Fall 2020 teaching reflection
This blog is intended to describe my Fall 202 teaching during a pandemic. I will not sugarcoat my experience because it is my truth. I hope to answer questions my teacher friends and non-teacher friends have about my experience. You may find your experience was similar or completely different from mine. However, teaching in a pandemic is hard.
The school year began with two weeks of virtual learning. You can learn about my first week here. Many students came to zooms but did not do assignments. Then the next six weeks my school did a hybrid schedule of half our students on one day and the other half on the next day. I taught three in-person classes and three asynchronous classes. 90% of my in-person students did absolutely nothing when they were home. Our grades were horrible district-wide and hybrid schedules were canceled two weeks early to try to get students to pass. Grades improved once students were in the building every day. However, our campus came up with a grade recovery plan that allowed all previous assignments to be done no matter the due date, and teachers created two weeks of extra credit assignments. In-person students took advantage of the extra credit, but virtual students were still struggling. By the end of the nine weeks, I had the largest number of failures I have ever had in my career.
I know there is a lot of controversy about failing students during a pandemic. I don’t feel guilty about failing students because students are given an opportunity to fix their grades with Saturday schools (we also offer after school time). My school district is also a social promotion district so students will be promoted no matter their grade in my class. Grades are the only way for parents to know what their students are doing in my class. I have always aligned my assignments with TEKS, so my grade book reflects mastery, not compliance. I was devasted by my failure rate, but I knew asynchronous learning would change my grade book, and all I could do is improve.
What did I do differently the second term? I tried to contact parents immediately when their students began the term without doing an assignment or attendance check-in. Did it help? No. I had to contact the same exact parents three weeks later when they failed the first progress report. I did not like how extra credit was given to students in the first term. I have always provided alternative assignments for students to prove mastery of an assignment and was determined to do so in the second term. This has proven to lessen the number of missing assignments I have. Students can’t copy from their peers, and they realize it’s better to do the initial assignment than the alternative one. I created alternative assignments for all TEKS learned in the first test. All students could improve their grades or replace their missing assignments. Very few students took the opportunity, and many did worse than the first assignment given. Some changes were required by the district which included less zoom session and changing the setup for Schoology courses. This only provided me more time to contact parents. My team also went from two assignments a week to one assignment. None of the changes improved passing rates or mastery.
A major change for me in the second term was having a virtual class taken away from me and given another in-person class. This became disastrous for my planning time. Making videos, creating Schoology courses, and converting in-person learning to online learning takes time. I couldn’t finish a whole week of lessons on Friday as I had done in the first term. Instead, I was creating videos the day before or even the day of. I’m not proud of myself for this, but I’m also not willing to spend my weekends doing schoolwork. I’m already risking my health by teaching in person. Why should I work outside of contract time? Did I work outside of contract time? Yes, but only to grade. Students have the weekend to do assignments in the asynchronous model, and I sometimes grade on the weekends to make sure progress report grades were accurate. I felt defeated knowing so many changes were made and there was little impact on students’ learning.
What did I learn?
Asynchronous learning is not best for middle school students. I have yet to meet a middle school teacher with high engagement and high mastery with asynchronous (feel free to give me some recommendations).
It is highly unfair to ESL and special education students. Many accommodations can’t be given online and there has been no help on the national or state level in providing those accommodations.
Middle school students don’t check their email or Schoology messages. The easiest way to ensure students read messages from me was to make a Schoology announcement.
Students who come to non-required zooms do better than those who don’t.
My students did not like to do work on Fridays.
Open-ended responses were the only way to confirm if students understood the material or not.
Parents were very overwhelmed with work and trying to get their students to do multiple classes.
The Fall semester was a disaster for most of my virtual students.
Virtual learning burnout was obvious. Students refused to do long term assignments. If it required multiple days to do an assignment or project, they were likely to skip it. After Thanksgiving, very few students engaged in my class every single day. Students who skipped lessons obviously googled their answers for assignments. Parents had no idea how to teach time management for virtual learning and weren’t provided any help. Taking everything into consideration, I don’t think teaching them at the same time as in-person students would have led to better results.
