If Alberta’s numbers, and your numbers, are anywhere close to “Oregon’s McNary High School, where 38% of grades in late October were failing” then you, like me, are probably feeling frustrated and burned out
(Thompson 2020). Further flaring these feelings are transitioning back and forth from in-person to online learning and back again that are difficult even if you are an excellent teacher, and you are. Or perhaps you, like me, are feeling as though your chosen teaching practices are now under intense scrutiny in this new teaching environment; no room for mistakes online, is there? Perhaps you, like me, are feeling inadequate as administrators, parents and other stakeholders gain access to every activity, assignment and assessment criteria, and pour over the overall fulfillment of curricular expectations that your programs provide. It may be that you, like me, are experiencing unbearable pressure from administrators to fight for “evenings fraught with battles over schoolwork” (D’Amour 2020, 198). Trying to maintain conversations about instructional development and improving the learning experiences of students in such an environment while meeting the perceived need for educational perfection seems as impossible as avoiding the washboard on a bumpy gravel road.
Conceivably, the hours you and I have spent pleading with students to submit assignments and participate in discussions about curricular topics have left you feeling overwhelmed and defeated in delivering what seems like a predetermined lost cause in seeing students perform well despite dropping attendance records, poor participation rates, stacks of unsubmitted assignments and unresponsive pupils. Social media messages following voice mails and phone calls being all that is left of those once healthy teacher–student relationships we once enjoyed as we chase after missed assignments from students whose experience of this pandemic we are unlikely to understand or even imagine. And topping all this off is the possibility that you, like me, are feeling as though you are being asked to forget what is actually important: healthy human beings. Has it really come to be that we classroom teachers are the only ones left asking if missed assignments are really what needs to be chased after?
I hope I’m overthinking this. Maybe not. I imagine that I’m not the only one feeling this way. And if you are, like me, feeling unimportant, then perhaps you need to hear this too:
- You matter.
- You are important.
- You are needed.
- You are valuable.
- You are loved.
- Take care, friends.
References
D’Amour, L. 2020. Relational Psychoanalysis at the Heart of Teaching and Learning: Why and How It Matters. New York: Routledge
Thompson, C. 2020. “Schools Confront ‘Off the Rails’ Numbers of Failing Grades.” AP News website. https://apnews.com/article/distance-learning-coronavirus-pandemic-oregon-7fde612c3dbf d2e21fab9673ca49ad89?fbclid=IwAR30tcH-kdPc7s55kt53RoVwLl-KqV5OBBODE39L3f_cQewzSRBIpBSyDLQ (accessed January 11, 2021).
Darcy House
