Adventures in Distance Learning, Part 1

Empress of Dorsa update:

Today’s words: 2,004
Manuscript total: 65,592

Still on-track to publish in late 2020.

And now…

I survived my first week of school — which is to say, my first official week ever as a classroom teacher AND my first week ever working with middle schoolers AND my first week of distance learning. I’m titling this post “Part 1” only because I anticipate a Part 2, 3, 4, etc. down the road.

Herding Cats… online

So working with 11 y/os is already a lot like herding cats. Imagine trying to herd them online.

My school decided to go with a platform called Schoology, which in turn has something called BigBlueButton built into it, which we have been using instead of Zoom.

Pros to BBB:

BBB makes breakout rooms a cinch.
It all transpires within a browser window.
You are always sharing your screen.

One Major Con:

BBB isn’t as stable as Zoom, which means that if your whole class, or even just half your class, tries to share their webcam, BBB will crash. That, in turn, means that in the main session, you can really only see yourself and the list of names on the left. It feels a lot like you are talking to yourself through your computer screen.

Why hello, public chat.

One of the best parts (one of the ONLY good parts) of teaching online is not having to constantly nag kids to stop talking and/or focus. In a way, it’s relaxing to know that they are definitely multitasking — watching TikTok videos in one tab while they half-listen to you in the other tab — and that there’s basically nothing you can do to stop them.

But they did discover the public chat quite quickly, a feature I don’t think I can / haven’t figured out yet how to turn off. So as I’m trying to get them started with the lesson, the chat looks something like this:

hi everyone

hey peeps

follow me on tiktok! [tiktok name]

does anyone have fortnite

HEYYYYY DOMINIQUE!!!!!!!!

i’m playing fortnite at lunch

JAY!

my audio isn’t working

hi

no

ikr ++++++++++

my audio still isn’t working

Me: “Okay, everyone, I know you’re excited to see each other, but… wait, D, your audio isn’t working?”

[ realizing he can’t hear me if his audio isn’t working ]

[ typing in the chat for him to re-start his computer ]

Me: “I know you’re excited to see each other but we need to stop using the chat now and — yes, you can talk about Fortnite later but… Okay, I’m going to countdown from five, and when I get to one, the chats need to be finished. Five… four… three… two… I still see some people typing… one. Good job.”

I mean, can you blame them?

They’ve been stuck at home since MARCH with their parents, brothers/sisters, aunties/uncles, and grandma. Perhaps for the first time in a long time, they were desperately looking forward to the beginning of school just so that they could talk to someone their own age again.

But a full day of herding cats is pretty exhausting.

“IT HelpDesk. Ms. M speaking.”

Probably the most frustrating / challenging part of the week was that it was about 70% tech support, 30% teaching — and sometimes, I was one of the people who needed tech support.

Schoology is new for all of us. In some ways, it’s a powerful and useful platform; in other ways, I don’t know why we couldn’t all just stick with Google Classroom, which we were all (students and teachers) more-or-less familiar with, and which is more intuitive and less buggy in many ways.

Just walking kids through opening up an assignment takes a good fifteen minutes of explaining, demonstrating, and then re-explaining when ten out of thirty of them say, “I don’t get it” / “I’m lost” / “Mine isn’t working.”

Add to that inexperience different Internet speeds — my Internet speed, which can be sometimes spotty with two roommates streaming work and/or video games throughout the day, and their Internet speed, which can also be spotty with siblings also trying to “do school” online at the same time — and you have a recipe for rolling, ongoing disasters.

On top of all of it, a lot of my babies don’t have much exposure to technology at home. First-generation Americans with rickety English, often living in multi-generational homes just so they can afford the insane SoCal cost of living, I suspect that a good 10-25% of my kids are getting daily home Internet exposure for the first time in their lives. And sure, they would’ve used computers in elementary school before, but not all day, every day. It’s brand new for them.

Oh, J.

Speaking of. One of my new homeroom babies, we’ll call him “J”, is an EL (English learner) who’s also SpEd (Special Ed). [ We can talk about the problematic and somewhat suspect over-diagnosis of language learners as SpEd kids another time. For now, just know that J hasn’t made it to any class except my homeroom so far. ]

I spent my whole lunch period walking him through his schedule yesterday, first showing him how to find the email I sent him with the schedule, then explaining how to read said schedule, and finally repeating about 30,000 times which class he needed to go to next. Keep in mind that this was after numerous other whole-class and individual instruction on when and how to “go” to class.

I checked attendance when the school day ended.

J still had not made it to class.

Oh, J.

I emailed Mom. J is confused about his schedule, Mom said.

Really? I’m thinking. How? I had him write it down on a piece of paper. I quizzed him on what his next class was. I made sure he knew what time to be there. I double-checked that he knew how to “attend.”

But he’s apparently confused. So there ya go.

I suppose it’s possible he’s shirking class on purpose, but I don’t think so. If I’ve learned one thing about J in the three days that I’ve known him, it’s that the kid LOVES to talk and interact. I think he is eager to “meet” his classmates and other teachers.

TBC…

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of “Adventures in Distance Learning”

Next week…

Will J make it to class?

Will Ms. M effectively shut down Fortnite and TikTok conversations in the public chat during class?

Will D solve his audio problem? Will A’s microphone begin to work?

Find out next week!

And I’ll leave you with…

In the student survey I gave my ELA kiddos to complete, a kid named Aaron answered the question “What name should I call you, if not your first name?” with A-a-ron.

I was cracking up the rest of the day.

If you do not “get” that reference, please stop everything in your world and watch this skit immediately: