Mrs. Ram's Jams

Tag: teaching

• A Teacher Tale: Ways My 8th Graders Horrified Me Recently

  Posted at 11:44 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on March 13, 2021

  

  Some classroom snapshots that demonstrate why I love and hate teaching middle schoolers, who I refer to with equal parts affection and exasperation as goofbuckets: 

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  Goofbucket #1: If I have a red-headed baby can I just throw it out the window? [Having temporarily forgotten that he sits next to a blatantly ginger (sweet sweet sweet) girl.]

  Ginger-Haired-Shoulder-Partner Goofbucket: [Shoots him with an eat-poo-and-die look that I thought she was incapable of making.]

  Me: There’s a word for that: defenestrate. And no. And I’m pretty sure you just hurt Ginger-Haired-Shoulder-Partner Goofbucket’s feelings.

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  Goofbucket #2: Hand sanitizer low-key tastes good.

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  *****In my school district, students have to wear uniforms. And. It’s. A. Battle. Every. Single. Day. To. Get. Middle. Schoolers. To. Follow. The. Policy. (Do I agree with public school uniform policy? No. But I enforce it because it’s part of my job.)

  We always have a few who try to get away with not wearing uniform shirts by just wearing a school-approved sweatshirt or hoodie instead with whatever t-shirt underneath. 

  Well, a couple of weeks ago, one of my students rolled into first block wearing a black hoodie, which they’re not allowed to wear. *****

  Me: [Stopping him at the door.] Hey, you know you can’t wear black hoodies in the classroom. I’m just going to need you to take it off.

  Goofbucket #3: I can’t.

  Me: Why not?

  Goofbucket #3: I don’t have a shirt on.

  Me: [Startled.] You don’t have on any shirt underneath your hoodie????

  Goofbucket #3: No, ma’am.

  Me: [Aghast.] Who wears a hoodie without wearing ANY shirt underneath it?????

  Goofbucket #3: [Hangs head in shame.]

  Me: Go downstairs and get a shirt from ISSP. 

  [Goofbucket #3 comes back 15 minutes later wearing a very wrinkly school-approved anorak that’s a tad too small. His midriff is visible when he raises his arms slightly.]

  Me: What are you wearing????

  Goofbucket #3: Coach was out of uniform shirts so he sent me to the locker room to find something to wear. All I could find was this jacket.

  Me: So you just took some random jacket???? 

  [Both of us hang our heads in defeat.]

  (Sidebar: A few years ago, a similar situation transpired, but it was with a girl, and she couldn’t take her sweatshirt off because she wasn’t wearing a bra. Like, I get you girl, #freethetatas all the way, and whew, you’re brave, but you can’t do that here!!!)

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  *****I’m not quite sure how we arrived at this conversation, but this transpired during my advisory.*****

  Me: Teaching is like performing, and y’all are my audience.

  Confused Goofbucket: We’re your audience?

  Me: Yeah, and if this were back in Shakespeare’s day and I were performing on stage at the Globe Theater and the audience didn’t like my performance, what would the audience have thrown at me? You should be far enough into your Shakespeare WebQuest to answer that.

  Goofbucket #5:  BEER!!!!!!!

  [The whole room gets silent.]

  Me: [Deadpans.] Wrong answer. Also, you better believe that I’m telling your mother you said that.

  Goofbucket #5: [Cowers in fear.]

  Me: [Behind a hardened stare, delights in his fright. Takes a silent curtain call.]

  ---

  *****In the middle of class, I watched a student, Goofbucket #1 who’ve you already met, drink water through his mask. (I honestly think he forgot he was wearing one.)*****

  Me: [Stops going over intro to Romeo and Juliet slides.] Did you just drink water through your mask?

  Goofbucket #1: [Puts the water bottle down and closes his eyes because he knows the class will never let him live it down. Starts laughing.] Yes.

  Me: When’s the last time you washed your mask????? [Asks because obviously 8th graders are gross and some of them wear the same mask every single day.]

  Goofbucket #1: Yesterday.

  Me: Thank god. [Finds my own mask getting wet from the laughing-so-hard-I’m-crying tears.]

  *****I watched the wet circle on his mask slowly dry the rest of the block.*****

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  Posted in education, teaching, Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged comedy, middle school teacher, teaching

• Teaching Fail: When Acronyms Backfire

  Posted at 9:32 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on February 20, 2021

  

  My students and I have been working on argumentative texts, and I swore on Facebook not too long ago that I would ensure my students would never forget how to evaluate an argument and a source.

