Still building the plane after it takes off…

School is always a stressful endeavor. It's high pressure-high stakes work, with huge public scrutiny, a paltry budget, and a ridiculous per-person workload. Luckily, it's also meaningful, personally enriching, and powerful, as well as never-ever boring. 

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Those of us who manage to last long enough to be old-timers in education learn to manage the stress somehow. Some of us in healthy ways, some of us less so. 

But this year is a whole new level. 

Switching gears last March and going to a school-from-home model 3/4 of the way through the school year was difficult. 

But, we knew it would only be for ten weeks at most (because that's how many weeks there were left in the school year). We had already built procedures, trust, and relationships with our students. 

In my district, we were extra-fortunate because we were already a one-to-one district, providing laptops for student use. Many of us already taught hybrid classes, meshing the best of in-person and virtual environments to give our students a variety of paths to learning and to proving they had done so. 

But, starting the school year from home? Ouch. That's a horse of a different color, and I don't think I like this color. 

This year, might as well just be called the year of uncertainty. We don't know how long we'll be teaching this way…so we don't know how much energy it is reasonable to invest in learning new schools that might not be needed in just a few more weeks, if everyone's hopes come to fruition and we are safe to return to an in-person model after the first nine weeks. There's still an awful lot we don't have a consensus on, too, when it comes to balancing equity and fairness with standards and accountability. 

My district has made some teacher-positive and supportive choices. They've bought technology to support us in this work, and bought *other* technology when what we ordered failed to come in time so we had some stop-gap measures. 

They found online courses and resources for us, at least those who were willing to work for free (only one course came with any offer of compensation for the additional work hours). They bought some new programs and subscribed to new services that look like they are really going to be helpful.

I can see that they are trying to give us what we need to create a positive and valuable learning experience for our children. 

Unfortunately, all those new resources were not available until two days ago--not enough time to even learn what they can do, let alone make high-level use of them. The learning curve is real, yo! And not everyone could spare the time in June and July for extra training--a lot of us were working second jobs or handling all the responsibilities that we struggle to handle during the school year. So, there's a lot of good stuff there, but I'm worried that by the time I figure out what's there and how best to make use of it, it'll be too little, too late. 

So, I'm left with a half-built plane on the tarmac, knowing that when we take off on Monday we are likely to crash because we only have one wing. There wasn't time to build both. 

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The main thing we needed was time--more than any of those other things. PAID time devoted to developing materials, procedures, plans, and back-up plans rather than struggling to learn new software and never-before-seen systems. 

I was luckier than some of my colleagues. I had eight unscheduled hours across three teacher workdays. Was it enough to prepare a digital environment for 107 students in three different courses, including gathering information on their IEPs, 504s, medical plans, and other accommodations? 

Nope. Not even close. At the close of my work day today, I was ready to teach one class on Monday and hadn't gathered any background information for ANY of my students. 

The other two classes are still in a messy, half-prepared status that will require me to give up at least one entire day of my weekend and start school on Monday under-rested and, frankly, grumpy because away-from-school time is essential to maintaining equilibrium and being able to do this job reliably. 

Dang I miss it when teacher workdays consisted of time for teachers to work: as in prepare to teach, not learn new things. I was handed a lot to prepare, and not even a third of time it would take to prepare it. 

Luckily I'm a miracle worker. Let's hope it doesn't kill me.