Having finished a year of this, I have to say that my assessment of online learning is overwhelmingly negative. However, there are elements of the online teaching experience that I will take into my classes even when Covid is a memory and the Zoom stock levels out.
The memories we unpack each year, the feelings the objects evoke, the sense of family and tradition they create, tell stories in a much more powerful way than the Haggadah.
Stable scans are a win, but they’re a hard win. Scanxiety has entered the chat.
Arya’s “Not Today,” implies fighting and strength. It is a call not only in direct defiance to the gods of death, but to the gods of chaos and crisis. There is nothing passive about it.
Death, pain, suffering – these are things that we are all going to experience this year. We can’t escape it. If it is not us, it will be someone we know. Something we will witness.
I know this is a bad time to argue the semantics of “challenge,” but today, even amidst worldwide chaos, I’m back five years ago, looking at a picture that reminds me how life changes on a dime.
This transfer of education from the classroom to the virtual world requires you to own your education and decide that regardless of what happens, you are going to make sure your learning does not stop.
I posted the video of Binny’s speech that he gave at the Team Lifeline Pasta Party on his Facebook page, but the sound quality was poor and people asked for copies of the speech. So with Binny’s permission, I am posting it here. I edited it a bit to include some of the lines he ad-libbed (though some I know I missed), but this is all his.
We meet daily for an Old West style shootout. Sometimes at 1:00AM, sometimes at 5:00AM, sometimes mid-day. Just me and Him. No red strings or lucky eye charms. The God I meet is not a Cracker Jack kind of being. No superstitions or silly wand waving. It is just us.
I just sent my son off for the year and this piece that I wrote three years ago is really resonating today. So I’m reposting it for myself and for anyone else sending their kids off to college, to foreign… Read More ›