  So I turned to Google while lesson planning and discovered the CRAAP method for examining sources. All you have to do is ask yourself is this source CRAAP to analyze for currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose–and voila, the children remember how to evaluate a source! And they get to say CRAAP in the classroom, so it makes them feel like they can cuss but actually aren’t! Students love that cusp of danger feeling! 

  And my teacher soul radiated warm fuzzies every time I heard them say CRAAP while discussing texts about failure.

  CRAAP never sounded so good! CRAAP was magic! They were learning! They would know forever how to evaluate a resource!

  Well.

  It backfired.

  While my students did test corrections yesterday, I examined exit tickets that analyzed if a failure fluff piece from Medium.com was a compelling argument.

  What did my students do in their formal writing???

  Used the word CRAAP–EVERYWHERE.

  I audibly groaned everytime I came across a sentence that said “this source isn’t CRAAP.”

  Not only did they come up with incorrect answers (sigh, only like five kids said the source and the argument itself was crappy), they actually thought saying CRAAP in their writing was a brilliant idea!!!

  After having done a badass job of teaching how to evaluate sources and arguments using articles about failure, I WAS AND AM THE FAILURE AND IT MADE ME FEEL CRAPPY.

  Crap. Crap. Crap. Extra Crap.

  What if they do that on their benchmark???? Or god forbid the LEAP test????

  How do I get the CRAAP out of them?

  Well, that sounded terrible, but you know what I mean!

  Looks like they’re in for a crappy Tuesday because they’re going to be rewriting those exit tickets. 

  (Sidebar:  When I looked at these same exit tickets, so many students kept referring to the author by his first name. I asked my fourth block why–because they fully know to use the author’s last name. Their response? His last name was too hard to spell so it was easier to use his first name.)

  

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  Posted in education, teaching, Uncategorized | 2 Comments | Tagged education, funny, teacher, teacher problems, teaching

• A Teacher Tale: A Rant About Cheating in Digital Classrooms

  Posted at 9:36 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on February 13, 2021

  

  Now that I’m an in-person and at-home synchronous teaching master–HA–I forget to start my Google Meet at third block about half the time and occasionally talk while my microphone is on mute–I need help mastering ALL THE STUDENT CHEATING THAT IS HAPPENING ALL THE TIME BECAUSE THEY ARE ALWAYS ON THEIR DEVICES.

  I miss paper. And pencils. And pens. And THINKING instead of Google searching and regurgitating whatever Spark Notes is telling them about symbolism in Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery.

  I’m starting to wish that Google was never invented.

  I’m so frustrated because some students’ grades are complete shams. Their grades aren’t reflective of their knowledge and ability. The grades are reflective of cheating and getting away with it.

  It seems like all my digital resources have been compromised. 

  All of the answers to CommonLit assessments are readily available to students on Quizlet.

  The state curriculum that we’re using is web-based. Want to guess how secure it is? Not very. Our unit test answers are plastered all over the internet.

  I can’t lock a Google Form anymore because my 8th graders don’t have Chromebooks.

  I gave the kids To Kill a Mockingbird before Christmas break to read on their own and a banana-ton of questions to answer as a test grade. It’s due in two weeks. Guess what some kids are doing? Googling the answers instead of reading the book. (In hindsight, this was a terrible assignment to give them.)

  And now that I’m teaching at home virtual learners who are, for the most part, unsupervised while they’re at home all day, cheating is even more of an issue. And I could be mistaken, but I think some of my in-person learners are staying home on days when they have lots of tests and logging in virtually to class so they can cheat more easily. 

  And while we do have Impero as monitoring software, it’s only on school devices. Some of my students use two different devices, one for the Google Meet, and one for classwork, which is fine, but I can’t see what they’re doing on the other device. This also becomes problematic when I do give locked tests through Illuminate. (Also no lesson planning or grading gets done when the students are testing anymore because I have to watch what they’re doing like a hawk.)

  End rambly semi-coherent rant.

  Do y’all have any teacher hacks to help prevent cheating, especially during testing, in this digital classroom era? This teacher needs help! 

  Here are some of the things I already do:

  1. Their cameras must be on and their faces must be fully visible. Most of the time, my rule is eyebrows and up, but this doesn’t work during testing. No blurred backgrounds are allowed either.
  2. I make all students push their sleeves up and show me their wrists to see if they have smart watches on. If they’re wearing one, I make the kids at home stand up and go put their watches on the other side of the room and the kids at school put their watches in their backpacks. (I personally don’t think kids should wear smart watches at school, period.)
  3. I make the kids at home show me their phones and have them put their phones on the other side of the room too. I don’t think this actually works. Lots of them tell me that their phones are already in another room. Yeah right.
  4. I make them have their microphones on the whole time they’re testing.
  5. Tests have to be taken on the school-issued device. 
  6. I give tests in a locked browser if at all possible. I wish I could lock students into a Google Form or CommonLit. UGHHH.
  7. I stalk them on Impero when I give them unsecure assessments.

