I've Got The Rhythm, But I Still Hate The Song

 

So Much.

That's my response when people ask what it's like to teach right now. It is just so much. I honestly have not worked this hard, or this long, or done this much since I student taught 23 years ago. However, 23 years ago I had no idea what I was doing. It's 23 years later and I know very well what I'm doing but it is just harder now. A LOT harder. Who knew that teaching in a pandemic would be this hard? This was definitely not something that was covered in any of my teacher prep classes back in college and it has never been addressed in any staff meetings or professional developments I have ever attended. How has this been particularly difficult? Let me share the ways. However, before I do, let me first say that I am not complaining. I am not a really a complainer, and honestly complainers are probably my number one pet peeve. I hate hearing people complain. So this is not a complaining rant or a woe-is-me diatribe. It is simply the reality of teaching in October of 2020.

We are now almost two months into this school year and it still seems so surreal. Almost Kafkaesque. The school has been transformed into something almost unrecognizable. One way hallways, limited access to bathrooms, one way stairways, and classrooms with half the desks. At my school, Pomona, there is a large tile "P" on the floor in the main hallway. This was THE hangout spot for students. They would congregate there before school, during passing periods, at lunch, and after school. Students would regularly receive texts from friends during class to "meet me at the P". No longer. The P is now visible during passing periods as the students silently and solemnly move about the hallways from class. Absent from the hallways is the usual strident plagency of teenagers engaged in the usual jocularity and gossiping that are commonplace among adolescents. In its place is a placid, eeire quiet more like a seminary than a school. In person the students hardly speak, ever. They simply look at you with their lifeless eyes peering at you above their masks which are covering their expressionless faces. They don't respond to you, they don't laugh, they rarely even speak with one another. Teenage boys, who prior to COVID, found it impossible to keep their hands off of each other, now quietly get out of their desks and stand at the back of the room with their hands dangling lethargically at their sides, staring straight ahead while I spray their desks with a solution to kill any possible Corona virus particles before the next class arrives. When the bell sounds, the students silently file out into the dour hallways, as the next equally morose class enters into the room.

Teaching to the remote students is even my disheartening. You speak at a computer screen filled with black boxes because none of the students will turn on their camera. They are as silent as a grave. You can't help but wonder to yourself 'Are they listening? Are they even there?' Ask a question and it will be followed by a minute or two of deafening silence as you stare hopefully and defeatedly at a series of black boxes on your computer screen. Eventually a disembodied voice will answer from the void. It is never an expansive answer. It is simple, to the point, and absent of any wonderings or nuance. Just as quick as the ghostly voice answers, it is gone. Ask if there are any further questions or problems and the screen remains reticent. So the natural response is to tell them to work on their assignment and to remind them you are available if they have any questions or problems. At this point, one by one the black boxes disappear from the computer screen as they students retreat to their gloomy solitude. The question now is, "Did they understand the work, and more importantly, will they turn it in?' Sadly, for the most part, the answer is no.

I am now in my third decade of teaching and I have never had this many failing grades, ever. It's not from bad scores on assignments or poor test grades. The high number of F's is due solely to the fact that the students simply do not turn in their work. However, it is not all work that they are not turning in, it is overwhelmingly the work they need to do when they are remote that does not get submitted. For whatever reason, any work assigned when the students are remote simply does not get done. Further exacerbating the issue is the fact that I will only see each student in person once a week, the rest of the week they are remote for my class which means that most of the work needs to be done remotely. I use Google Classroom which allows me to look at the students assignments to see what they have done even if they haven't submitted the assignment yet. I've done this often during this school year and, for the most part, the students never even start their remote assignments. This is defeating for teachers as we are left to wonder what else and how else can we teach our content when we only have contact with them once a week. It is even more crushing for the students as they see their grade slowly sink while their work slowly rises. This whole year is a discomfiture for students and teachers and the other side of this is still somewhere around the corner.

