Bucket List Bird

I am an avid birdwatcher.  I particularly love bluebirds, orioles, waxwings, and goldfinches, but for as long as I can remember, there have been two birds that I have longed to see more than any others: the Steller's sea eagle and the snowy owl.  The former is a giant of a bird with a wingspan of up to 8 feet, found on the Kamchatka Peninsula and in northern Japan.  The latter breeds in the Arctic circle and might wander as far south as Michigan or Minnesota in the winter.  Both birds are majestic, spectacular, and beautiful.  Considering how far I'd have to go to see them, I haven't spent much time seriously considering pursuing either species.

My first forays into birdwatching, or birding, came as a 12 year-old, and since then I have kept pretty meticulous records and lists of my sightings.  As a teenager, I often spent weekends being driven with my best friend, Max, to look for rare and unusual birds, or rarities.  We spent school holidays together, for the specific purpose of birdwatching.  On one occasion, we walked over 20 miles through the Cornish countryside for an approximately 30-second view of a yellow-browed warbler.

As an adult, other than being able to drive myself wherever I wanted, two things turbo-charged my birding life.  One was a move to San Diego County, where over 500 species of birds have been recorded, and the other was the internet.  Where previously birders had relied on hotlines and word of mouth, now email alerts, GPS, and Google Maps made chasing rarities almost childishly easy.  Standing on the shoulders of giants, I quickly totted up a deceptively impressive list of birds, very few of which I found by myself.

For the past 6 years, however, birding opportunities have been virtually non-existent.  Maturing as a parent and a husband has made me realize that I have obligations at home that now supersede (and maybe should always have superseded) my need to add another species to my various lists.  Getting an early start (on the road before dawn) is a must for birding; nowadays, if I am to get up at 5 a.m. on a weekend, it will be to go for a long run or to grade essays.

So when news stories started emerging in December 2022 of a snowy owl being spotted in Cypress, a mere 75 miles away, my long dormant birding adrenaline started coursing through my veins once more.  This was a mega-rarity.  A once in a lifetime sighting in southern California, a good 2,000 miles away from its normal habitat.  And one of my bucket list birds.  

Now you have to understand that my birding instincts had been dulled considerably by 6 years of inaction.  Previously, I would have jumped in the car at the first available opportunity.  You only have to read books like Kingbird Highway or watch movies like Big Year to realise that many bird watchers are so obsessive that they will travel hundreds of miles at the drop of a hat (and several hundred dollars, most likely) for the chance to see a rarity.  There are no guarantees in birding.  

My desire was a little more slow-burning.  

But by the time the bird had stayed in the same neighbourhood for over two weeks, I broached the idea of heading up the I-5, and my wife, to her eternal credit, suggested I should do it.  She even offered to go with me. When I realized that, in taking my parents to Los Angeles International Airport, I would be passing within 5 miles of the bird, I decided to go for it.  A couple of hours on ebird gave me all the information I needed to be able to scour the neighbourhood for this bird that, by this time, was making national news.

Ebird maps showing all the sightings of the snowy owl.

By the time I had left LAX, battled traffic on southbound I-405, and made it to Cypress, it was well after 4 pm.  Daylight was fading, and I realised that I didn't have much of a strategy for looking for the owl.  Thanks to ebird (see the pictures above), I had a pretty good idea of where to look, but I didn't know how long I should drive around for and when to park and search the neighbourhood on foot.  

However, I needn't have worried.  After less than five minutes of cruising the streets of Cypress, I turned onto Jaluit Street and saw, almost immediately, about 30 people with spotting scopes and cameras, lined up on the pavement, clearly staking out a house on the other side of the street.  I swung round the corner, parked terribly, grabbed my binoculars, and, heart racing, practically ran back to the crowd of birders.  They all seemed to be waiting patiently, but my attention was grabbed by a man standing in a driveway across the street.  He had his phone up, taking a picture of something.  He saw me and beckoned me over.

"It's over there, on the roof.  Look between the houses."

He was standing much closer to the house than the crowd of birders, who seemed to have decided that staying a respectable distance back was appropriate.  They were probably right: there is a slightly odd dynamic about birdwatching in a residential neighbourhood.  Let's face it, some dude walking around in front of your house with a pair of binoculars looks downright creepy, and I've personally never felt comfortable doing that.  But this guy, who had neither binoculars nor telescope nor fancy camera, clearly wasn't a birder, so he didn't care about etiquette.

Hands shaking, I raised my binoculars, and almost immediately saw, perched on a chimney, a large white bird with heavy black barring on its wings and breast.  Most birds, especially rare ones, require some careful observation to confirm identification.  This was one of those few that didn't.  It was obviously, almost ridiculously obviously, a snowy owl.  A juvenile, most likely a female.   It was incredibly surreal, seeing it framed by palm trees in the fading southern California sunshine. 