  Is it terrible that I delight in their looks of misery when they realize I’ve thwarted most of their reliable cheating methods? Give me more ideas so I can get my schadenfreude on! 

  But in all seriousness, I can’t believe that parents of in-person learners aren’t making more of a stink about how easy it is for at-home learners to cheat and ultimately get better grades. 

  Is there anything that parents and students hate more than grades not being fair?

  Posted in teaching | 0 Comments | Tagged digital classrooms, education, student cheating, teaching, teaching during a pandemic

• Mrs. Ram’s Holiday Gift Guide for Teachers

  Posted at 10:41 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on December 12, 2020

  

  Tired of giving gift cards, coffee mugs, and home-baked goodies to your children’s teachers every year for Christmas? 

  Have you put off shopping for teacher gifts because you lack good ideas?

  Look no further! I’ve got some great teacher gift ideas for you.

  Plants. I squealed in delight when the school librarian dropped off this perfect little succulent in my room this week.

  

  Once, I received a begonia hanging basket and about died on the spot. If your child showed up with a tiny poinsettia for me, I would explode with Christmas joy. Seriously, consider giving plants this Christmas. They’re inexpensive and unexpected. 

  A lunch-sized Crock-Pot. If you’re willing to spend a little more on a Christmas gift, this is perfect for teachers. I purchased one for myself, and it has been life-changing. Some schools don’t allow teachers to have their own microwaves in their rooms, and right now using a communal microwave grosses me out. With COVID, lots of teachers have to monitor students during lunch and can barely find the time to eat, let alone heat up their lunch. I plug in my baby Crock-Pot at the end of third block, and my chicken and veggie soup or pot roast is the perfect temperature by the end of fourth block. Every teacher I know who has one can’t live without theirs. 

  

  Cool handmade shit you or your friends make.  ‘Tis the season to promote yourself! Last year, I received a gorgeous pottery ornament and bowl made by a student’s mother. I’ve gotten the most delicious salsa that a student’s mother sells, and once I tasted it, I turned around and bought some to give to my friends for Christmas. And while I’m not crafty, I have friends who are. One of my besties from high school makes the MOST gorgeous and fantastic artisan soaps, so guess what Little Thing’s teachers are getting this year?

  

  (Here’s a link to her website:  Persifer Soap Company.) (Image credit.)

  I’m sure you have friends who make earrings, bath bombs, hot chocolate bombs, etc. Support your friends, and give the cool shit they make to your kids’ teachers. 

  Cool handmade shit your kids make. I have received gifts that have made me cry and are framed and precious and I will cherish them forever and ever. (Rambly incoherent sentence intended because I’m incoherent just thinking about them.) I had a student two years ago paint me this. I was a mess for the rest of the day.

  

  I had a student draw this for me one year. (Context:  Mrs. Ram, that’s me, loves Goose, my husband’s nickname, with Little Thing watching the two of us. I die now, okay?)

  

  Your kids are talented. I love to get their works of art.

  Gifts that relate to the teacher’s classroom theme. More than likely, your kids’ teachers’ classrooms are decorated with a theme. Mine’s decorated in llamas, so anything llama related is welcome! Llama sticky notes? Yes, please! Llama pencils? Sure! Llama stuffed animals, hand towels, or journals? Absolutely! Ask your kids how their teachers’ classrooms are decorated and go from there. 

  

  Gift cards to local businesses. Okay, I know I started this post by saying Tired of giving gift cards…but but but. Think outside the box with this one. Don’t just go with gift cards for Amazon, Walmart, Target, or Starbucks. Think local, especially with small businesses being hit hard this year. Give the gift of a manicure or pedicure! Give the gift of your favorite Mexican restaurant! Give the gift of your favorite florist or boutique!

  

  But in all honesty, teachers enjoy all the gifts they receive. They will love every coffee mug and Starbucks gift card they receive. 

  It’s just nice to be recognized and appreciated, especially during such a tumultuous school year. 