I will say that as the school year has progressed I have gotten better in teaching and presenting information. I can confidently say I am a better teacher in this format now than I was in August and I am certainly better now than I was in April. When we began in August, I could not wrap my mind around hybrid teaching. I was going to see my students in person once a week, students would be remote twice a week and I would have each class for a total of three times a week. They were divided up into Group A and Group B by alphabet. Group A would come to school on Monday and Tuesday. On Monday Group A will go to period 1-4, on Tuesday Group A would go to periods 5-7. Each class period is 80 minutes. While Group A was in person, Group B was at home following the same schedule but remotely. On Wednesday and Thursday Group A and Group B switch with Group B being in person and Group A going remote and the same schedule of classes is followed. On Friday both Group A and B are all remote and they go to all their classes which are 50 minutes long. Doing this means I need to have a separate grade book for each class so now instead of having to maintain five gradebooks, I now have ten gradebooks to maintain. Instead of posting work for five classes on Google Classroom, I now need to post work for ten classes. Instead of needing to create two different lesson plans for the two different subjects I teach, I often times now need to create four to six different lesson plans for the two subjects I teach. All of this, of course means more grading (assuming the work will be turned in). At the beginning of the school year, I tried to teach both the remote and the in-person students at the same time. I quickly found this next to impossible as you had to ensure the remote students could not only see what you were doing but also hear what you are doing which is a challenge when you are wearing a mask and not close to the computer. I quickly ditched that idea, that was just too much and too difficult. So now I actively teach the students who happen to be in person that day and I post the work for the day in Google Classroom for the remote students. I usually make a video explaining the work for the day or giving the students content and contextual information they need. Making a video for everyday means I have to take the time to make the video, edit it, download it and then post it. I do this everyday and sometimes I need to make two or three for each day. On top of all this, each class usually has a few all remote learners sprinkled into the mix, so I have to keep them in mind when I'm doing check-ins and posting assignments. 

If this sounds like a lot, it is. If it sounds confusing, it is. When we began in August I was scrambling everyday to keep up and I was exhausted all the time. Having done this for several months now, I've got the rhythm down, I know what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and when it needs to be done. Friday's, I have found, are a God-send for me. I don't regularly meet with my classes, I post the work for the day to Google Classroom for each class at 8:00 am and then I leave my Zoom link open all day if they need to jump on and ask a question or have a problem. Usually they don't but every once in a while a student does come on to ask a question or sometimes they come on just to talk about random stuff. For myself, I use this time to catch up on the week as well as to plan and prepare for the coming week. I have figured out how to make the work more mangealbe but it is still a lot. I am working more, harder and longer than at any point in my teaching career. Because I can no longer go into the school at 4:30 am like I used to, I am at the breakfast counter in the kitchen every morning by 4:30 doing school work. I am at the doors of the school by 5:45 when the custodians are opening the school for the day to get to my room and continue working. I usually stay at school until 4-4:30 in the afternoon working and when I come home, I usually have a few hours of work to finish before I can spend time with my family. I follow this routine everyday Monday-Friday. On weekends, I usually have a few hours of work that I need to do as well. I am putting in on average 70 hours of work a week. It is a lot and it is hard but I figured out the rhythm, I have got the beat to this requiem down, but I still hate the song.  

I do have to say, that while my schedule is overwhelming at times and very difficult, elementary school teachers have it much worse. Their students are there everyday Monday through Friday. They do not have the opportunity to use Friday's as a catch up/plan day. That should and must change if this model is to continue for sometime. 

COVID-19 has absolutely turned all of our lives completely upside down. Everyone's lives are harder, more difficult and more dangerous now than they were last February. My wife, who I adore and dearly love, works in healthcare and she has been going into people's homes and nursing homes to deliver treatment to patients since May. She does this five days a week. Her job is significantly more difficult and more dangerous than it was, but she keeps doing it. She doesn't like it any more than I like what I'm doing. This is the story for all of our society. Everything is different, everything is more arduous but we have all figured out how to make it work. None of us like the song, but at least now we can dance to the beat. My advice on this is simple; keep swimming we are bound to find solid ground at some point. We have to. Right? 

The Wild, Weird, Wacky World of Presidential Campaigns

For whatever reason President elections tend to bring out the worst in our leaders and in ourselves. Are you turned off by the nastiness and brutishness of today’s politics and elections? Just be glad that you live today and were not around during our nation’s past. Your friendly American History teacher here with a quick lesson on the nastiness, bizarreness, and flat-out meanness from past presidential elections.

The election of 1800 between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams  was remarkably sleazy and obnoxious with both sides hurling wild accusations against each other. Supporters of Jefferson charged that Adams was abusive and neglectful of his wife. That he worked against the U.S. on behalf of England. That he supplied several very young prostitutes to a visiting Russian dignitary. And most shocking of all, it was alleged that Adams was a hermaphrodite! Supporters of Adams alleged that Jefferson stole money from a widow and her children. That he was an agent of France. That he was a “slave lover” (this happened to be true, by the way). That he was an Atheist (although he probably was not, he was not really a Christian either). Adams supporters, relying on the fact that lies spread faster than truth especially in 1800, even said that Jefferson had died! Opponents of Jefferson even went so far as to warn that should Jefferson be elected president, his administration would actively teach and support “murder, robbery, and rape!” Of course, Jefferson won the election and none of these things were taught nor supported by Jefferson. 