Tick!  (I use the English method of writing dates: day-month-year)

I pulled out my phone and fumbled off a text to my wife just as the garage door opened and the homeowner in whose driveway we were standing emerged.  He asked us if we'd seen the owl.  I said I had and commented on how strange it must be to have so many random people roaming his neighbourhood looking for a bird.  He admitted that he found it odd but also somewhat endearing.  When I told him I'd driven up from San Diego County, he was astounded. 

"Wanna get a closer look?  You can see it even better from my backyard."   He looked slyly beyond me to the crowd of birders and lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Just you two, though."

We didn't need a second invitation.  And, just like that, this kind, slightly dishevelled fifty-something, guided two complete strangers through his home and into his backyard where we got the most magnificent views of this wonderful bird.  I was hoping to see it fly--no luck there--but I did get a glimpse of its gorgeous amber eyes, glinting as it faced the setting sun in the west.  I stayed, looking at the owl, still not quite believing what I was seeing, as long as I thought I could reasonably stay without being rude.

On the drive home, my heart that wonderful mixture of being both full and light, I reflected on what I loved about birdwatching.  The glimpsing of a beautiful bird and the rush it gives me.  The knowledge that I can add another bird to my world, US, and California lists.   I have seen a lot of articles recently extolling the mental health benefits of birdwatching and I think they're onto something. But more than that, I realised that I when I birdwatch, I often have unexpected and unique encounters with people I don't know whose kindness enables me to get what I want.  

That day in Cypress, in a neighbourhood I had never visited and one which I am unlikely to visit again, my life had been enriched by a total stranger into whose orbit I had been briefly flung by a shared love for and an excitement in seeing a feathery, winged, and most likely completely oblivious creature.

Just the other day, I saw a report that a Steller's sea eagle had, incredibly, been seen in Bangor, Maine.  Only a $600 round trip...

To Such as These Belongs the Kingdom of Heaven: The Princess and the Goblin

 “The righteous will live by his faith”—Habakkuk 2:4

I first heard of George MacDonald in a play about the life of C.S. Lewis.  Like Lewis did so masterfully himself, MacDonald uses stories—fairy tales, essentially—to illustrate some of the essential truths of Christianity.  The Princess and the Goblin, published in 1872, is one such story.  It explores many Christian themes, but the experience of Curdie Peterson, the boy miner, helps bring into sharp focus the transformative power of child-like faith. 

Curdie is a smart, courageous boy who has devoted his time to working nights in the mines, trying to figure out what the villainous goblins are planning.  Bravely, he ventures deep into the heart of the goblins' territory, only to get lost when the ball of string he uses to help retrace his steps fails him.  The pickaxe that anchors the thread in place has been moved by some of the hideous creatures that live in the mine, and eventually Curdie becomes a prisoner of the goblins, condemned to die.  He is then rescued by eight year-old Princess Irene, who, even though she is terrified of the dark mines and the goblins, has obediently followed a different, invisible thread given to her by her grandmother. 

Curdie's experience highlights for Christians the dangers of anchoring our work in our own strength.  Even though both his plans and his courage are praiseworthy, and even though he is very nearly successful in his exploits, Curdie shows that acting in good faith is not the same as acting in great faith, and this is confirmed by Irene's own supernaturally-endowed courage. 

Curdie also serves as a symbol of those who experience Christ yet are still unable to believe.  Even though Irene constantly tells Curdie that she is following her grandmother's magic thread as she successfully leads them out of the mines, he remains skeptical and when taken to meet Irene's grandmother, he cannot see her.  “Seeing is not believing,” Irene's grandmother remarks, “it is only seeing.”

Here, MacDonald reminds us that the world will try to explain away God. It may account for God’s acts and movement with logic, science, or theories.  Or, even like many of those who actually witnessed Jesus’ miracles, people will see and still not believe.

Eventually, after being visited by Irene's grandmother in a dream—itself a reminder that Jesus is so often the initiator at the moment when people come to faith—Curdie is given a thread of his own to follow.  He doesn't understand why or how, and it takes him to unexpected places, but faithfully and obediently follow it he does; as a result he plays a pivotal role in rescuing his community from the goblins' nefarious schemes. 

Unbelief is a complicated thing.  It persists for all sorts of reasons.  But childlike, obedient faith is so simple.  It is the very thing that prepares us, enables us, and allows us to serve God in the way he wants us to.  Trust and obey, He says.  

George Macdonald's story beautifully reminds me of the redemptive power of obedience through faith.  It convicts me of my own tendency to see faith as something theoretical, to be defended, rather than something concrete, to be lived out and proved by works, works done not in our power, but set aside for us by and in the power of the Lord Jesus himself.

Just like a TV show

I wrote this well over a year ago, before the start of the COVID pandemic, to try to convey a sense of the craziness and utter chaos that can so easily envelop a class, even when you have two relatively experienced teachers in the room.  Looking back over it now, and having experienced 15 months of soulless drudgery, I will take this kind of day any time over Zoom classes and even over in-person instruction with masks, plexiglass, and other restrictions.  It’s not even close. 

