I’m proud I covered the curriculum this year.

“Covering the curriculum” is one of those phrases that’s been around so long everyone in education has turned against it. Curriculum coverage has become synonymous with prioritizing the delivery of content over student success, or fixating on what the teacher presents rather than what the students learn. “You shouldn’t cover the curriculum. You should uncover it!” says the education influencer, getting 1K retweets every time.

Of course curriculum planning should center student experience. But it should also embody a clearly defined set of concepts and tools. Covering the curriculum should mean delivering that full set of ideas to students in a coherent and meaningful way. And covering the curriculum was not easy this year.

In September I had to plan for a year of unknown unknowns. Our restructured school schedule included a switch to block periods and a 33% overall reduction in instructional time. Double periods are not as simple as teaching two lessons back-to-back. Losing a third of my class time was going to have a substantial impact on what we could do. There was a lot of uncertainty about what the courses I’d taught so many times before would look like. More fundamentally, there was a lot of uncertainty about what each day of class would look like. I had no experience with live remote instruction, and I had no idea what could be accomplished in a 55-minute Zoom class.

Putting together a pacing guide in September was flying blind. Our Geometry team worked together to streamline the sequence and differentiate core concepts from peripheral ones. I consolidated units in my combined pre-calculus / calculus course hoping for more efficiency. I made my best educated guesses based on my 20+ years as a teacher, but I really had no idea how the courses would unfold.

As unusual as the year was, one thing was the same: Like every year, I tried things, I got feedback, I learned, and I adjusted. I slowly got a feel for pacing and a feel for the day-to-day. And quite remarkably, as we face down the last month of school, I can say that the plan worked. It wasn’t easy, but I taught the courses I set out to teach. Students learned what they needed to learn, and they will be ready for what comes next. I covered the curriculum. And I’m proud of it.

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I keep a Word document open on my computer that serves as my planner. Inside is a table I use as a calendar, and I look ahead as many weeks as rows can fit on the page. It’s crude and dependable, like many systems that stick around.

I update the calendar, and the file name, as weeks and months pass. A recent update to May Plan.docx put the final instructional day on my calendar. Visualizing that day was a powerful moment.

Eight months ago it wasn’t clear how even the most basic elements of school would function. How was “hybrid” instruction going to work? How many students would be in the building? How many teachers? Which courses would be taught, and which dropped? Visualizing the last day of instruction would have been impossible then.

Even after the basic elements were set, it took me months to feel even slightly competent at my job, and months more to feel like I was starting to be effective. Now I’ve figured some things out, and I’m having enough day-to-day success to feel like a teacher again. And as I plan for the end, I realize that, for the most part, I’ve successfully executed the curricular plan I put in place in September, when I had virtually no idea what lay ahead. Being able to imagine the final day of instruction at all feels like an achievement, and to see it as the end of something successful feels a bit like a miracle.

The stretch run to the final day is always an exciting and challenging time. Usually it’s a time for me to experiment, but since everything’s been an experiment this year, I’ll be content with my small successes, delivering the courses I set out to deliver, and deleting the final row from June Plan.docx.

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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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I was at school twice this week: First to proctor the SAT, then on my rotation day (The school is required to have a certain number of teachers in the building every day, so available staff rotates through the responsibility.)

It was nice to be around students, even if it was just proctoring an exam with nine kids in a room, or walking around the cafeteria, smiling and saying hi as they worked on their laptops.

There was an especially nice moment at the end of the day. About twenty 9th graders gathered in the halls after the final bell rang. They were talking, laughing, making plans, looking at their phones. Apart from the masks, it all seemed so normal. Like a time not too long ago, or a time not too far in the future.

I have been moved by the resilience of students throughout my career. When the world disappoints them, they figure out how to move forward. When I disappoint them, they give me another chance. I often find strength in their strength.

Students have suffered greatly this past year. I’ve seen it. I’m seeing it. But I’ve also seen their resilience. It will carry them. And maybe us, too.

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Students sit in groups of four in my classroom. The arrangement creates opportunities to collaborate, argue, and socialize around mathematics. It’s essential to how I design instruction.

This wasn’t a common approach when I first started teaching high school. But 20 years later the practice is so common there are different schools of thought about how to assign students to groups: homogeneous grouping (students at similar levels), heterogeneous grouping (students at different levels), visibly random grouping. Like most ideas in education, each approach has its proponents and detractors. And like most ideas in education, each approach can cycle from preferred to discouraged as it gains and loses favor in the spirit of the times.

I’ve always used a variety of strategies in assigning students to groups. As a mathematician I appreciate the benefits of randomization, but as a teacher I want to leverage my knowledge of my students in designing experiences that serve them best. Sometimes I want advanced students working with advanced students. Sometimes I want gregarious students working with quiet students. Sometimes I want Jane to work with Julie because they think in similar ways and I want them to share ideas. Sometimes I want to place students in groups based on who they are, hoping that they will enjoy themselves and learn and grow.

Like many teachers engaged in remote instruction I’ve been using breakout rooms to try to replicate some of the student-to-student interaction that comes from sitting together in small groups. It has been a challenge. Sitting in a zoom breakout room is not the same as sitting in a chair next to someone. The social dynamics are dramatically different. I’ve had some success, but I have not figured out how to make breakout rooms work the way I want them to.

Part of that may be because I just don’t know my students as well as I would under normal circumstances. I’ve felt this in many different ways throughout the year: When I can’t remember which student observed that congruence is a kind of similarity two days ago; when I’m trying to write a recommendation for a student I’ve taught only remotely; when I realize that I might not recognize John when I pass him in the hall next year.

When I recently changed group assignments for my classes, I felt this again. Because for the first time all year I was comfortable assigning students to groups based on who they are. It felt so normal, so satisfying. And then I realized that it’s April. It took me nearly all school year to reach this point. Better late than never, I suppose. It’s been a year of celebrating small successes, and I’ll take this one. And it will make reaching this point next November something to celebrate, too.

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