“What Did I Do Last Year?”
I stopped asking “What did I do last year?” months ago. In some ways it’s true that good teaching is just good teaching, regardless of the circumstances. But designing remote instruction is so fundamentally new to me that, as I’ve slowly figured out what I’m doing, it’s been easier to start from square one when planning a lesson.
This has required a lot of work. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to worry about every single lesson I teach. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling: Throughout my career I’ve always taken on the challenges of teaching and creating new courses. But creating a mathematical computing course from scratch is easier when the geometry and calculus courses I also have to teach are already in good shape.
But a month ago we passed the one year mark of remote learning in NYC, which means the answer to “What did I do last year?” is suddenly relevant. Last year I made short videos explaining key concepts. I created auto-graded quizzes to use as formative assessment. I wrote documents that placed essential course content into the context of our year-long conversation. These are all resources I can plug into what I’m doing right now, usually with only minor changes.
The ability to use pre-existing materials as is has provided some much needed relief. There’s still so much to do each day and week, but every resource I can reuse amounts to a small reduction in the stress and burden of planning everything anew. And with the home stretch ahead of us, every little bit helps.
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