Give me the madness again.  Please.

The bell rings for the end of lunch and the start of 5th period, which means it's time for one of my co-taught freshman English classes.  

Having taught upper level classes for the vast majority of my career, this past three years of co-teaching has been, as they say, a real eye opener and no mistake.  About half of the students in this class have some kind of legally required academic accommodations, yet it is a college prep class, so my co-teacher and I are constantly trying to balance rigor with accessibility.  This particular class has a number of students who are particularly challenging to manage.  One, who when I asked him to put his phone away launched into a string of obscenities, called me a passive aggressive asshole ("Well, you can be passive aggressive," said one student afterwards) and stormed out of the classroom, has thankfully been moved to a different program. 

Nonetheless, my co-teacher and I generally tend to laugh a lot in the class.  The kids are funny, good-humored, and generally fine, but the potential for complete degeneration and chaos is never too far below the surface. 

We usually start Mondays with Power Writing, eight minutes of sustained writing.  It's a nice routine and an easy way to get class started first thing in the week.  Today, for the first 4 or 5 minutes, all is calm.  Simon, who has severe ADHD and who is so work averse that he will take 5 minutes to extract a notebook and pencil from his backpack and do anything in his power to leave class to go to the bathroom or the nurse, is not in class, but otherwise things seem fairly normal.

5 minutes into class, Simon walks in, accompanied by the school nurse.  She beckons us outside.   "He is not going to make it through today," she says.  "He didn't take his meds."  

He’s not going to make it.  What on earth does that mean?  It sounds so...ominous.

Simon goes to his desk; he is almost vibrating with barely suppressed energy. The nurse has given him a sticky note with his plan for the next two hours.  Go to English.  Stay in English.  Ask for a pass to the APs office…. And so on.  I ask Simon three times to take out his notebook and start working.  He starts tapping his feet. Loudly.  Brittany, the girl who should have done honors English and has probably regretted her decision ever since, loudly asks Simon to stop tapping.  He stops.

I look up.  Barry, a student with autism who frequently plays the Russian national anthem loudly on his phone and who once dramatically and loudly called out, "Satan!" in the middle of class, is squinting, chin on his hands, looking as if he wants to sneeze.  I look at him, eyebrows quizzically raised.  He continues to squint.  My co-teacher barely suppresses a giggle.  The whole class eventually notices me looking at him, at which point he loudly apologizes, saying that he only got 3 hours' sleep last night.  General hilarity ensues while I go over to Barry and reassure him that all is good.  We are not reading Lord of the Flies today so he won't be making eye contact with his buddy Gary (I call him "Big G." ) and giggling at every word or phrase that might possibly be construed as sexual.  So I am already counting my blessings.

I hear a jangling noise.  Simon has started to shake some keys, bizarrely attached to a strap of his backpack.  I take them from him and zip them inside a compartment in his backpack, my patience starting to fray.  I am 90% sure that Simon is doing this for attention, and it's working.  No-one is writing now.  Simon starts making a clicking sound with his tongue. 

I am determined not to just send him down to the APs office.  I can't be bothered to go through all the steps necessary to refer him (exhaust all “Tier One” options, call home, fill out a form) and I am pretty sure sitting in the APs office is exactly what he wants to do and I am determined not to let him have his way.  It's petty and small-minded, I know, but I have to get some kind of victory from these interactions. 

So I send Simon outside.  I ask him to wait out there, and as the door closes he slips the strap with the keys on it into the gap so that when the door shuts, there are his keys, jingling on the end of a strap in the classroom.   At this point, my co-teacher isn’t even pretending to put on her “we are not amused” face; I know that she finds this absolutely hilarious.  I pick up a chair, take it outside, come back, pick up a desk and start moving towards the door with that, too.  The students, realizing what I am doing, burst into applause.  Simon isn’t exactly Mr. Popular.  There isn't the slightest attempt at even a pretense at doing work.  

As I open the door, hauling the cumbersome desk, I almost walk straight into an occupational  therapist, who wants to know if "it's a good time" to pull Gary out for some OT.  "No, it is jolly well not a good time to take him!" ...is what I want to say, but I don't.   Instead, I place the desk and chair in the corridor, tell Simon to sit down and ask the therapist if she wants to go in and get Gary, or if she wants me to get him for her.  She looks at me, looks at Simon--he grins, maniacally--and glances warily into the classroom, where everyone is watching the three of us outside.  She can’t be older than 23 and she could easily pass for 16.  I know that she has no intention of going into the classroom. It might as well be a lions’ den.  I ask Gary to join us outside, and despite the fact that he has had this school-provided service once a week for several years, he looks both clueless and terrified as they depart.

 

I give Simon his work, tell him he can tap and jangle all he wants now, turn on my heel, and, leaving him in the corridor, stalk back into the classroom.

You have probably realized what happens next, and a split second later, so do I.  Too late.

