Another View: AV #208 - Being Together in the Classroom - Part 1 (Laughing)
Distance learning: Not remotely or virtually the same as the classroom
I stopped teaching after five years – in 1981—thinking there might be something else I could do. I asked a veteran teacher at that time—who seemed happy in his job—why he kept at it. He answered: “In what other job can you have two good laughs a day?”
Wise words. And perhaps one reason I ended up teaching or coaching another 20 years.
This is why those* who sound (too) pleased, in our Covid-19 isolation, that we have (finally) turned to remote teaching—as if only now have we discovered what they believe to be “the future of education”—don’t understand why teachers teach. Why we love being with our students, in the classroom. And why teaching can often be—lest we forget—so much fun. (*Addendum first quotes from such voices. After that, quotes from teachers and students less sure about this Brave New Online World.)
I fear we might take the wrong lessons from this crisis. I hope we see the irony in the argument that distance learning is how we can truly personalize education. Isn’t being personal, even silly, half the fun of being together in the classroom (remember the old days, back in early March)? Isn’t this how we connect?
I walk into a Freshmen class on April Fool’s Day and see the students have turned all their desks backwards and sit, looking oh so polite and proper, facing the back of the room. (Almost) no one cracks a smile, from what I can see on the faces of those who are now in “the last row.” I try to stifle my laugh, CONTINUE READING: Another View: AV #208 - Being Together in the Classroom - Part 1 (Laughing) | National Education Policy Center
