A Day in the Life of a Teacher During Lockdown
Overwhelmed is the understatement of 2020 — here’s what our new class schedule looks like…
“What do you do?” I’m often asked. I teach Middle School Social Studies. That means World History. Early Humans. Ancient Greece. Rome. Medieval Europe. Africa. China. Stories. Epic challenges! Battles waged — won and lost. It’s quite a lot to cover in one school year, but it always is.
Students can’t get enough of the unbelievable nature of History, and always ask, “…that really happened?”
I teach 13-year-old’s:
- How to label countries on a map
- About different cultures, stories from the past, heroes and villains (depending on who wrote the source, of course) and how to form opinions about the world
- How the economy works
- What happened in the past in hopes that they will be able to learn from it and create a better future
I have been doing this for the past five years now, and while I struggled in the first two years, I now waver back and forth between “I’ve got this!” and… “should I be doing this at all?”
Now that we’ve been asked to each online, I think a lot of teachers are questioning everything.
I Don’t Hate Remote Learning…
But — I do miss my kids. I miss them more than anything.
I miss their random questions, I miss their reactions when they discover something new, and I even miss them complaining about being at school in general.
I know that they are (hopefully) safe.
It’s A Chance For Students To Learn Independence…
However, it’s not a break for me or any of my fellow teachers.
I am trying to be grateful for this opportunity to teach from home because I know how much our students are growing.
After all, they are being asked to do what some college students can’t do — manage their time and work by themselves.
Here’s what my days have been looking like lately:
7:00 A.M. Wake Up/Shower/Get Ready
I actually have been sleeping in later than usual. But — that doesn’t mean I’m getting more sleep.
Normally, I would need to be at school around 7:30 at the latest, changing my white board goals for the day, testing technology, and setting up everything that I need to teach the day’s lesson.
8:00 A.M. Post Assignments For The Day/Email Colleagues
We post our assignments and morning announcements at 8 o’clock sharp so that students (hopefully) feel like they have a morning routine and know when they can expect their work.
Instead of taking a full hour for each class like it would during a normal school day, student work now takes between 10–25 minutes each day for Social Studies and Science, and about 30 minutes for Math and Language Arts. Electives give one assignment per week and students can complete them on their own schedule.
This is so that students can complete the work more easily due to bad or low internet connections, and work around sibling/parent schedules.
8:30 A.M. Answer Emails/Adjust Assignments
This includes emails from the night before, staff emails, parent emails, etc. We then often have to adjust assignments as students have questions, so we clarify within the assignment to make it easier for others as they look at it throughout the day.
9:00 A.M. Staff Meeting
This is exactly what you’d think — but digital. Someone has their dog, someone’s head is getting cut off because of camera placement, and someone is already on their 3rd cup of coffee with their kids screaming in the background.
9:45 A.M. Sending Google Hangout Invites To Students Via Email
I have many individual meetings with students each day, so I send them scheduled emails 15 minutes before their meetings so they know where to click, and when I’ll be there. They aren’t as experienced with managing their time yet, so I like to send them these reminders ahead of time so they make it to chat with me.
10:00 A.M. My First Individual Student Meeting
These meetings are check-in’s to see how students are doing, to help them with homework in my class (and often, others), to walk them through making a to-do list to decrease their stress, and just to chat.
They are all voluntary and requested by students — after I started opening up time slots for this, I received emails each day saying “Actually, could we meet tomorrow? And the next day?”… and then they wanted to continue to meet— so now they all have their own repeating 20-minute time slot Monday-Friday.
It can be exhausting, but it makes me happy to hear their voices, see their faces, and know that I’m helping them stay sane in some small way during this strange time.
10:30 A.M. Another Individual Student Meeting
This time I am joined by my coworker to help a student with their assignment from the previous day.
11:00 A.M. — 12:00 P.M. Office Hours
I hold open office hours for an hour each day as my “class” time where students can drop in and ask for help, or just to talk.
If I have time where students are not present, I’ll make coffee/breakfast during this time.
Many students are intimidated to come on when others might be there, so that’s why so many prefer individual meetings since it’s more private.
12:00 P.M Individual Student Meeting #3
12:15 P.M. — 1:00 P.M. Team Meeting
Our grade level meets to talk about what’s happening this week, our assignments, any students we need to check in with, and anything we need to do together.
1:00 P.M. Eat Lunch While Grading Yesterday’s Assignment
I have 110 students, and each assignment must be graded by the next day so that I can enter it into the log and email parents if students are behind by more than a couple of days.