Sure enough, almost immediately, a deafening racket emanates from the corridor.  Simon is not just tapping; he is stamping.  I try to ignore it, but all the kids can hear it.  I tell them not to worry, that he'll get bored soon, but the stamping on the concrete floor echoes down the corridor.  

The phone rings.  This is my and my co-teacher's trigger point.  We are constantly told that instructional time is valuable and that we are to make the most of all our class time.  Obviously, this class period so far has been the epitome of quality instruction.  Needless interruptions, then, are very annoying indeed, so I pick up the phone and tell the speaker that no, you cannot speak to my co-teacher because she's, you know, TEACHING.  (I told you I was passive-aggressive.)  Actually, she’s at the back of the classroom, trying to refocus students while simultaneously trying not to laugh out loud at Simon’s antics.

Within a minute there's a knock at the door.  Now, I really want to throw something, and it is everything I can do to maintain a professional demeanour as I leave my co-teacher to deal with the rapidly unraveling class. I open the door. A yellow-jacketed campus supervisor is standing there, a severe look on her face.  Simon sits to the side, puppy-like in his mingled satisfaction and expectancy at what might happen next.   

“We’re getting complaints from other teachers about the noise,” says the supervisor.  At that point, I remember Simon’s sticky note from the nurse.  Ask for a pass to the AP’s office.

But that's exactly what he wants, I remember. I can't give in now. You'd think that this would be the cue for a titanic struggle between expediency and pride. Not any more: my pride is shredded. Simon has broken me.

“You know what,” I venture, “can you take Simon down to the AP’s office for me?”  

The supervisor looks doubtful, but she nods her assent.

As Simon packs up his things, I breathe a sigh of relief, turn to go back into the classroom, and almost collide with Barry, who is standing uncomfortably close behind me, backpack clutched to his chest.

“Uh, I’m leaving,” he blurts out.  I look over his shoulder into the classroom, where there is loud hum of laughter, comments, and conversation.  It’s not exactly the quiet, structured environment Barry needs, and he does have an "anytime pass" to his case manager’s classroom, which basically functions as a homeroom for him.

“Sure,” I reply. “That sounds…”

But Barry has already fled.

Our much-vaunted Power Writing is in tatters; most of the students have written a couple of lines at most.  I catch my co-teacher’s eye and we both agree: wrap it up and move on.  It’s over.

Charlie, another one of those really smart but generally underperforming kids, is sitting at the back with a smile lighting up his face.  I want to apologize to him, to the class, for what has just transpired.  Instead, he turns to my co-teacher, who is standing nearby.

“I love this class,” he says.  “It’s just like a TV show.”

Two teachers, 28 years of experience between us, and this is what we have been reduced to: entertainment.  Luckily, I have recently learned that my ego and even my dignity are not the most important things when it comes to teaching.

But these are the days we remember.  And fondly, too.

These are also the days our students remember.  I recently got an email from Brittany, the student who probably should have been in an honors class.  I had asked her how distance learning was going and she wrote this: I would do anything to go back to a day in your class, even with Barry's AirPods he wouldn't ever take out, and Simon’s constant pencil tapping. I miss the class environment so much. 

We reach students in the weirdest ways, I guess, and it’s one of the great mysteries of teaching: you never know how or when you’re going to impact a student, and quite often, it’s in a very unexpected or unintentional way.

In August, my co-teacher and I will start our 5th year together.  After the hell of distance learning, we are both ready for more chaos, laughter, and quality material for our TV show. 

The Reality of Facilitating Distance Learning

Well, week two of distance learning is in the (virtual) books, and I've got some time to dispassionately reflect on how it's gone, especially now that I've purged myself of the angst and negativity I felt during the first week.

To be honest, so far, the results have been—on the surface at least—encouraging. Participation and work completion isn't dire, although it's certainly worse than normal, and the general feedback is positive.  I'm in a bit of a routine now and I can see some patterns emerging that require a little more objectivity —not ranting —to analyse. Let's say I have a more well-rounded perspective. Here's what I have come to understand:

It still sucks. Perhaps even more than it did a week ago.

A month or so ago, when it became clear that distance learning was going to be the way forward, I smugly went over a litany of reasons why this episode would make us appreciate the value of public schools. I envisioned articles, Facebook posts, memes, and maybe even a politician or two lauding the amazing work public school teachers do because it's well nigh impossible for the average family to educate their children at home. I imagined emails, public recognition, free Starbucks for teachers, maybe even a parade or two.

What I've come to realize is that we're not even ready to think about this, although perhaps I secretly wish people would. Part of it is that most of us are either in survival mode or hibernation mode and can think of nothing else. But the other part of it is that what we are doing is not actually distance learning as education experts and pedagogical gurus understand it. What we are doing will not be used as a future blueprint for how teachers can effectively develop our students, academically, physically, socially, and emotionally without being in the classroom. Not even close.

What we are doing is emergency distance learning, and that's completely different.

