Teaching

I reached a benchmark of sorts this past week. I taught a new lesson.

In a sense, everything I’ve been doing this year is new. Remote teaching means new classroom routines, new assessment strategies, new procedures for facilitating collaboration, all sitting on top of a fundamentally new way to gather and conduct class using new technologies.

But despite all the newness, I’ve mostly been adapting existing instructional materials to fit this new reality. Well, more like because of all the newness. With so much effort being expended adapting to everything that’s new, having quality existing materials to rely on has been invaluable so far.

And in reality, adapting those existing materials to remote learning has been its own challenge. It’s not as though I can just run out the same lesson, the same task, the same problem set as before. Classes are longer, the semester is shorter, the medium is fundamentally different. I can’t simply do what I have done. Putting my existing materials into practice itself has seemed like a new job.

Which is why teaching a new lesson is something of a breakthrough for me. Three months in, I’m a bit more comfortable with what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. I’ve been experimenting with platforms likes Geogebra Classroom and Desmos Activity Builder, which have helped me recreate some of what’s been missing in my classroom, but have also given me an opportunity to take new approaches with old ideas.

Last week I introduced parallelograms with a Geogebra Classroom activity that had kids playing with quadrilaterals and conjecturing about the consequences of parallelism. They were able to explore, make observations, and outline proofs together. In Calculus I changed my approach to integration by substitution, emphasizing the process as a change of variables instead of an algebraic procedure. I designed a Desmos activity that allowed students to experiment and transform integrals and hypothesize about the consequences.

The methodology isn’t new for me: I always try to bring ideas to students through exploration and conjecture. But it’s been hard to figure out how to do that effectively in remote learning. Now I’m getting familiar with new tools that create new opportunities for teaching, and I’m starting to feel comfortable taking advantage of those opportunities.

I love reflecting on how I present mathematical concepts and then redesigning lessons around those new ways of thinking. It’s one of my favorite professional challenges as a teacher, and being able to do it again was a much-needed reminder of how fun teaching can be. My only concern now is what’s going to happen to these lessons when things go back to normal?

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I haven’t always been the most patient and understanding teacher. Students know me for my passion for math and teaching, but early in my career I was probably equally known for my rigidity about things like punctuality. It was well-intentioned, as manifestations of high expectations often are, but it was also informed by a teacher’s desire to keep things under control.

I’m probably as well known now for being flexible as I was early on about being rigid. Age and experience have made me much more patient and understanding as a teacher. And having children of my own has certainly accelerated my acceptance that there are things I simply have to adapt to.

This change has helped prepare me for teaching during the pandemic. With so much out of our control, we all have to approach what we do with tremendous patience and understanding for each other. I’ve been doing my best, but this week it was my students who led the way.

Now that we are once again fully remote, I’m working from home and facing yet another round of fresh challenges. An over-extended wifi has made videoconferencing a crapshoot: I was kicked out of my class several times this week, which meant interruptions in instruction and extra work for us all.

Despite my struggles, students have continued to make things easy for me. They’ve waited around for me to log back in to class; they’ve watched the impromptu videos I’ve made to replace the missing instruction; they’ve completed the asynchronous assignments meant to make up for the lost time. They have been incredibly patient and understanding with me. I’d like to think they’ve been following my example, but in thinking back on it, it’s more likely that I’ve been following theirs all along.

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Thanksgiving was the most important holiday for me early in my teaching career. Four consecutive days away from work meant I could actually turn off my teacher brain for a bit. Single-day holidays like Veterans Day or Columbus Day were just opportunities to try to get caught up on work, or to develop a plan that felt less desperate than whatever it was I was doing at that moment. I spent those days, along with nights and weekends, unable to get away from work, but at the same time unable to do much about it.

The combination of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion I experienced as a new teacher left me with losing options on days off: Spend my down-time in a low-return investment on work, or make a half-hearted attempt to relax while constantly worrying I wasn’t doing enough to stay afloat.

Thanksgiving brought me a day or two to regroup. Far from family and with no desire to travel, I’d sleep late, play guitar, watch football, cook a luxurious meal, and otherwise do nothing. Importantly, it was a guilt-free nothing. With four days off, I knew I could take a day or two to myself and still survive in the classroom. And with a long holiday just a few weeks away, and the end of the semester a few weeks after that, more relief was on the way.

Twenty years later, Thanksgiving stills serves as an important benchmark for me as a teacher. It’s time to take a deep breath and think about the small tweaks and adjustments that can carry us through to the end of the semester. And it’s still an opportunity to relax. For that I am thankful.

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