Riding the Roller Coaster

Remember how yesterday was a really good day?

Today... not so much. My little guy found himself totally off his routine, missing friends and teachers, and just decided he just couldn't do it today. When we have days like this, what helps me is to look at how far we've come with him. Looking back two months, four months, six months, a year – you simply don't see the positive trend if you're only looking at a few days. It's there. And it's encouraging.

Unfortunately, we're being told that the pandemic is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Most of my neighbors are staying home, but I heard a party on Saturday night, and I see families on our street having friends over. It is frustrating, and I imagine that part of my son's lousy day was seeing the kids down the street that he likes to play with sometimes have friends over. I look forward to the day when this thing peaks and starts heading downhill. Of course, we could be riding a statistical roller coaster, which I've also seen in the news.

We met as a school staff online today, which went more smoothly than I thought it would. Zoom will be a serviceable tool for experiencing remote conferencing. I saw an interesting tweet today: something about us teachers finally seeing if our classes were actually worth the price of admission now that students won't face any academic penalty for not working, (which I completely agree with).

Oops, did I just say that?

Why yes, I did. Grades are horrible, students, and if the point of school is to get the grades, you're not doing it right, and we haven't helped much.

Now's our chance to offer meaningful work. We've been asked to keep it light for you, and believe me, I will. But there's freedom in ungraded work. We'll be taking off the pressure and asking you to write for writing's sake, read for reading's sake, and do these things because it makes you a more capable version of you.

Now we have to really put our money where our mouths are and put out assignments that are actually worth doing. The mindset shift we need will be tough for me. Many still won't work. Parents might pop up and not get it.

I hope it will change the way we look at school. My earliest replies have been clear and real: students want meaningful work, but they don't want it to stress them out. Why can't we do it that way all the time?