.

I would have told a few students, “Look, you really need some one-on-one time with this, so come by tomorrow during advisory, and we’ll make sure you leave feeling much more confident.”

Instead, I went step by step with students through the process, but each student was with me for a different part of the process; the other time they worked through it on their own at home with materials I developed. Which means I was unable to assess and assist them as they went along. Which meant I spent an inordinate amount of time assessing things online this week that I never would have assessed in a normal year. Which means I’m not at all confident about my students’ development right now.

Covid-schooling.

First Week

Thursday 27 August 2020

Whew — Thursday. I made it. Or rather, “I MADE IT!” I can’t believe i just taught the same lesson four times a day for four days — sixteen times the same lesson. THE SAME STINKING LESSON!. I thought i would go absolutely stark raving mad before it was all over. And yet I somehow made it through. 

I did realize in sixth period — or was it fith period? They’re all running together for me — that I didn’t do the student handbook stuff with them today. And to be honest, I’m not even sure when I stopped doing it. Did I do it with third period today but not the other periods, or did I just neglect it completely today? I really don’t remember. 

When you teach the same thing over and over, it really becomes difficult to remember what you’ve done when. I would get to a point in the lesson and think, “Wait didn’t I tell them this earlier? Or was that last period?” And honestly, I could just as easily ask myself, “Or was it the period before that?” Every period seemed to blend into the next; the last four days have been a blur, a smear of repeated instructions and jokes. I found myself saying even the same off-the-cuff jokes as well, repeating them if they amused me even vaguely the first time I made them. The pinnacle of the dad jokes joke? I thought of it in fourth period today (Or was it third? Or fifth?) and repeated it the other periods. It’s no longer off the cuff if you’re doing it with intention, is it?

Still, there was a certain ease to the week. I never had to stop and think, “Wait, what am I doing tomorrow?” The answer was always the same.

I remember reading a book — a Malcolm Gladwell book, I think — about the value of repetition for toddlers. It was about the show Blues Clues and the fact that apparently, the series aired the same show every day of the week, thus repeating the week’s episode five times. It had something to do with the comfort of predictability. When the kids watched the same show for the third or fourth time, they knew exactly what would happen next, and that gave them some kind of comfort. It reminds me of E and his ability to watch the same episode of Mighty Machines over and over. “Deep Underground” was a favorite — he must have watched that ten or more times. If streaming the show on Netflix could somehow wear it out, that’s just what he did.

Yet despite all that, the repetition didn’t do anything for me but tire me out. If I had to do that one more time, I think I’d mutiny. “Mr. Finlay, I refuse to do that lesson one more time! Not even once!” Mutiny on the Hughes!

I’m also a little surprised that I managed to write four times in this journal about essentially the same thing: the first week back. The days, despite their repetition, have had a certain different quality all their own. In fact, the word count shows that I’ve done more each day than I did the previous day, which was the opposite of what I expected.

Random Picture from the Past

Living in Lipnica, I spent a lot of time with friends in this bar or that bar, talking and just passing the time. One evening, sitting with my best friend, I snapped a picture. I had my camera with me because it was the last night that particular bar was going to be open. He turned his head just as I snapped the long exposure, and the resulting image was otherworldly — haunting and somewhat terrifying.

2020 School Year Day 2

Tuesday 25 August 2020

We’ve finished two days of school. I swear it feels like a week already. There’s nothing like doing the same thing over and over to drive the joy out of something. Today, the same lessons as yesterday: one lesson four times, the other once. And what’s worse: this is only the halfway point. I still have to do the same lesson just as many times as I’ve already done it.

As with yesterday, I tried journaling with my journalism/creative nonfiction students today:

Day two is now behind us. I feel like we’ve been here for a week. I’ve done the same thing with eight — count them, eight — classes, and I still have eight more to do. I’m already seeing that the plan to try to do the same lesson with the in-person kids throughout the week was an absolutely ridiculous idea: I’d go stark raving mad if I had to do every week like this week, with the same lesson over and over and over and over and over and over and over. (I’m tempted to do that sixteen times, but I don’t even want to try to keep track of how many times I’ve actually typed it…)

So what was different about today as opposed to yesterday? New kids — the obvious answer. Some very entertaining kids, including siblings of folks I”ve taught in the class (at least two that I can think of). Some very quiet kids. (I used to worry about such kids, but I’ve learned over the years that such kids are quiet as a sort of defense mechanism. What I mistook for near-apathy is in fact just a lack of certainty about where they fit in the class, what their role will be.) SOme kids with great senses of humor — kids that can take ribbing and know that I”m’ actually being silly with them and who hopefully realize I mean the exact opposite.

I also remembered to have my online meeting with kids who are still at home. I got to talk to three girls, one I’ll meet tomorrow and two I’ll meet Thursday. I don’t think anyone really realizes how far that goes in creating a positive first impression. It’s a little bit of effort that has a disproportionately large impact on one’s impression. It’s like paying a dollar and getting ten dollars worth of candy.