2:30 P.M. Finish Grading/Email Parents/Meet With More Students
I try to be very open with parents and let them know what’s going on with student work so that they can help the best that they can — while they are trying to work full-time jobs as well.
3:30 P.M. Go For A Walk
I have to take a break and go for a walk at some point each day if the weather is nice to get my eyes off the screen, and to get my watch to stop yelling at me for sitting so much.
As a teacher, I have never had an issue with my watch telling me to move more — I’m always walking around the classroom, leaning, bending, running up to the board to draw something — I’m never not moving while teaching in-person.
Now, I’m having all kinds of weird aches and pains due to the way that I’m sitting — it’s quite interesting and somewhat upsetting, so I’ve been trying to get up and move more.
Sometimes that means taking meetings on my phone and walking around my house with my camera off.
4:30 P.M. — 6:00 P.M More Individual Student Meetings
Parents can join if they are later in the day, so many students request these times.
6:00 P.M. Make Tomorrow’s Assignment/Record & Upload Video Instructions
It’s hard to plan too far ahead during online learning.
“Just make it ahead of time for the whole week!”
That’s difficult right now because teaching is a business. You can’t afford to have a lesson not land, as students will be frustrated and not want to log on the next day for what’s next.
It needs to be entertaining, informative, easy-to-follow, and have them ready for more tomorrow.
It has me feeling like I’m a YouTuber trying to keep my kids subscribers to my channel, honestly.
We have to make sure that each day lines up with the next, and we can’t anticipate what we need to include until we’ve seen how they react to that day’s assignment.
But — we have to upload our video instructions to Google Drive as far ahead of time as possible to ensure that it uploads and processes. If students click on a video and can’t see our instructions due to processing time, they probably won’t come back later to see if it’s working.
7:30 P.M. Eat Dinner
Goal: Try to not look at a screen for at least 20 minutes.
8:00 P.M. Answer Parent Emails
Parents have jobs too, so this is about when they have time to email me asking questions about their students and their work. Thank you, parents at home who are working and trying to support students at the same time — I salute you.
8:30 P.M. Double Check That All Assignments/Announcements Are Prepped For Tomorrow:
Do the links work?
Are the emails scheduled to go out at the correct times?
Is everything easy to understand?
Is the formatting right?
9:00 P.M. Enjoy Personal Time
…I think that’s what it’s called?
I’ve really been trying to read a little bit each night to settle my racing thoughts.
I haven’t made it past Chapter 1 in the book currently sitting on my nightstand — this is due to my very tired brain re-reading the same sentence over and over and getting distracted by what I need to do for tomorrow.
10:00 P.M. Get Ready for Bed/Try To Sleep
I really try to go to bed early every single day, because I’d like to wake up before 7 A.M. and take my walk before work. Has that happened yet? Nope.
I’m sure many people who are working from home are dealing with similar issues right now — the work day doesn’t end at a certain time like it used to. It just… stays with you.
I end up falling asleep sometime around 12 A.M — 2:00 A.M. according to my Fitbit. It’s hard to sleep because I’m constantly thinking of how I could improve my lessons in my head, and things I could do to make them more interesting the next day.
I want my students to have fun and get the most out of their assignments, and it’s defeating if some days they find it difficult or just don’t want to do it.
I almost always end up writing when I can’t sleep, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — so if you’re reading this or any of my other recents — it was probably written in the wee hours of the morning.
7:00 A.M. The Next Day — Repeat
Am I Complaining?
Absolutely not. I’m grateful to have a job, and happy that I still get to talk to so many of my students each day, even if it’s not in person. I have great co-workers who make this a lot easier than it could be.
Am I Learning?
Absolutely. Each day is a new kind of brain Jenga where I have to figure out how to deliver information to my students without being there to see how they interpret it, and without knowing what questions they have if they do not ask.
I Get Excited When Students Come To Office Hours Or Email Questions
It feels a little less weird to actually get to interact with them instead of just sending assignments out into the ether to hope they come back.
What Does This Mean For The Future Of Teaching?
We’ve proven we can do it — and some students thrive here. In fact, many of my students who do not do well in-person have completely loved being able to create their own schedule, work alone, and do assignments on their own time.
I think that somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten about the introverted students — the ones who do not want to do group work or be forced into certain activities.
The ones who are just as curious… but don’t express it. I’m so excited to see those students learning in a way that suits them.
I hope the other side of this brings a balance — and I hope we’re all able to become better learners, teachers, and people in general.
Thank you for reading!
