A Comedy of Errors
Sunday and the thirtieth Covid blog. ❄️
This week I posted online that a full week of teaching live lessons everyday via Microsoft Teams, meant that I may well be applying for the CEO of the said organisation by the end of the week.
Yep, Satya Nadella? No worries, you’re safe!
I am not tech savvy I was born in the dinosaur age when ‘Computer Studies’ consisted of entering a series of numbers which then punched holes into some sort of special paper and sent off (presumably by the school) to goodness knows where.
When they came back, they seemed to have even more holes, which unraveled some sort of code. I still have no idea to this day what they meant apart from the fact that they constantly made me want to lose the will to live.
This week felt a little like that at times. I managed to navigate my way around it fairly well but there were several times it felt like deja vu, that feeling of having absolutely no idea of what you are doing.
When you stand in front of a class waiting for silence it can take a while; minutes, hours, weeks, months, you choose. With teaching remotely it is instant, in fact at times, I felt like I was conducting a seance.
”Is anybody there?”
Nothing, you see they can see me, I can’t see them and remarkably they have suddenly lost the power of speech despite the fact they have the options of speaking via a mic or typing into a chat box. Naturally, they chose the longer option:
“Hi Guys, can you see me?”
(Typing begins in the chat box)
“Yh”
”no”
”yes Miss”
”yeah”
”hello miss”
”no but I can hear you”
“I can see you, I can’t hear you”
They also forget you are there and then start talking to each other:
“Hi (insert name)”
” hey flamingo man” ( no I didn’t make that one up)
”yo lol”
”what ya doing”
”nt much”
”Guys, I am here and I can see everything you are posting, so let’s get on with the lesson, thank you”
I won’t go into the whole debacle of screen sharing my power points except to say that at times it worked brilliantly and at others (despite doing nothing differently) technology decided it had other ideas.
It has been a very tough and a very emotional week in so many aspects, tough for teachers, tough for pupils and tough for parents.
There is no substitute for face to face teaching, I miss my kids, it is not the same.
Do not believe those politicians and those in the media, intent on vilifying educators. We absolutely do not want to stay at home, teaching is far more difficult remotely and results in a higher workload through the admin constantly generated, as well as the job’s normal demands.
I take my hat off to those colleagues and parents with small children at home trying to juggle and spin plates at the same time. None of this is easy and this cruel pandemic has us all at times, on our knees.
There have of course been the light and very sweet moments:
”Miss, I forgot about your rubbish jokes”
”Miss, is it ok if I go downstairs and get my glasses?”
”Miss, your fringe is well long”
“Miss, can I go to the toilet please?”
And this…
“Sorry miss I did not mean to send that”
I have no idea what that meant but I am hoping that the saddest donkey I have ever seen was not the true reflection of my lesson.
I feel our emotions are very much at the forefront, we can see the end but it still feels so very far away and there are so many hurdles before we arrive.
We are only just in the middle of January and talks of the vaccine being rolled out by the summer to all ages in society is at least six months away.
That’s a long time.
We need to remember to be kind to ourselves and to understand that it’s normal to be sad and feel emotional at the strangest of things. It is kindness that gets us through, kindness and humour.
On a parents evening video call this week, one of my pupils introduced me to his cat, not normally something I’d experience sitting in the school hall meeting parents but it made me smile and I needed that, ‘we’ need that.
At the end of what seemed a very long week my final lesson of the day included this little message and yes, I cried, I cried twice.
First at his amazing words and secondly at his spelling of the pronoun ‘your.’
We will work on that one.
Have the best week you can.
Stay Safe,
Joy xxx