What about COVID? My campus didn’t have confirmed cases until October (school starts in August). However, almost every single Texas teacher I talked to in the last four months has said the same thing, “Students are disappearing for two weeks.” Many parents aren’t answering the school’s phone calls to confirm their student is sick. Students come back after two weeks and say they were home. I have been teaching for twelve years, and I have never had parents who let their students stay home for no reason for weeks at a time. When students go on vacations, they usually share pictures with their peers or at least discuss what they saw. I believe my campus and others have COVID cases that have not been confirmed. I, unfortunately, had more confirmed COVID cases than any other teacher on my campus. This took a heavy toll on my mental health after Thanksgiving. I began having stressful dreams, and my husband noticed I was having ticks on the last day before the holidays. It is extremely hard to be my best teacher self when I’m worried about getting sick and spreading it to my family.
I don’t feel the TEA guidelines are enough to protect everyone in the school building. For example, it should never be allowed for staff to wear just a face shield. If students need to see the mouth for learning, staff members should be wearing clear masks. The 2% positive rate of the school might be much lower than the 25% positive rate of a class a student has. Students are not told the person they ate lunch next to has COVID so there is no way for contract tracing to be completely correct. I’m not aware of any secondary lunchrooms that have children separated by six feet. Suggestions and not mandates are not helpful to larger schools. I am happy that masks are still being enforced by the latest guidelines. However, the refusal to have schools be 100% virtual at times is ridiculous. Schools and districts should be allowed to choose when the spread is too high in their area, not the state.
What was my biggest disappointment this Fall? I am horrified at the lack of SEL (social-emotional learning) emphasis at my campus and district. I know grades were a large part of the conversations happening in various meetings. However, students are navigating a pandemic as children. Why isn’t SEL a major topic of conversation? I did my best to incorporate SEL into my time with my homeroom class. However, it was nonexistent with my virtual students. My zoom sessions always included talking to students about how they are feeling and topics of interest, but they didn’t incorporate the SEL lessons they needed. I don’t even know how anyone is implementing SEL in the asynchronous model. I will never feel comfortable at a school that doesn’t emphasize SEL, and I’m starting to wonder if any secondary schools do.
What was my highlight this Fall? I did not forget my experience of not seeing my students after Spring Break earlier this year. I was successful in remembering that time with my students is precious, and it’s not all about standards. I also believe that students came to school more eager than years before. Students usually have a lot of apathy by October, but after not being in the school building for almost six months the students welcomed the school day routine. I feel like I did a great job with bonding with my homeroom students by incorporating SEL. I was very blessed this year with a group of students who enjoy reading. My classroom library was used more than ever before. I am looking forward to seeing all my students and forming better relationships in the Spring.
What am I going to do differently in the Spring? I’m going to try to build relationships more. I’m going to send postcards to the students who haven’t engaged at all. I’m going to try to build more non-academic zoom meetings to engage virtual parents and students. My school did it in the Spring with much success. I’m going to do my best to recognize virtual fatigue. I’m going to try to teach time management skills when assigning projects by having more check-ins. I know my first unit is extremely hard and students and parents need to know the lessons need to be done before a graded assignment is done. I’m going to try and email with the other teachers on my team, so parents get one unified email from their core teachers instead of four separate ones. I’m going to recognize we are in a pandemic. Parents, students, teacher are doing their best. No matter the changes I implement, everyone’s safety will still the most important priority in my classroom.
How did this semester change me as a teacher? I realized that this isn’t sustainable. I know many districts are realizing their refusal to have teachers only teach virtually was a mistake. All I can do is my best. I give grace to my students, and I will give it to myself. My anxiety has never reached such a high level, and I need to work on improving my mental health in the Spring. I have sacrificed way too much time with my family because of the need for social distance because of my job.. I know many educators are nervous about the vaccine. It will be the only reason I teach in person next school year. I will be looking for a virtual job teaching next school year, and I’m even willing to take a year off from teaching to not deal with the anxiety I experienced and see my family more. Fall 2020 was more disappointing than I could ever imagine. I envisioned all my love of teaching to get me through hard days. Instead, I was faced with constant changes with no help and anxiety about my physical health. I’m holding on to the idea it won’t be this way forever.
