Everything has changed, so they say. The end of the school year is usually a time of great relief and satisfaction, but there’s something anticlimactic about this transition to summer. Usually it’s accompanied by a comforting sense of resolution. Not this year.
My department spent its final days trying to talk about the fall. What if we see students every other day? What if we only see them every five days? What if we’re entirely remote at the start? Can adjusting our course sequences help? How do we approach assessment? Participation? Collaboration? In a way it’s fitting that we end with as many questions as when we started. Maybe more.
I’ve heard people say remote learning made them feel like they were first-year teachers again. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but rethinking everything from instruction to engagement to assessment definitely brought back memories of my early career, when everything I did seemed like an experiment on the brink of failure.
Navigating Emergency Remote Learning as a teacher has been an unique professional challenge. I’m thankful that I didn’t have to face it alone: I learned alongside many great teachers in New York City and across the country. And I’m lucky that my students were ready to adapt, learn, and succeed, as they always are.
And so ends fourteen weeks of reacting and adapting. I’m glad I made time for these reflections: They’ve helped these past few months, and they’ll help in the fall. But first, I’ll give the comfort of summer a few more chances to sink in.
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