Remember when you were younger, and you would wait around watching the bottom of the screen to see if school was magically cancelled, so you could go back to bed and sleep in?
I remember praying for snow days when I was a kid. When I became a teacher, I prayed again for snow days because I could then get the much needed rest I wanted.
Then the internet arrived and the idea of virtual teaching gave too many people ideas.
We had snow here in my little corner of South Carolina. Usually snow shuts things down. Not school. Not anymore. Now we have E-Learning days. I have an 8 a.m. class (just like a normal school day). Instead of telling students to sit down, I’m having to mute mics or turn off cameras because someone decided it was okay to join the meeting in their underwear. I just want to teach my drama lesson. It’s difficult to do that while virtual. Not because I couldn’t do it, but most of the students are sleeping in and not joining the virtual class meetings.
As if virtual teaching from home isn’t enough, our district makes us fill out a form to account for every single hour and minute of our day and what we did during that time.
8:00-8:27, virtual meeting.
8:28-8:30 reply to email.
8:31-8:50 grade papers.
8:51-8:56 help student access assignment.
Blah, blah, blah. Because, you know, we might go back to bed and not fulfill our obligations as a teacher. Students think that we treat them like they are in a prison, but they don’t know about what kind of demands are being placed on us as teachers. I mean we even have a special lesson plan that we have to fill out for our virtual lesson plan to make sure that we get all of the necessary components in to our lesson. No wiggle room. No room for mistakes. No trust.
Here’s the kicker: You don’t have to fill that form out if you are teaching virtually from your classroom. Why? Because they know where you are. They know you are in bed sleeping, or shopping at Walmart. They know right where you are. And then we wonder why so many teachers are leaving the profession. It’s this nitpicking and micromanaging that is causing teachers to leave. With everything else that we are juggling, is this even necessary?
So, Goodbye, Snow Days. I will miss you. I will miss cuddling up on the couch with my cat and hot cocoa while staring out the window watching the snow fall. I will miss sleeping in until 9 a.m. and making breakfast. It has all been replaced by logging into a meeting by 8 a.m. and grabbing my coffee off the Keurig as soon as it finishes brewing in time to listen to students complain that they wanted to stay in bed. Me, too. Me. Too.
