Hybrid School: The First Week

Here a few thoughts about teaching my first week of hybrid-model school:

1) hybrid doesn't work very well . . . you can either pay attention to the kids in the room-- and we are tending to have two or three kids in the room-- or you can pay attention to the kids on the little screen, but it's difficult to pay attention to both groups . . . what tends to happen is that the kids in the room become "virtual" kids and they just participate on the screen, and then there's no reason to have them there in the first place;

2) it's hard to hear the virtual kids unless they have a nice microphone . . . one virtual girl told us she learned to sew during the pandemic and that she sewed a "flag" and I told her that a flag seemed pretty easy to sew, because it's a rectangle and she said, "let me go get it" and she retrieved a "frog" not a flag-- which looked much more difficult to sew;

3) it's hard to understand the in-person kids because they are wearing masks, so I'm constantly asking them to repeat things;

4) got two drama kids to do an impromptu scene on the Microsoft teams;

5) a number of us have insanely large classes, I have 31 kids in a college credit writing course-- so this is going to be difficult to manage virtually and grading-wise, and it also ensures that we are never going back to school because-- pandemic or not-- there's no way to stuff 31 seniors into my classroom

6) I'm still teaching elective classes: Philosophy and Creative Writing . . . I'm not sure why if the actual English courses are packed . . . didn't anyone think of this?

7) I'm taking a lot of walks with my in-person kids-- I put the virtual kids to work and then we go outside and discuss the reading like normal humans;

8) my son Ian-- who is a sophomore and is all remote-- was on a virtual "scavenger hunt" and he got his beloved weighted blanket and put it on his head-- as instructed-- and it fell off his head and landed on the laptop-- MY good laptop-- and ripped the screen from the body of the computer . . . Ian was crying and totally regretful and I felt really bad for him . . . but at this rate he's going to go through 90 laptops this virtual school year . . . I did manage to duct tape the screen to the computer, so it works . . . sort of;

9) I've now sent several rambling emails to administration, about class size of the senior English courses courses and about opening doors, courtyards and windows because we are in a global pandemic;

10) Genesis, Microsoft Teams, and Canvas are impressively dysfunctional and unsynchronized; we are doing all our own tech support and trying to get things to clean up and work, but everything is fragmented, disorganized and incomprehensible;

11) in an attempt to organize things, I  deleted all the channels where various teachers are supposed to meet on Microsoft Teams . . . who knew I had this power?

12) I was running late for work this morning because I was filming a video of myself for work;

13) it's fun to break up pretend fights off-camera-- you just get up quickly, bang a bunch of stuff, and then come back and tell the kids you broke up a fight;

14) we need an all virtual day to catch-up . . . this isn't sustainable;

15) people are already getting laryngitis from teaching with a mask on . . . once coachign starts back up again, my throat is going to be raw every day;

16) my eyes are so tired that I feel like I'm going blind;

17) at first I thought the four rotations of in-person kids would give up and go virtual because there are so many 1-3 person classes, which are awkward . . . but the kids I talked to kind of like it because they only go to school every eight days-- so it's like a weird little masked adventure-- but the teachers are masked and teaching EVERY day, for extra long periods . . . it can't last;

18) my own children are enjoying virtual school -- they can sleep until 8:55 and then school is from 9 AM to 1 PM . . . my high school is still making kids get up to attend class at 7:26 AM . . . it's cruel and unusual punishment for a teenager;

19) Stacey almost cried twice today: once because she forgot her laptop charger-- which is now a vital piece of equipment-- and then later in the day when she taught twenty minutes on mute and then had to repeat the entire lesson;

20) I have a girl with a one-on-one aid that accompanies her to my room and I teach this girl in two different classes, but she only comes to school once every eight days-- like all the in-person students-- but her aid comes to my room every day, though the aid doesn't have a laptop yet . . . so the aid mainly just watches me say weird stuff into a computer;

21) East Brunswick Vo-Tech shut down yesterday, so I think we are the only school building with kids in it in the county . . . and so far it has been quite an adventure.