On one hand we are trying to triage—and this is not a hyperbole—a potential educational catastrophe. We are desperately trying to do whatever it takes to keep students engaged in some form of the educational process at a time of year when many teachers feel it all starts to come together. Most of these kids cannot afford to switch their brains off between March and late August. Every year, there are students who—despite the best efforts of teachers—fall through the cracks. It's the nature of the system. Since emergency distance learning began, those cracks have become crevasses—picture the kind Bear Grylls likes to explore— and I am already seeing the consequences, and I can't overstate how heavily this responsibility is weighing on me.

At the same time, we are being asked to do pedagogically sound distance learning. My administration has, on the whole, been supportive, understanding, and utterly reasonable in what they're asking us to do. But now we are being asked to address essential skills, make our instructions as succinct as possible, gather data, and ensure that we are on the same page as our colleagues. I am working at least 10 hours per day just trying to ensure students have meaningful engagement with me and my subject. Anything more complex or coordinated might just make my brain explode.

A Wordle I made a couple of years ago based on a conversation I had with some new teachers on assessment.  It struck me that I've used hardly any of these words in the last two weeks.

The best analogy I can give is this: in this situation I'm an ER doctor and a nutritionist. At the same time. They're both connected to keeping people healthy, but they have completely different roles and sets of skills. An ER doctor isn't going to give you advice about developing good eating habits when he's trying to give you stitches for a gash in your head.

There are the things in my job that I am contractually obliged to do. There are the things that I know I must do if I am to succeed at my primary job, which is to ensure my students learn the skills and habits of mind necessary to meet whatever standard is required of them. To go back to the analogy, that's where I'm the nutritionist. I'm trained for this. I'm an expert in this field. As I have become a better teacher, the time required to do this has gradually decreased, but not by much because I don't use the same material or teach the same classes year after year.

At the same time, time spent on things that I am not contractually obliged to do -- let's call it things that I feel morally obliged to do -- has increased dramatically. Additionally, these are things that I am not actually an expert in: counseling, trauma, suicide prevention, coaching, motivation, conflict resolution. This my ER doctor role. I've had a little bit of training in these things, but not much. Nonetheless, my emotional bandwidth has been increasingly devoted to this aspect of the job.

Emergency distance learning has increased the stakes in and the time spent working on both realms of my job -- contractual and moral -- and I am really struggling to do either. I know I cannot do both.

To be honest -- and let's persist with the imperfect analogy here -- I have been increasingly more of an ER doctor ever since I realized the mental health calamity that our youth are facing. This awakening has been accelerated and clarified by my opening up about my own mental health struggles and by my teaching of a much more vulnerable population of students. That was long before March 13th.

I am not an expert on trauma, but I do know that it impacts the same area of the brain that learning uses. I also know from experience that a student whose social and emotional needs are not being met is not going to be able to learn. So issues like depression, divorce, sexuality, and abuse force their way into my consciousness because they prevent me from fulfilling my contractual obligations to the best of my ability.

But helping kids navigate their school day and creating an environment where they can learn or at least feel secure when everything around them feels as if it's collapsing requires physical presence. Dozens of my students are struggling, and now I can't see them. So now the focus is on reaching out and trying to engage those students in some meaningful way so that I can check in with them. It's not even learning at this point.

I am working so hard just to keep them engaged because if they're engaged, I keep telling myself, then maybe they'll learn or maybe they'll at least "show up" on the days they'd otherwise skip. And if they do that, then maybe they'll not be so far behind when they come back to school. 

I am banking on the capital that I've built up in my students during the year by showing myself to be someone who cares and who knows what he's talking about -- and let's face it, there are times when I have to fake both -- to keep the students motivated and willing to engage. That somehow their lives will be better if they log into Google Classroom every morning. That they would do it out of respect for my wishes and efforts.  I know some are doing precisely this, and it means the world to me.

My co-teacher and I (we teach 9th grade college prep English classes in which over 40% of the students have some form of learning disability or legally required accommodation) have talked about this.  The little interaction students have with us during our Google Meets is great for them.  It's healthy, educational, meaningful participation in something useful.  It's not great for us.  We end the meet feeling down, discouraged, and missing our students.  Most of the time, we spend time sharing our grave concerns about individual students whose educational needs are not being met.

I will end this with just a small example.  During Friday's Google Meet, one of the students -- let's call him Lorenzo -- was confused on the directions.  He needed several explanations, re-directs, and reminders before he was able to do something that we have been doing every other week for the entire school year.  Lorenzo does not have a diagnosed learning disorder.  He is just a regular kid who has problems reading and following directions.  

Reading directions and asking questions: it seems like such a small thing, but we have dozens of Lorenzos who need this kind of intervention multiple times every single day and who, unlike Lorenzo, lack the motivation or conviction to ask for help, either because they don't know that they don't understand or because they don't care enough to understand since they have other, more important things to worry about.

And those tasked with solving this are people like me, sitting in my bedroom at a makeshift desk and armed with nothing more than a laptop and a moral imperative.  

Yeah, it sucks. 