  Posted in education, teaching, Uncategorized | 3 Comments | Tagged english teacher, gifts for teachers, middle school teacher, teacher gifts, teaching

• What I Miss

  Posted at 7:56 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on November 21, 2020

  

  I’m rather wistful this morning. Here are two things that I’ve been missing HARD because of the pandemic:

  1. Wearing fancy earrings. I have a whole drawer full of golden hoops, tortoise shell danglies, leather teardrops, and Kendra Scott knockoffs that are slowly going out of style. Instead, I’m donning studs, BORING, because I am fearful of losing an earlobe when tearing my mask off my face after class ends. Have you ever ripped a piercing wide open? I have— between freshman and sophomore year of college waiting tables at my cousin’s restaurant. I bussed a table using a big Rubbermaid container and brought it back to the dishwashing area. As I was setting it down, its lip got caught on my belly button ring and ripped that senior-year-in-high-school-spring-break-bad-decision right out. I screamed. It hurt like hell. For years the top of my bellybutton looked like it had floppy devil horns hanging upside down from it. I don’t want my ears to suffer the same fate. Occasionally I’ll sport my fancy earrings anyway when I want to live on the wild side or simply forget the dangers of fancy earring wearing. The only upside to wearing them is if you wear hoops. Then at least when you take your mask off, the hoopies catch the elastic and your mask can hang like a hammock from them if you don’t feel like putting your mask on your desk. 
  2. Name brand hand sanitizer. All I want for Christmas is some Germ-X or Purell. That cheap shit smells like tequila, and by nine a.m., WHILE I’M TEACHING CHILDREN, all I can think about is a giant top-shelf margarita. I’ve had to stop myself mid lesson from sniffing it because I’m all nostalgic for bygone Friday afternoon happy hours with my teacher friends. It’s not fair that my classroom smells like a Mexican restaurant when it’s unsafe to even patronize (Patrón-ize?) one currently. So if you walk past my classroom door and see me fondling a bottle of GermsNoMore and bringing it lovingly up to my nose, I might need you to come in and confiscate it and replace it with some chips and salsa, thank you very much. 

  If you need me for anything this Thanksgiving break, you can find me in my backyard wearing my favorite tortoise shell oversized hoopies sipping a massive margarita in my not-yet-purchased hammock. 

  

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  What are the random things that you miss, friends?

  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 4 Comments | Tagged funny, pandemic, teaching

• A Teacher Tale: How I Tortured My Students for My Own Entertainment This Week

  Posted at 10:51 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on October 24, 2020

  

  It’s no secret that my class’s content is mind-numbing. I sympathize with my students who have fallen asleep, cheeks pressed to their sanitized desks and drool unspooling from the corners of their mouths, lulled into slumber because The Odyssey is boring. Who can blame them? It’s terribly long, was written eons ago, and is a poem. I struggle to contain my excitement, too.

  (You have no idea how much middle schoolers loathe poetry. But I adore yelling:  Guess what? We’re going to read a poem today!!!! And delight in the resounding chorus of teenage groans of displeasure following my pronouncement.) 

  Anyway, to further torture students, I try to make it as awkward as possible for my own entertainment.

  Because messing with the kids is the best part of my job. 

  Here’s how I tortured my students this week:

  1. I made them do their work in Kami. If you’re unfamiliar with Kami, it’s a PDF annotation program. The students despise it because despite an autosave feature, it only saves frequently not constantly. Apparently they’ve never known the despair of writing an essay in Microsoft Word that you’ve stayed up all night to complete that’s due to a professor in a couple of hours and losing your work because you accidentally closed the document without hitting “save now.” The. Horror. Google Docs has spoiled them. Experiencing the collective agony of pre-Google technology will make them better human beings.
  2. I made them talk to their laptops. Well, I specifically asked them to converse with Kami and ply her with compliments so she’d be more willing to save their work. An ALARMING number of students performed the exact opposite of my request and told Kami horrible, awful things, calling her names. One student even expressed to Kami a disquieting desire to light her on fire. Middle schoolers are terrible at being kind, but they loved talking to inanimate objects–even though they were being total Regina Georges while doing so. Weirdos. 

  

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  3. I made them listen to the cyclops scene from The Odyssey straight through, it’s thirty minutes long, without stopping–on a Friday. Sir Ian McKellen narrates the audiobook for them, but Gandalf fails to impress them. I did soften the blow by playing some pop culture clips of the Lotus Eaters beforehand. At least I didn’t test them?

  

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  4. I talked to myself obnoxiously to fill awkward silences. My second block refuses to warm up to me, laugh at my terrible puns and dad jokes, and to be anything but serious. I will loosen them up, and if it means I’m narrating my inner monologue audibly for the rest of the year, then so be it. 
  5. I called myself beautiful. Actually, I referred to myself as a “lustrous goddess,” like in The Odyssey, and the boys laughed in horror at a grown woman’s audacity at calling herself pretty. If you want your ego shattered, I suggest employing this strategy. Another good strategy is to ask them to guess your age. ONLY embark on either of these methods if you can brush off the comments and have a sense of humor about their reactions. (Also. What. The. Hell? What kind of society have we created that it’s not socially acceptable to call yourself beautiful and that it makes people and children uncomfortable when you do?)

