Monday, May 4, 2020

Let's Teach in Pajamas Forever | The Jose Vilson

Let's Teach in Pajamas Forever | The Jose Vilson

LET’S TEACH IN PAJAMAS FOREVER


Contrary to my own public activism and advocacy, I propose that we move the nation’s largest public school system into a completely online endeavor forever and a day. I know this may come as a shock to everyone who’s been following me for years, but I might have developed outright envy for some of my most fervent detractors. I’m jealous of the way they speak, walk, and work as if they’ve got their theory of online schooling fully figured out. Instead of having to fight them amongst the various contrarians in this little line of mine, I’m now squarely in agreement with them.
That is to say, rather than my favorite sweaters and slacks, I’ll teach in sandals and pajamas from home. With no exceptions.
At first, I thought it a ludicrous idea. Before the pandemic, I couldn’t have imagined that tens of thousands of working adults could convert 1.1 million students from full human beings with all their complexities into digits and images shifting about our monitors, but I was wrong. In a week and a day, we not only beat the number of school closures that former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former mayor Rahm Emanuel, and former chancellor Michelle Rhee shut down combined, we moved school operations into multi-color calculators no larger than the length of a shoebox.
I too am impressed by the efficiency.
I marvel at the notion that corporations like Microsoft, Zoom, and Google knelt down to offer free CONTINUE READING: Let's Teach in Pajamas Forever | The Jose Vilson