Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs. In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year. Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home. I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
It's been over a month since my last post so I figured I needed to get a post in. This is my first post of the school year and what a difference a year makes. Last year I felt horrible as a professional. I knew I was a better teacher than I was able to be. The fall of 2019 I really felt like I had my best semester as a teacher. I was so proud of the lessons I had created, the engagement level of students with the content. My physics classes seemed to just flow. I was able to provide feedback to students that they acted on. I was able to elicit feedback from students related to content mastery to help remediate. I was also able to get meaningful feedback about what was working in terms of style to help co-design instruction that created the best learning environment for all students.
When we came back to school in the fall of 2020, I felt like I had to provide instruction in ways that didn't match up with my pedagogy. We weren't able to do many of the hands on activities and group work that I felt engaged my learners. These activities removed me as the purveyor of the content and let the student work more directly with the content. I think I'm pretty good with tech, so I was able to find replacement activities. But in the end, these resulted in students working on Chromebook simulations and such and I felt it removed the physical realty and phun of physics.
This year we are 100% in person with no social distancing requirements. I still teach in a mask but feel very comfortable doing it. While the dropping of many of the virus mitigation strategies has allowed me to move back to my favorite methods of teaching, I know the reality of the pandemic has not changed. The majority of the staff in my district are vaccinated, but we don't have numbers on students who are vaccinated. I'm feeling very conflicted about the ability to move back into my favored modes of teaching while at the same time knowing that removing all of these mitigation strategies may not be right.
But, I've decided to accept that which I cannot change or don't have the power to control. This means embracing the opportunity to return to my practice of 2019. We are about 5 weeks into the school year and I feel like I'm back on my game. We've been able to do some of my favorite labs and demonstrations. In our first unit on linear motion we were able to share materials across classes again. This meant that I could bring out the Spheros and iPads!
This isn't much of a post, more of a chance to admit me conflicted feelings about being so happy that things are "back to normal" in my classroom while accepting the reality that they aren't in the rest of the world. In fact, I just went to my first concert since 2019 (FYI, it was Hasan Minaj). For this show we were required to wear a face mask for the entire show and provide proof of vaccination before being allowed into the venue.
Moving forward I'll be keeping this conflict in my mind out of my posts, but it'll be in the back of my head everyday I head into school and don my mask.
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