Written May 15. Just a little late posting it...
We've been doing hybrid school for a little over a month, and so far -- it's not as bad as I was fearing. We do in-person in the mornings. We have two in-person cohorts. One comes on Mondays and Wednesdays, the other on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We also have a third cohort of kids who stay at home. In the afternoons, we still do virtual learning for everyone.
The mornings go quickly. Sure, the in-person kids totally ignore the whole "give each other space" thing... no matter how many times you remind them... but so far the behaviors have been okay. Perhaps it's just because there are fewer kids to be behavioresque. I haven't heard any kids running around slamming doors so far, but maybe they're still warming up. The only tears I've really noticed are from the preschoolers who miss their parents.
Even though I'm in the building in the mornings, I have little physical contact with students. I greet some of them arriving, and I help walk some of them to their buses, but the rest of the time, I'm doing online groups. Since I share my workspace (another teacher has a desk on the other side of the classroom), they still want me to wear a mask while teaching online. I'm trying to teach some of these kids how to pronounce certain letter sounds -- but with facial coverings, that's tricky. The admins gave me a face shield and a beekeeper-type shield, too, but those just fog up and then the kids can't see my lips anyway.
On the bright side, doing small groups online has been a real treat. Maybe because I was given some really sweet kiddos this year, or maybe it's the environment, but I've really been able to get to know these kids better this year. I'm really going to miss some of them.
Working with kids online has other pros and cons. One pro is: if they are being noisy -- you can mute 'em! Of course, they can unmute themselves right back, but overall the whole environment is a lot quieter. Another pro: if they need a snack, or the bathroom, they can just go -- I mean, sure, they'll miss part of the lesson, but that's not something I can control, so I let it go. Another pro is that some of the kids who are handfuls in real life are actually quite composed when at home online.
Cons: Some of the kids show way more than they should. It was a joke in the beginning of the pandemic, you may recall, that you might be video calling someone and see someone walking around without clothes in the background or something. At this point, though, the kids and their families seem to be settled enough that we don't see a lot of background distractions. We do, however, see kids trying to hold their computers/laptops with their feet. We still see kids putting their eyeballs or mouths up to the camera. Kids still like to show off their toys. Little brothers and sisters still wander into view. The more attention-starved kids know that they can "accidentally" unmute, or raise or lower their little "hand" and force everyone to listen to the incessant beeping. They know how to enter a meeting twice, which at the least makes everyone distracted, and at worst provides some alarming, noisy feedback. In short, if a kid is determined to be annoying, literally sitting two miles away from their teacher isn't going to stop them from succeeding.
I don't miss recess duty -- much. It could be fun when I could get all the kids involved in a game of "shark tag," but less fun when I was breaking up fights and trying to get the kids to stop throwing rotten apples at the neighbors' house.
I don't miss cafeteria duty, and I doubt I ever will.
I don't miss having to haul myself from classroom to classroom to teach small groups.
I don't miss in-person staff meetings.
* * *
Kids 12+ in the U.S. can now be vaccinated, and that's great news except I don't think any of our students are old enough yet. Yay for the middle and high schools, though!
India has recently had a huge surge of Covid cases and deaths. :(
Canada's border with the U.S. is still closed.
And so it goes.
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