When administration announced we were moving to remote teaching I started adjusting my plans. Now understand that when the semester started I had a plan for every singe school day for every one of my classes. They were great plans. Several of them have been used as recently as this past fall semester. Now I had to adjust for a schedule that had classes meeting 5 out of 10 school days rather than 7 out of 10. Oh boy!
So one sets priorities. In the case of AP CS Principles, what do I need to get covered for the exam and how do I get the last performance task in by the due date from the College Board. For my other classes, what are the key concepts that I need students to lean to feel like the course was a succes. I planned accordingly. Then of course the schedule changed again.
We’re not going to have school this Wednesday. Everyone needs a little time away from screens. Don’t tell anyone but I am likely to use some of the day figuring out how to teach some things. So I adjusted again.
The College Board announced changes for my AP course. No exam. AP grades will be based on the Performance Tasks and we have a later deadline for those. Great! Now what am I going to do with the time I scheduled for test review in May? At lease I have some room for the performance task. I’m still going to try and get that in before April break because who knows what comes next.
I have plans for my other two courses. I think they’re ok. For now at least. Will we even have a full school year? I don’t know? Will we have finals? I don’t know. I figure that my plans are solid for no more than a week at a time.
This uncertainty is the biggest stressor for me tight now. I suspect I am not alone.
No teacher is alone in this. We spend years refining our teaching technique, pedagogical methods, resources and everything else that makes us skilled professionals. Suddenly we have to do the same thing all over again in a week. I have been teaching the same Stats class with the same textbook for 15 years. I had it locked and only had to make tweaks to fit the particular group of kids. I could dedicate my prep time to my CS classes and the Math 2 Honors class. Suddenly I have four courses I have to rewrite from scratch in days. This is happen across the nation. I am not alone. And in reality our issues with education are trivial. Kids will not die as a result of a poor lesson or if there is no satisfactory way to evaluate what we can get to them. But we are professionals and it drives us batty to not be attaining the level we are used to.
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