Read on Twitter
Feel like I’ve done a competent, though not good or great job of teaching in several different modes this year, as have all my colleagues t my school. But what I feel strongly is that while the pressure to find and use new tools has been massive this year...
My inclination to do so has been very low. Not because I don’t like to innovate or use new tools, not my MO. But because the mental space and time just isn’t there fir me or the students. Giving them another log in isn’t helpful.
This is not a criticism of folks doing it, I’m a believer in change and finding things that works for ones particular students. But as this year goes on, the space to think just isn’t there.
And good hearted attempts to force those things just seems to add to the burden. That might just be me since I like to pick things up and figure them out in my own rather than in a group or on someone else’s timeframe.
What I have loved to see is something like @swaffmoney shared with me, that he basically said, I can’t do class like normal and rewrote a lot of what he was doing to accommodate. Not using a lot of new “tools”, but really leaning into student needs in a challenging environment
Granted, a lot of my pain this year is from being forced to use a new curriculum from a corporate overlord. It is a decent thing, but has made me throw out a lot of my normal stuff. In a regular year, that would have been fine.
But in this year, being able to try on tried and true things would have given me more mental space to really focus on how I could adapt that to my students, rather than how to teach brand new lessons and judge their efficacy (which means nothing since this is a bad control year)
The real pain of course is that while I understand the feeling, I don’t want the “year to just be over” I love these kids, they deserve the best I can give them, and they are doing so well and hopefully learning a fair bit.