Throughout our nation’s history there are several instances of similar crazy allegations made against presidential candidates by supporters of their opponents. In 1840, Whig supporters of William Henry Harrison, cast incumbent Martin Van Buren as a rather effeminate dandy who spent taxpayer money on fancy foreign made finger cups in which he would “wash his pretty, tapering, soft, white lily fingers”. Furthermore, Whigs alleged, Van Buren also spent taxpayer money on a closet full of fine silk, frilly clothing. Not one of those allegations were true, but Van Buren nonetheless lost the election. In 1876, Democrats charged that Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes shot his mother. He did not. In 1948 Harry S. Truman stated that a vote for his opponent, Thomas Dewey, was a vote for Fascism. In 1964 the Lyndon Johnson campaign ran a now infamous TV commercial that alluded should Republican Barry Goldwater be elected president, Goldwater would start a nuclear war that would kill your children. In 1988 Republican George H.W. Bush had a commercial that Democrat Michael Dukakis, while governor of Massachusetts, gave weekend furloughs to “268 first degree murders to kidnap, rape and murder some more”. A wildly inaccurate and misleading charge.  

Religion is also a favorite target for scurrilous lies to be spread about presidential candidates. Especially if they can connect them to the Catholic Church. 1856, the Democratic Party charged that the Republican candidate, John C. Fremont, was an alcoholic, a crook and worst of all a Catholic. While Fremont may not have been the most virtuous person, he definitely was not a Catholic. He was an Episcopalian. During the 1928 presidential campaign, many Republican Protestants argued that good Christians could not vote for Democrat Al Smith, who was a devout Catholic, because Catholicism was really a cloak for the forces of Hell. In 1960, it was widely and not so quietly whispered that Americans should not vote for John Kennedy as President because Kennedy would simply be a minion for the Pope. In recent times, religion has again often taken center stage for outrageous accusations against candidates. In 2008 and again in 2012, seizing on the Islamophobia that gripped the nation following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many opponents of Barack Obama alleged that Obama was a Muslim who would institute Sharia Law. Obama was not, nor had ever been an Muslim and he obviously did not impose Sharia Law. During the 2020 election, there were again questions arising about the Democratic nominee Joe Biden, because he is a Catholic and concerns that if he were elected the nation would in essence be turned over to the Vatican. We know that did not happen. 

Recently in the Truly Weird and Bizarre Category there have been allegations- that have been supported by some- , that are so crazy it would seem more appropriate to have come from earlier, more informationally challenged times than now. In 2016 it was alleged that Bill and Hillary Clinton along with the rest of the Democratic Party were running a weird child-sex ring out of a pizzeria in Washington D.C. This was taken so seriously that shortly before the election a “good samaritan” charged into the alleged pizzeria armed with a high power rifle demanding that the surprised and confused pizzeria workers release the child sex slaves from the back room. Also, in 2016 opponents of Donald Trump stated that, while on a business trip to Russia, Trump had two Russian prostitutes urinate on each other while he watched. Eeeeeewwwww. Gross. While Trump did pay a porn star to have sex with him, there is not any evidence that Trump watched Russian call girls urinate on one another. In our current election, Trump seemingly accused Kamala Harris of not actually being black, but instead decided one day that she would say she was black. To be clear, Kamala Harris has always claimed to be partially black, because she is! Her mother was an Indian immigrant and her father is a immigrant from Jamacia. Finally, the election of 2020 provided American voters perhaps the most bizarre story of all. One so kooky and fantastic, not even the supporters of Adams or Jefferson in 1800 could have envisioned it. In our current 2020 election there is a story circulating that shadow forces are at work to ensure that Joe Biden is elected president so he can cover up and protect high ranking members of the American government and powerful figures in the entertainment industry who are Satan worshipping, cannibalistic, pedophiles....WOW! 

Presidential politics have always been fraught with mud-slinging, half-truths, and outright, outrageous lies. We hopefully can take heart that, until very recently, the lies, half-truths and distortions have become more tame over time.  Hopefully, brazen and scurrilous allegations of late are only an anomaly and will fade following the election of 2024. Luckily, no one has accused the other of being a hermaphrodite. Yet.