Doing Hard Things

My second week of hybrid learning school starts today.  When we decided to invite half of the students on campus for each week (the other half learn remotely), I knew that we had selected the hardest of all teaching options.  Last week, as classes got underway, the difficulty of the choice was confirmed.

This week, the students in class last week will be remote and the second crop of students will be present in class.  Some families have opted to be all remote and with those kids mixed in, more than half of each class I teach is off campus each day.  Teaching school with masks and social distancing, with more than half of each class learning remote, is more than exhausting.  It’s also really, really hard.  

Though my classroom is familiar (albeit with plexiglass and desks spaced 6 feet apart), so much of class is different, starting with the tiresome but necessary mask worn while teaching to masked face students in person while the rest of the class chimes in via Zoom.  For years, I’ve taught lessons using an iPad to broadcast notes on the screen.  In hybrid learning, I must choose being seeing the faces of my remote students or broadcasting my notes.  I’ve chosen student faces but that makes the task of teaching students how to take notes much harder.  Lessons take longer and while I don’t feel the pressure to cover material at the same pace as the pre-pandemic world, I’m increasingly aware of what we lose in this method of schooling.

For now, I persevere, aware that there is no other option available.  I relish the laughter and chatter of students doing what middle schoolers do.  I’m also aware of the relative privilege of my students, all of whom have Internet access and a brand-new iPad; most have two devices while they learn remotely.  If it’s hard for us, I can only imagine how much harder it is for teachers whose students have so much less to work with.

But that doesn’t mean my exhaustion isn’t real.  That doesn’t mean my lift isn’t heavy.  Each day I remind myself and then my students that we can do hard things.  And each day we do the hard thing moves us one day closer to a brighter horizon.  

And with that, a new week of hard things begins.