  

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  What did you do, teacher friends, to add a little humor to your classrooms this week? 

  Posted in education, teaching | 2 Comments | Tagged english teacher, middle school, middle school teacher, teaching, teaching middle school

• A Teacher Tale: Teaching During a Pandemic Update #1

  Posted at 10:25 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on October 17, 2020

  

  Don’t get me wrong, pandemic teaching is rough, an understatement, but my teacher life got a gazillion times easier last week.

  My school had its fifth first day of school last week. What a weird thing to type, but it’s 2020.  Here are the five first days we’ve had:

  1. The first day for Group One students.
  2. The first day for Group Two students.
  3. The first day teaching in-person and at-home learners.
  4. The first day with both Groups One and Two on campus.
  5. The first day for previously at-home learners.

  At the first nine weeks’ end, our Home Based Virtual Learners (HBVLs) had the option to come back to physical school, and so many did. And while it’s fantastic to finally meet them IRL–cue me squealing in excitement through my mask while taking a HBVL’s temperature last Wednesday Jayda!!!!! It’s so nice to meet you in real life! Look at you!–It. Was. So. Strange.

  I’d just been teaching heads and necks, sometimes just eyebrows and foreheads, and instead of floating heads eerily levitating through the hallways on Wednesday morning like a Disney Channel show’s terrible Halloween episode, those heads were connected to BODIES. Some of my HBVL boys are GIANT, and it completely caught me off guard.

  And something that didn’t catch me off guard–the freedom afforded by being unchained to my computer screen for four blocks. Because with more HBVLs on campus, administration gave us the go-ahead to create a virtual school schedule, so I only teach virtually during third block now. 

  

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  I can stand up if I want. I can move around more, even though I’m still keeping my distance. I don’t have to constantly monitor the Google Meet chat, my email, and Impero (our student technology monitoring software) every single class. I don’t have to shut down a Meet at the end of every class and start a new one while trying to make sure the in-person students are social distancing, know what’s due the following day, and are walking into the hallway on time. There’s more normalcy, but I know it’s possibly short-lived with fall’s onset and increasing numbers of COVID-19 throughout the country.

  And while those students returning to school has made teaching a gazillion times easier, other aspects of more students on campus are troublesome:

  

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  • More students means less space for social distancing in the hallways and in the classrooms.
  • More students aren’t wearing their masks properly.
  • More students are sharing supplies and food when they aren’t supposed to.
  • More students are sitting in cramped classrooms without their masks on eating lunch.
  • More students means going through more sanitizing wipes, and who knows if and when we will run out. 
  • More students means more are showing up to school sick even though they should stay home.
  • More students is harder to manage than fewer students.
  • More students makes it appear like the coronavirus is disappearing when it’s not. 

  And like I said, I’m ecstatic more students are back and actual teaching is easier, but we can’t forget that this isn’t over yet. Please do your part to help keep all students, teachers, and everyone else safe. 

  There’s only so much teachers can do. 

  

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  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged teacher problems, teaching, teaching during a pandemic, teaching middle school

• A Teacher Tale: What Teachers Really Think About Parent Emails

  Posted at 9:22 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on October 10, 2020

  

  Hey Parents and Guardians,

  We teachers are more than happy to answer your questions and concerns via email, but before you hit send, could you ask yourself a couple of questions first?

  Before you send that email to your child’s teacher, is it kind?

  We are working our educator booties off this year.

  A mean email can derail our entire day and even week. We cry over these emails. We lose sleep over these emails. We have panic attacks over these emails. We might even turn a little mean ourselves when we get these emails and lash out at our own loved ones in misdirected anger.

  We then have to respond to an unkind email, try to turn the situation around, and wait on pins and needles for another response, which again, could be an angry one. 

  It’s a vicious cycle.

  And before you send that email to your child’s teacher, can you find the information somewhere else?

  We are working our educator booties off this year, and parent emails create more work for teachers.

  Often times when you email us, the answers to the questions you’re asking have already been given to you. If you look on PowerSchool you can see the answer to why Johnny has an F. He didn’t complete three test grade assignments, and there’s a note for every single missed assignment. If you’re questioning our late work policies, the answer might be on the syllabus, which you actually signed off on, stating that you read and understood the policies laid out on it. 

  And before you send that email to your child’s teacher, consider if it might be better to come in for a face to face (or a Zoom) conference with all your child’s teachers.

  We are working our educator booties off this year, and parent emails create more work for teachers.

  It takes a lot less time for us to talk about your concerns versus us writing an email back.