I know I should be grateful, but this isn't what I signed up for

Before you read this, a warning. This will come across as selfish, self-indulgent, and self-pitying, and any other adjective you can think of that starts with "self" -- except selfless. Apologies.

OK, now that's out of the way, here comes the rant...

Yesterday was the "first day back". The first day with students engaged in distance learning, a phrase that, truthfully, I had never heard a month ago. The first day seeing the faces of students I had not seen since March 13. The first day sitting at my makeshift desk in my bedroom, going "live" with my students. And to be honest, in many ways, it felt like the first day of school: I was nervous, I was sleep-deprived, and I was underprepared.

My first class was at 8:30, and although I had worked most of Monday afternoon and evening, I still needed a couple of hours in the morning to frantically record those last few screencasts and post them on Google Classroom. It felt a little bit like preparing for having a substitute teacher.

For those of you who are not teachers, it is important to understand that preparing for a sub, preparing for when you are not going to be in the classroom -- which is exactly what I was preparing for -- takes far longer than planning for a normal lesson. Trade secret: this is the reason why so many teachers, myself included, only take sick days when they are at death's door. It is too much effort to take a couple of hours to write those sub plans, make the copies, and ensure the directions are simple enough to be understood by an 8 year old. Just dose yourself up and go to work so you don't lose a day of instruction.

Anyway, that's what it felt like. The instructions had to be perfect and the links all had to work. There was a video on Google Meet etiquette that I needed to make. I know there is so much information out there to help, but, trust me, we have been overwhelmed with information -- dozens and dozens of emails touting strategies, training, links to webinars, resources, blogs -- to the extent that I can't handle it anymore. In that sense, I feel like a first year teacher again.

A first year teacher making sub plans. Great.

Oh, and did I mention that I have no way to make the students do the work I set them?

On the bright side, at least I'm not going to get a snotty note from the sub about how the instructions were too complex and how the kids spent too much time on their phones.

To their credit, most of my students were actually "in class". They watched the screencasts, attended the Google Meet, and waved dutifully at me and answered the basic questions I threw at them. I thought it would be energizing and uplifting to see them all again, but something was missing.

On the plus side, my workspace is tidier than it's ever been.

It was physical presence.

I couldn't high five anyone. I couldn't catch someone's eye and say hi. I wanted to reach out and connect but I didn't know how. Each class over the course of the year establishes its own routine: the same kids arrive first, the same kids rush up to me to spill the latest tea or rant about their science teacher, and I greet the same kids in pretty much the same way every single day.

These are the myriad small moments that add up to a genuine relationship, and they are impossible to generate in a Google Meet with 36 students. Not having this made me feel powerless: I don't see a way to establish the kind of classroom culture I know I am good at fostering. Sure, I made a cute Flipgrid assignment but that actually made things worse because now they were speaking to me individually in their videos but I couldn't respond in real time.

And if classroom culture and authentic connection is important for teachers, imagine what it means to students. That's another post for another time, though. It's all about me today. I told you this was going to be self-indulgent.

These are kids whom, until March 13th, I had seen for 5 hours per week since August and -- there's no other way to say this -- I love them. They are the reason I do what I do. It was a very strange rush of emotions as the familiar faces popped up on the screen. I feel like I've already had to say goodbye to these kids and seeing them again made me realise exactly what this pandemic has cost me. And, truth be told, it hurt. In eight weeks I'll have to say goodbye again, but who knows whether there will be any semblance of a connection at that point.

A case in point: at the beginning of the break, over a month ago, I told one of my classes I didn't want them to do anything except read. As I watched their Flipgrid videos and looked at their faces in the Google Meet, it became patently clear that they'd done absolutely no reading of note. Despite my pleas in the various videos and letters I'd sent out them and their parents, urging them that they'd be losing valuable opportunities to improve the one thing that will help them in so many ways, it all fell on deaf ears. I felt so discouraged, especially since I knew that I'd be able to hold them accountable if they were physically in class with me.

And, moving forward, I don't even know if the kids are going to get anything out of this at all. They don't have to do any of the work (see my previous post for an explanation), they are not especially cognizant of this moment (hardly surprising, I suppose, since they're teenagers), and now they're dealing with a teacher who is basically lost.

Of course I also miss my colleagues, and I suspect I'll feel their absence more keenly as the workload gets more intense and the frustration and exhaustion rises. More than anything, we are each other's support system. I spoke to one of my colleagues this afternoon and she was already in tears. She is fed up of being alone in lockdown and today, although providing her with an opportunity to connect with students she hadn't seen in a while, merely reinforced that reality.

By now, I am totally aware that I am being self-indulgent and ungrateful, so I'm going to shut up in a minute. I don't want to come across as selfish. After all, I have a job. I'm healthy, and so is everyone in my family. We has enough food, good wifi, and a decent supply of toilet paper. I am not suffering like so many people. This is our new, albeit (hopefully) temporary, reality. I also know this will get better; it was only the first day, after all.

