“This is My Teaching Life during the Pandemic”
By KYLE KEVER, a 4th grade teacher at Barnhart School in Arcadia, CA
I’m sitting in my classroom, my empty classroom. If you walk by, you might think that nothing is happening, but you would be wrong. You see, I just put my fourth grade students into breakout rooms to create a Haunted House. Learning is happening, but through computer screens, not in my classroom. This should terrify every teacher in the world. No eyes in the back of my head knowing what every student is doing at all times of the day. Someone from 1950, heck even 2010, would look at me and ask what kind of science fiction world am I talking about if I explained to them what I just did.
I begin my breakout room roundabout, checking in on each group and seeing if they need help. To my amazement, kids are laughing, sharing screens, and talking about the project that I just assigned. Each room I visit, I learn new features that the students are putting in their haunted house; ice cream zombies, haunted Minecraft rooms, and scary clowns chasing you. This is the first time I am teaching this project, and I’m impressed by my students’ resilience and ingenuity. They are mapping out different rooms and determining the area and perimeter of each. Once they complete their house, they will use similes, metaphors, and descriptive language to craft a paragraph to bring the experience of their house to life.
This project entered into my existence long ago, in a classroom far, far away in February of 2020. During this time, I was looking for creative ways to teach lessons and I began researching Project Based Learning (PBL). I became intrigued by all of the unique ways that kids could lead themselves through a project and be in the driver’s seat of their education. As would every other teacher I know, I began looking through Teachers Pay Teachers (who should be awarded a Nobel Prize for the amount of times they saved my butt when I needed a quick lesson). I bought so many PBL projects that I realized I should learn how to actually implement these projects in my classroom instead of just learning how to do it as we go. During this time though, a word started being whispered in the mouths of the other teachers and began showing up on the news – “pandemic.”
By March 14th the whisper became a full blown scream. School was closing that day and would reopen the following Wednesday, remotely. Instead of teaching about Pi, I was teaching my kids how to send emails and how to track their Google Classroom assignments. We crammed all our supplies into bags and looked for any tool that could have been used for future lessons.
The next thing I knew, it was the last day of the school year. We never went back on campus. Instead, I was eating ice cream with my students over Zoom and playing pictionary. We were able to finish the year and actually got some learning in. I ended the meeting and there was silence. School was over for the year. Time to enjoy the summer until we are back in the classroom in August. But as every teacher knows, a summer is filled with research and training.
As the first few weeks went by, the scream of the pandemic never let up. I knew my school would not come back in person. As I stewed over everything on my apartment patio, I realized something.
I have the opportunity to become creative in a new way. They call this remote teaching, but what I was doing last spring was emergency remote teaching, rather than prepared learning. I did not know what I was doing. I was making it up each day, like many teachers. I was keeping it together for the students. I knew I did not want to keep doing the same thing I did in the spring; I wanted to feel prepared. I wanted a framework for what I was doing. As I sat on my patio, I realized I need to take advantage of the circumstances.
I checked out books from the library and began taking a course on distance learning. I digested everything I could. I created a routine for myself – a distance learning training course in the morning and reading in the afternoon. I began conjuring up ideas that opened my mind up to different practices. I, of course, realized all the mistakes I had made last spring. New terminology entered my vocabulary, synchronous and asynchronous. A framework began to take shape as I realized how I could approach certain lessons and units. I found myself getting that excited feeling that teachers get when they find something that could really work in the classroom. So many ideas flooded in- pre-recorded lessons that make me cringe when I watch myself, passion projects, project based learning, choice boards, home science projects, collaborative presentations, etc..
My curriculum map was starting to form. This was becoming the new normal. My “classroom” theme this year is Disneyland, but my actual classroom still has March on the whiteboard, a four walled time capsule in my mind. I create a virtual classroom on Google Slides separated into the different lands found at the Disneyland theme park. Each month is going to be specifically themed to a ride or land. October is Haunted Mansion month and a lot of our activities are based on the infamous ride.
Fast-forward to the present: Our math curriculum is in full swing, and I am meeting with students to help edit their personal narrative paragraphs on Google Docs. Students are talking about their Haunted Houses, while other students are recording themselves describing the science experiment that we completed the other day. Welcome to school in 2020.
The sound of that pandemic scream seems to be lessening though. The conversations in our faculty meetings include how we are going to transition back into the classroom. It’s been so long since March of 2020 that I’m trying to remember what that life was like. I’ve only known my current students through my laptop and hearing them through my headphones. Now it seems like I’m going to get the chance to see them and teach them in person in the near future! I’m not sure what that day will look like. I’m not even sure what my first lesson would be. However, I do know that when that moment comes, there will be a sense of relief and a smile on my face.
A Native American proverb says, “We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.” I want to make sure that whatever I do during remote learning is something that I can look back on and feel proud of. For now though, I’m just sitting in my empty four walled time capsule talking about Haunted Houses, and a student is explaining how he is going to make chocolate ice cream zombies scary. This is my teaching life.
Kyle Kever is a 4th grade teacher at Barnhart School in Arcadia, CA. Barnhart is an independent school with small class size and strong academics. If you are interested in learning more about the amazing program at Barnhart with teachers like Kyle, please email admissions director Silvana Moschella at smoschella@barnhartschool.org.