  An email that you wrote that maybe took you two minutes to compose can devour our entire 75 minute planning period. Yes, it can really take that long to reacquaint ourselves with your child’s work, write a thoughtful detailed response, and proofread until we go cross eyed–because heaven forbid an unsightly typo exists in it that you could use against us, to further prove your point that we’re incompetent.

  And before you send that email to your child’s teacher, and this one is going to be hard to swallow folks so prepare yourselves, ask yourself, could your child be lying to you?

  Children lie. All. Of. The. Time. 

  They cheat. They plagiarize. They fib about why work isn’t done and tell tall tales about their assignments being done when they’re not. 

  They’ll claim that teachers aren’t helping them and that teachers don’t like them and that teachers are mean and and and and and and and. 

  And while occasionally these claims might be true, more often than not, they aren’t.

  And then when we point out these things are untrue, we still aren’t believed sometimes. 

  And before you send that email to your child’s teacher, are you a teacher too?

  These are the worst emails, emails from parents who are teachers too. 

  Have I sent a snooty, condescending email to one of Little Thing’s teachers?

  Yes.

  And I’m terribly sorry. I don’t know everything, I’ve never been in your classroom, and it was a really shitty thing to do.

  I’m trying to be better because I know how terrible parent emails can be.

  So before you email your child’s teacher ask yourself:

  Is it kind?

  Can I find the information somewhere else?

  Is it better to have a conference?

  Is my child lying to me?

  Am I teacher too?

  Posted in teaching | 3 Comments | Tagged english teacher, parent emails, teacher, teacher problems, teaching

• A Teacher Tale: Virtual Learning Concerns

  Posted at 11:30 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on August 29, 2020

  

  Like any teacher who has started the 2020-2021 school year, I am trudging uphill to get a handle on teaching my curriculum in a digital world. Who am I kidding? We’ve been “in” school for three weeks, and I still won’t even get to the state-mandated curriculum until Tuesday. Like I said in a previous post, “I feel more like tech support than an actual English teacher” at this point. And in this new realm of almost fully digital teaching (I’ve gotten rid of all paper including books this year), these are the key factors that I’m worried about.

  1. Cheating and plagiarism. With the interwebs at their fingertips and teachers’ minimal capabilities of monitoring students learning at home, cheating and plagiarism, already an epidemic in middle and high schools, will be more rampant. Yes, there are programs to help catch plagiarism. Yes, there are programs where teachers can monitor what students are doing on their screens. Yes, there are programs where students can take tests in locked browsers. But. There’s no way for teachers to know that students at home don’t have their phones out or even another computer out googling answers while testing. Granted, the way that most English tests are set up anymore makes it hard to cheat, but that isn’t the case with math or social studies tests. And there’s no good way to prove that a student cheated with this setup. I also already had a student plagiarize an exit ticket, on a question that wasn’t even really plagiarize-able. Last year during digital learning, I had gobs of students put straight up the first thing they found in Google as their answers to a test grade assignment about “The Cask of Amontillado.” It’s loads easier to prove plagiarism, but students will deny it even with the proof in their face (and don’t get me started on the parent denial of their perfect student committing fraud). I’m enforcing a strict plagiarism policy this year to make it hit home to students that cheating in any form is not cool.
  2. Being recorded. There. I said it. We’re required to record our Google Meets. I’m being recorded all the time and so are the students. No thank you. First of all, I don’t understand how legally this can be a thing. I’m recording minors. Everyday. Secondly, the students don’t want to talk, whether it’s because of the fact they’re being recorded or you know they’re just middle schoolers who don’t want to talk. Thirdly, it’s a can of worms. It makes it awkward to correct a student’s behavior. My tone is forever documented on that recording, so are the students’. It’s going to make organic conversations around literature die, and these complex texts that we read at the middle school level discuss adult situations. You never know what kids are going to ask. Romeo and Juliet have a wedding night. They commit suicide. Odysseus cheats on his wife. Men rape women. While I’ve always handled the questions the kids ask about these texts professionally, I would hate to think what an outsider listening to these conversations might think about my classroom. I can’t skip over these parts; the kids are smart, they get it, and they ask questions about it. (Now granted, if students are doing independent work or testing, I don’t make them stay in the Meet the whole time because their technology doesn’t work properly if they’re running the Meet and trying to do work at the same time, but I run the Meet the whole time so they can pop in and out to ask questions.)
  3. Parent criticism. Listen, I’ve always dealt with this, lost sleep over it, had panic attacks about it, thought I’d quit my job over it, etc. But parents now can literally hear what’s going on in my classroom and your classroom if the students aren’t plugged into a headset. My students are on silent to get rid of background noise for the whole meeting, but I have no idea what’s going on in their houses or who is listening in because I can’t hear them and I can’t see them either. It’s eerie to know that people are listening who shouldn’t be. Not that parents aren’t welcome. Or that their input isn’t valuable. Or that they shouldn’t advocate for their children if they believe their children have been unjustly treated . . . but still. I’m human. Sometimes my tone comes out wrong, or I’m being sarcastic, or the parents have missed what’s happened before with their students, or– All. Of. The. Other. Possibilities. Parents are being eavesdroppers. And that’s creepy. Sorry not sorry. 
  4. Shift in teacher and student work expectations. I refuse to be available 24/7 to students and parents because of digital learning. I refuse to bend over backward to meet unreasonable digital learning expectations. I refuse to run myself ragged just because society demands it so. I can still be a good teacher even while saying no. I’ve already shifted my paper-based lessons to be fully digital. Do you know how many hours of work that took? I now don’t get my own lunch break because the students have to eat in our rooms. Heck, I have to clock into work at 7:05 and I’m now with students until 1:15 every day, except for SWIFT runs to the restroom in between classes. I’m now chained to my desk in front of three computers instead of up and interacting with kids during lessons. When students are quizzing, testing, or writing, that’s my time to grade in class. That goes out the window with virtual learning because I’m troubleshooting device issues with kids and monitoring their screens constantly instead. I’ve got even less time to grade at work than I did previously. And the poor kids. No recess. No true group work. Also tied to their device, or devices if they’re at home. Often their technology doesn’t work. Lots of students can’t manage their time in class without a teacher directly in front of them. Their technology is a distraction. And I could go on and on. But mainly, I’m distressed at how we’re expecting students to be miniature corporate business people who can toggle among Google Meets, a lesson, and four other tabs when there are kids out there who can’t even get logged into a website they use every day.  They’re just missing business suits and MBA’s. Pretty soon they’ll be telling their coworkers, I mean fellow students, to “lean in” and be “team players” and throwing “synergy” around like confetti.
  5. Is virtual learning our new forever? Once the pandemic gets under control, is virtual learning going to be a permanent part of brick and mortar schools? If I have students who get sick or have to have surgery requiring them to miss a week or two or seven of school, am I going to be expected to teach them while they’re at home if the parents want that for their children? Am I going to have to be prepared on any given day from this point forward to teach students at home too while most students will be physically present? If I have to have surgery that requires me to be out but I’m able to teach from home, will I be allowed to do it? Should I be allowed to do it? Is it one of those just because we can doesn’t mean we should scenarios for both students and teachers? Also, just an FYI, it takes three to four times as long to cover material virtually than it does in person. Students will get less done and learn less if this set-up is now part of our new forever. 