But as I fell into bed, exhausted and brain still whirring -- it actually hurt to close my eyes, yet another new sensation -- I could only come to one conclusion. I'm either going to hate being an online teacher or I'm going to be a terrible one, which in education is essentially the same thing. "Doing what I do" now looks totally different, and I feel cheated. Worse still, the kids are being cheated, and I'm not sure they even realise it.

Rant over. Time to get back to work.

"Coronabreak" has forced me to admit that I need my students more than they need me

It's been, to put it mildly, a strange time to be a teacher.

On March 13, I left school weighed down, both by the massive pile of grading in my backpack and by the uncertainty about the future. On April 13, we will start up again. The grading will be electronic, and probably considerably less, but the uncertainty is still very much there. What will class look like? How will I connect with students? How do I reach those who are unable or unwilling to engage in distance learning? How do I have video calls without children or piles of laundry embarrassing me in the background?  And, most importantly, can I do all this while still in my pyjamas?

Plenty to do during the "break".

A frustration has been that at our site at least, teachers have been moving a lot quicker than the district, which has been moving quicker than the county, which has been moving quicker than the state, which has been...You get the picture.  Finally, though, there seems to be some clarity to the plan moving forward, although what that will really look like on a day to day basis is anyone's guess.

One of the initiatives our district has put in place during this time of distance learning is a "do no harm" policy when it comes to grades. Any work students do during this time period can only help their overall grade in the class. It cannot lower it. When I consider the difficulties and stressors faced by many of our students at home, it makes sense. Being at school levels the playing field somewhat, mitigating some -- but certainly not all -- of the impact that children's very different home experiences have on their education.

This, however, was not my initial response to the policy. Like many teachers, I was deeply skeptical. A student who had an A on March 13 is now guaranteed that A at the end of the semester and has no obligation to do any work whatsoever. My mind reeled with the change: the traditional carrot and stick approach is now all carrots. And who wants carrots when you can have cake?

Of course, there were the platitudes from administrators about focusing on the learning and not the points. You come and teach my class, I wanted to say, before essentially preparing to present the same argument to my students.

As I hosted a Google Meet for my AP Literature students last week, I explained the new policy. And as I did so, I suddenly felt powerless. So much of the authority I wield as a teacher lies in the fact that students have to be there and that I have the power to impact their futures with my assignments and assessments. When I think about students who fail my class, the one trait they all have in common is that those things do not motivate them. These, it is no coincidence, are also the students who present the biggest behavioral problems.

So that was my first "gut check": my power to mandate and enforce has vanished. I will now have to rely on my ability to appeal to students' intrinsic motivation. And there are many strong arguments for continuing to learn when the rewards and consequences are not immediately obvious. I have been challenging my students in the lead up to this next Monday -- when we "go back to school" -- to embrace this unprecedented moment when they can learn without fear of failure.

My own fear of failure, however, looms large whenever I sit down at my makeshift workstation in my bedroom. During the three week break only about 30 of my 80 AP Lit students participated in my Google Meet readings of Hamlet; a handful reached out via email to ask what they could do to increase their grades, and still fewer listened to the podcasts I made every day.  If only 50% of my AP students, who have huge exams coming up in May, were engaged during this time, it doesn't augur well for my other classes.

The truth is, I want my students to want to participate in my activities. I'm insecure. My ego needs massaging. Put it any way you want: I take it personally when students don't do my work. I feel like a failure as a teacher when I realise that the only reason students are doing my work is because they have to. Sure, they -- mostly -- enjoy my class. They appreciate my attempts to meaningfully connect with them. But what do those smiling faces, kind words, and fun banter count for when it's no longer mandatory? I pour a lot of myself into my classes and my students, but I worry that they're only doing it for the grades and not for the meaningful interaction. Who am I kidding? They're high schoolers: of course they're doing it for the grades! That's the system's fault, and I am an integral, complicit part of that system.

Worse still, I am coming to the realization that many of my students don't actually need me at all. My AP students, for example, are talented kids, many of whom are much smarter than I am. They don't really even need me to prepare them for this year's truncated AP test. 45 minutes to write an essay on a prose passage? They have the whole internet at their disposal and 5 weeks to prepare. I was watching an AP Lit review webinar this morning. There are going to be about 25 of these daily lessons. They don't need me at all!

Yes, I know that there are a lot of my students, particularly my freshmen with special needs, whom the federal government has spectacularly and unforgivably tried to claim are no longer our responsibility, that desperately need guidance. They don't do their work a lot of the time. Those classes are often chaotic and very difficult to teach effectively. I know for sure many of them will see words like "optional" and see the writing on the wall. That will lead to a different kind of sadness: the sadness of seeing young people wasting their opportunity and not valuing their free public education.

One of the perks of being a teacher is the feeling of fulfillment that comes with knowing you're making a difference. I would love to claim that it it's a pure, noble, altruistic feeling, but to be perfectly honest, it's also a massive ego boost. And now that's gone, too.

