Today Gov. Jay Inslee shut down all public and private K-12 schools in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties through April 24, 2020.
That's 6 weeks from now.
That's 6 weeks without my students.
6 weeks without banter, without laughter, without smiles, without in person social interactions.
6 weeks without the structure that my students need.
6 weeks without the structure that I need.
6 weeks of IEP meetings being held via conference calls and video conference.
6 weeks of social distancing when one of our key jobs is teaching social skills.
6 weeks of adapted learning- we're still not 100% sure what we mean by that.
6 weeks less of a high school experience.
6 weeks of isolation for some students whose only social interactions are at school.
And when we go back what does that look like. Any teacher can tell you how difficult it is to come back from breaks, this like coming back from summer vacation mid-year.
To the students who keep up with all of the work while we are out great we can move forward, for the students who don't, what will we do? How do we move forward? Or do we simply accept that next years students will come to us with a little less of the prerequisite skills?
Today I am sad. I stay in education because I love what I do. I am lucky I go into work every day and enjoy the work I do. There are some days that are hard, but I honestly enjoy my work. I enjoy watching students make progress and I will fight like hell for the next 6 weeks to help my students continue to make progress and keep up in their classes. It's going to be difficult. Online learning is a struggle for many types of learners. I am sad because I will miss seeing my students every day. I am sad because of the opportunities in high school that they are missing out on this year. But I work with some really amazing people and we will get through this. There will be data collected and teachers years from now will do better because of the lessons learned from this experience.
If I can be a little selfish- I hope in my teaching career we don't have to see another experience like this again though.
Dear Claire, You are a keeper of data. I hope you track how this experience in distance learning plays out. There may be a group of students who Thrive with less face to face interaction. They may grow with the Autonomy of computer based learning.
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