  I’ve got all kinds of other things on my mind, and I know the above is all rambly and gluey and incoherent in places, but at this point, I’m not worried about being eloquent. 

  And I’d love for all those Higher Ups in education, whether at the school level, district level, state level, or national level, to be alright with their workdays being recorded and listened into by whoever just so happens to walk by while they’re being live-streamed into people’s houses. Just saying. 

  Posted in teaching, writing | 4 Comments | Tagged teaching, teaching during a pandemic, teaching middle school, virtual learning

• A Teacher Tale: How My First Week of Teaching Students During a Pandemic Went

  Posted at 12:08 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on August 15, 2020

  

  If you’re not a teacher, have you checked in with your teacher friends who went back into the classroom this week?

  Sent them a silly gif of encouragement via text message?

  Venmo-ed them twenty bucks towards a splurge-y bottle of Pinot Noir for them to unwind with over the weekend?

  Offered your ear for them to vent their frustration?

  Or at least liked their end-of-the-first-week-with-students-during-a-pandemic Facebook post?

  You have?

  Good.

  Because it was probably rough on them. It definitely was overwhelming over here in Mrs. Ram Jam land.

  I made it through the first two days of only in-person learners just fine, but by day two’s end, my throat was on fire. From lack of use due to a five-month hiatus or just the normal back-to-school-first-week-malaise–or so I thought.

  Where I teach in Louisana, educators are teaching in-person learners and virtual learners simultaneously, and the first day with both, our third day, was particularly chaotic. Because the district’s network broke. I didn’t have high expectations to make it through much, but the whole experience was frustrating for learners and teachers both.  

  I woke up Thursday morning with a cough and a headache on top of my sore throat. I made the responsible choice and stayed home for the day, and my awesome principal let me teach from home. Google Meet didn’t work during first block nor second block, so I didn’t get much done with those students, but my last two classes went much more smoothly. Individual students kept having issues with their devices, Google Docs and websites lagging or failing to load, and Google Meet crashing.

