Remote Teaching ≠ Real School
It’s not. Not close. But I’ll save the details for another day.
Big picture: we are working. We are working hard. Many of us are working as hard as we’ve ever worked. Many feel exhausted the way we haven’t since we were first-year teachers.
While we are trying, the City and the Department of Education are making our lives hard (and some administrations – not mine – are also standing in our way). They have stolen our planning time, while asking us to plan completely new lessons and even curricula. They have allowed misguided principals to over-schedule days for those unfortunate teachers, pushing them further behind on their work. They let us learn to do live lessons on Zoom, and then surprised us by banning that tool. They took Spring Break, then Passover and Good Friday. They send some of us to useless daily meetings. Instead of consistently supporting us, the Department has wasted our time; sucked our energy.
We are doing our best to engage our students. I’m fortunate. Most of my students want to be engaged. It makes my job easer than most. And it’s not easy. It’s hard. It’s real hard. And it’s just as hard, probably harder, for teachers across the city. Easily the worst problem? Kids without internet access. And don’t get me started on meeting students’ individual needs (from their IEPs).
Remote teaching? A pale imitation of teaching. We are not face to face, answering questions, explaining concepts, drawing students out. We are not making eye contact. We can’t encourage the same way. We CONTINUE READING: Remote Teaching ≠ Real School | JD2718