All these new procedures are gradually becoming new habits. I didn’t forget to spray disinfectant on any desks today, and I”m not sure I got them all yesterday. It’s one of those things that I think, “Missing one time is not the end of the world,” when, in fact, in a pandemic situation, it might very well ultimately be the end of the world for someone. It’s almost depressing to think about it like that, but viruses don’t care how we feel about them. They’re just there, doing what they do without giving it a single thought.

I am getting terribly yawny now. I always do during seventh period. When I used to have English I during seventh period, I felt those kids were getting something of a raw deal because I could never get through that class with the same enthusiasm as I did with other classes. I found myself wishing I’d filmed fourth period so I could just say, “Watch this video and do it along with them…” It was the same way yesterday, and as a result, I went to bed shortly after nine. I was so exhausted that it was difficult to focus. I guess it’s the way every year during the first few weeks: my body is used to a different schedule, and it rebels at having revert back to a school-year schedule.

It was an especially long day because it was the Girl’s first volleyball game. Possibly the last — who knows in these times. Is it safe? We all take the most precautions that we can. It’s such an important element in L’s life, so important to her mental heath — does that outweigh the risks? What exactly are the risks? It still seems so unlikely and yet so inevitable.

The Girl did well; her team won both sets. She had a couple of really good saves, and in set one, her spike was the winning point (if memory serves).

Her school won both sets easily, and the coach was wise and sportsmanlike enough to pull almost all the starters when the second set was clearly in the bag and put some sixth- and seventh-graders in to get some experience.

A good day, but tiring.

First Day 2020

Monday 24 August 2020

It’s an odd thing, repeating the same thing four times. Four times. Four times. Four times. But that’s what I did today, doing the first day scenario four times as I have four English I Honors classes this year. But in fact, I’ll be repeating today’s lessons four days, hitting a quarter of the students in a given period each day. That’s an altogether different issue: repeating the same lesson sixteen times.

That’s the Covid-19, 2020-school-year reality.

The only exception to this is journalism, which is not journalism this year because it’s logistically impossible. Instead, it’s “Creative Nonfiction” — close but not really the same at all. In that class, I had the kids start their journals, and I wrote in my own to model the expectation and show that when I say “You can write about anything,” I mean it:

The first day of the dreaded 2020 school year is over and what do I have to show for it? Well, I’m quite frankly completely sick of this mask: I haven’t worn a mask continually ever. Evetr. During last week, I took it off in the classroom, but GCS requires teachers to wear a mask when around students, and honestly, if the didn’t require it, I would be a little upset. It’s a pain, but it’s for everyone’s safety.

Still, there were a lot of things I didn’t expect. For one thing, it’s much harder to understand what students are saying when they’re wearing masks. I had one girl who spoke very quietly, and I had to ask her to slip her mask off for a second because I couldn’t understand what she was saying at one point. And it happened more than once now that I think about it. Another unexpected element was how warm my face got with it on. Having not worn a mask for more than a hour at a time, I didn’t realize how my face would warm up and just stay warm. My wife had to wear a mask every day when she was still working at __, and she told me how hot it was, but it really didn’t register that it would be my reality when the school year started. A final unexpected element was how I could get used to it. Despite the heat and the other challenges, there were points that I wasn’t even thinking about it — until my nose itched and I went to scratch it.

Still, it’s a small price to pay. I’m glad to be back in the classroom with students. That 100% online teaching was hardly teaching. Granted, I didn’t do any teaching today to speak of (well, perhaps showing students how to organize their Drive folders a bit), but still, being physically with the students–there’s no substitute for it. I don’t really like that I won’t see these kids for a week after they leave today, though I know it’s necessary for preventing the spread of our covid reality. Will I remember everyone’s name in a week after not having seen them? I kind of doubt it. I’m so terrible with names as it is: having a week between each meeting will make it all the more difficult. That’s tempered by the fact that I”m only learning 4-7 names per period. Despite that, I doubt I’ll remember every name next Monday.

(I just had a realization: if we have a snow day, one group of kids is missing essentially a whole week of school. It’s another argument against having in-person days different lessons from what online kids are doing.)

I will have to write a “first” entry three more times this week.

That’s the Covid-19, 2020-school-year reality.

The Night Before

Sunday 23 August 2020

Tomorrow is the first day of school. We were supposed to start a week ago, but for whatever reason, the district moved the start date back a week. Kids were supposed to come to the school in shifts and get their Chromebooks and do some other administrative-type things. A lot of kids did; a lot didn’t.

We were supposed to have elearning starting tomorrow for those not coming into the school building (75% of the students on any given day). Instead, since the district was having issues with Google Classroom rosters, we’re doing school-wide lessons instead of teacher/subject-specific lessons.

Everything is turned, twisted, confused, and confusing. For the first time in my teaching career, including when I was student-teaching, I’m going into the first day of school with no clear idea of how things will go, what we will do, when we will do it.

And I’m completely okay with that. Seriously — no stress at all. This is going to be the year (as long as we’re going to school in person in one form or another) of letting go. This is the year of flexibility.

We — teachers, students, and parents — will become figurative contortion artists.