  I felt even worse by the end of my last class. My doctor squeezed me in for a quick phone visit and ordered a COVID test for me, telling me to stay home for a week even if I tested negative because I have no immune system with all the medicine I’m on for my ulcerative colitis. 

  So I taught from home again yesterday, and while it went a million times better than the previous day, it was still glitchy and slow and crashy and frustrating for students experiencing tech issues.

  And it’s really hard to figure out how to help them when you’re not IRL in front of them.

  I also don’t have a good gauge of how engaged they are or even how much work they’re completing while they’re logged into virtual class, if they can even get logged in, because it’s impossible to run a Google Meet, answer their questions, help students troubleshoot tech problems, check my email for other issues, AND log into 20 different individual students’ Google Docs at the same time to check their progress. 

  Here are my takeaways from week one:

  • Always take your technology home. When I left school on Wednesday, I left my three work devices on my desk because I didn’t want to detach the chargers from the powerstrip, ruining my complicated teacher desk set-up. I’m lucky that I’m married to the network administrator for the district, and we have 105 different devices floating around at home, so I was able to teach from home on an extra device and my personal Chromebook. You never know when you or someone in your family will get sick, and you too might have to teach from home.
  • Keep it simple stupid (The KISS Rule). Don’t make your lessons complicated. Don’t make lessons that require students to have ten other tabs running at once besides their Google Meet too. I had to spend ten minutes teaching students how to split their screens on Wednesday because they didn’t know how, and I couldn’t even show them how to do it right because it wouldn’t work properly on my laptop hooked up to my SMART Board. Try to keep websites that require students to log in to a minimum. Most of my Wednesday was spent trying to get students logged into CommonLit and Newsela, two websites that the students will be using all year. It’s hard enough to get students logged into programs IRL and trying to do it virtually was ridiculously hard–even though to log into both of those programs they use the same login credentials to log into their Chromebooks every day, so you’d think it would be super easy. I still have students who can’t get logged in. Then once students get logged into new websites you have to teach them how to use them too. This goes without saying for any program you want the kids to use throughout the year. You will have to teach them how to use the programs first before you can expect them to do any lesson. I’m sticking to just Google Docs and Kami aside from CommonLit and Newsela, so I can teach content instead of having to teach kids how to use a different program every single day. Remember to KISS it.
  • Closed captioning is not your friend. In each class, I had a couple of students who couldn’t hear in Google Meets, so I turned closed captioning on to help them out, but can we talk about major backfire? Yesterday, I started going over Greek and Latin roots and how to break down words for parts. I modeled using the word “abhorrent” and then tried to work through the process with the word “acerbic.” In one class, I asked my eighth graders “How many parts does acerbic have?” I looked at my Google Meet screen and glanced at the closed captioning real quick and saw that it translated that to “How many parts does a cervix have?” My mouth dropped open briefly in surprise, and I recovered quickly and just ignored it, but how mortifying. I have no idea who actually saw that roll across the screen. Needless to say, I won’t be using closed captioning again.
  • Be flexible and realistic. Guess what? I’m already a couple of days behind where I’d like to be content-wise, and imma be real honest, I probably won’t get to my curriculum until Wednesday. Am I stressed about that? Nope. Am I stressed that my lessons are going to take longer to execute and that I have to streamline them? Nope. I’ll go with the flow and adapt. I am more worried about the students themselves and how they’re adapting to online learning and their frustration with technology that doesn’t want to work.
  • Don’t be chin surprised. With all of the everything going on this week, I forgot that my students had chins. And smiles. The students who I teach at fourth block eat lunch in my room every day, and when they whipped off their masks to chow down on their Lunchables on that very first day. I. Could. Not. Stop. Staring. At. The. Bottom. Of. Their. Faces. They looked like completely different human beings with their masks off, and this made me unbearably despondent. It just made everything hit home that this school year is so different and that I’m going to be denied their full range of facial expressions while they’re in my room. 

  As of right now, I feel more like tech support than an actual English teacher. And while I’m hopeful that this will pass and I’ll get into my groove, my Ram jam, of teaching poems, The Odyssey, the Hero’s Journey, symbolism, allegories, words, and writing, I’ve come to terms with our new teacher reality and I’m going to remain dedicated to not sugarcoating what we do to the general public (even though I approach it through the veil of humor sometimes). 

  Unrealistic expectations have been placed on teachers and students during this pandemic, and teachers need to speak out about it. 

  I encourage every single educator out there to share their bad and their ugly just as much as they’re sharing their good. 

  (Good news:  I don’t have the coronavirus! I got my results yesterday afternoon.)

  Posted in education, teaching, writing | 5 Comments | Tagged digital learning, english teacher, teaching, teaching during a pandemic, virtual learning

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