Today I Need a Reset

This week we are reaching out to students who’ve not been engaging in online learning. If any of these students are failing any classes for the year, we will refer them on to admin and our social worker for further efforts at contact. If we can get them to engage, and help them through the super standards in the class or classes they are failing, then we will be able to send them on to the next grade level next year. If not? What then?

It really wouldn’t be ethical to fail students who haven’t been engaged. What we may need, instead, is an extra effort in the Fall, assuming we are back in school by then. Maybe a three day per week study hall, actively staffed by teachers who know the students involved, for the months of September-October? Something required of these students to ensure they get off to a better start next school year, ideally. For the time being, many of these students have checked out for reasons not easy to determine. I also wonder to what extent we should be poking around in a family’s circumstances and/or parent to student dynamic.

Some days, like today, I find myself struggling to stay checked in to my work life. Usually when I feel this way I reach out to my colleagues to see how I can support them, or I jump onto a discussion board and respond to students there. Right now I just want to curl up into a tiny ball and pretend that none of this is really happening. In normal times I would schedule a mental health day in order to do a reset. But these aren’t normal times. In online schooling the expectations are clearly spelled out in email after email, but the actual reality is less clear on any given day.

So I respond to a Sped teacher’s request for input on an IEP she is writing, I send rows of student names for Garden Club members back to the teacher compiling our yearbook, I practice Canvas Conferencing with one co-teacher, I hunt down my TA partner in Houston, of all places (where I actually have a favorite restaurant to recommend to him), and I show up to my eighth MS Teams meeting in three days. But now, I think it’s time to get outside, do some mowing, head up to the school garden and work on that reset.