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.
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.
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’ve been a high school English teacher for so long that you’d think I had the letter writing gig down to a science. You know, finding ways to turn a lazy, obnoxious, entitled kid into a “witty future leader, brimming with possibilities.”
I’m kind of over the whole don’t look at a rainbow thing. In fact, I have trouble believing that God would give us something so beautiful and awe inspiring in order for us to look away.
Actively take part in the greatest kickstarter ever that’s been running for years behind the scenes of every hashtag, meme, and status update but has somehow fallen behind the far easier “click and share” culture of publicly feeling good.
It’s the season of graduations and my newsfeed is filled with caps and gowns and diplomas. This year, I had two kids doing the Pomp and Circumstance walk. One was graduating high school and the other finishing middle school. They… Read More ›
Robin Williams turned me into a teacher. Turned me onto poetry. Made me want to believe in the power of words and music. Granted, he didn’t write the screenplay for Dead Poets Society, but I doubt it could have been told… Read More ›
This is for Michael who asked me to write something political: I don’t write about politics. That isn’t to say that I don’t have political opinions. I certainly do. I’m a registered voter. I read the newspaper (one of the… Read More ›