I also think that one of things that makes me a decent teacher is the ability to connect with students. I do make an effort. I do care. It's an emotionally exhausting but wonderfully rewarding aspect of my life and it's why graduation is such an emotional occasion for me. It's also why it takes me several days to decompress after the end of the school year. I think it's because I'm grieving. And that grieving process has already started.  I really miss my students, even the knuckleheads. Especially the knuckleheads.

It's been hard to come to terms with this truth, let alone admit it, but my students don't need me anywhere near as much as I need them.

Literature is life, and we're all going to die.

When my AP Literature students walk into my classroom at the beginning of the school year, I am aware that I need to try to change the way they think about literature in a number of ways.  I've given this speech—or a variation of it—to my AP Literature students early in the school year for the last two years, and, in preparation for the start of this new semester, I thought I'd write it out in full.  I usually get some horrified looks from my students as my monologue unfolds, but before I start my rant, I ask them to consider the phrase "Literature is Life" and discuss with their table partners what they think it means.

How many of you noticed that the literature you read in high school tends to have sad endings?  Have you ever wondered why that is? Are your teachers trying to depress you? Do they take pleasure in ruining your faith in mankind?  Maybe they are trying to prove Wesley's quip in the Princess Bride: "Life is pain...Anyone who says otherwise is selling something."

It actually comes back to the phrase we talked about earlier: "Literature is life".  I want you to say it with heavy emphasis on the second word. 

Literature is life.

Literature is life just as two plus two is four.  Literature is representative of life. It reflects life.  It is a snapshot of life. Hamlet says that the purpose of drama is "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature".  Its purpose is to illuminate the human experience. And other than being born, every human shares one universal experience.  Dying.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but one of the reasons that there are so few happy endings to novels, stories, and plays is that there aren't really any happy endings in life.  We all die. In other words, if books worth studying (studying, not just reading) are meant to teach us about what it means to be human, then they are being disingenuous when they claim, "And they lived happily ever after."  "Messily ever after," perhaps. "In seasons marked by both joy and grief for the rest of their days," perhaps. But regardless of how we live, we will one day stop breathing, and die, our bodies decaying under the ground or reduced to ashes in a furnace.

If literature is supposed to help us understand the human experience, then it has to include death, doesn't it?  Just as the love of Romeo and Juliet is made more dramatic set in a society torn apart by hate, the writer who wants to convey the majesty and aching beauty of life must juxtapose it with its counterpart: death.

In many ways, though, death is not just the biological reality of this world.  In literary tradition, going all the way back to the story of Adam and Eve, death is connected with and even created by human foolishness.  It is the ultimate penalty for stupidity, for sin, for vice. And so literature becomes, as much as anything, the story of mankind's folly. In East of Eden, John Steinbeck claims that there is only one story, and that "all novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves between good and evil".

We cannot escape this reality, for if we are honest, we live it every single day.  That is why we shouldn't read to escape the real world; rather, we should read to immerse ourselves in it and learn more about it.  And we can't learn about life if we insist on happy endings, on characters who are like us, on people we understand immediately. There is beauty, however tragic it may be, in our recognition of another human's struggles against his own frailties.  More than that, there is deep empathy gained when we see ourselves in someone who initially seems foreign and incomprehensible. So although many of you cannot immediately understand the hubris of Okonkwo, the narcissism of Hamlet, or the aloofness of Mr. Darcy, when you remember that these characters are simply part of a great human tradition—as you yourselves are—of choosing folly over wisdom, the text becomes instantly more accessible.  These are characters unlike anyone you know in person. But they are human, and how wonderful it is to know that! And, yes, they are fictitious, but it doesn't mean we can't learn from them. So we need realism, for it is only in realism that we can see the world for what it is: broken and messy.

A hastily made list of the works of literature I teach or that I've taught in the past.  I think it speaks for itself!

Now, this does not mean that literature has to be depressing, for we know that so much of life is glorious and beautiful.  We are not living, to quote Switchfoot, "in the world of if onlys, stretched tight in between our birth and our graves". For a start, while literature may reflect our lives, it does not have to define them.  I think that there are actually very few stories that fail to offer hope. Our mistake is, I think, in always looking at the ending. If we measured our lives by how they end, then we are all, by definition, unsuccessful, because we ultimately fail at living!  But scattered throughout the pages of all literature—and our lives—are those transcendent, transformative moments where good rises out of bad. Redemption coming out of suffering, forgiveness when it isn't deserved, power in weakness, and victory in defeat. That's why we read.   These are universal traits of the human spirit. Of course, the most memorable and beautiful stories often have these moments at the end, but the reality is that we can find them anywhere in good books. Most significantly, though, while there is plenty of literature that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit, we read, not because we have escaped foolishness through our moments of glory, but because we can only find true glory through, after, learning from, or even in the very midst of our moments of foolishness.  Or, as one of my students put it, "We read because humans have been fools for thousands of years."

I think there is one other thing that literature offers us.  Beauty. You may not see this in all literature, just as you may not see beauty in all aspects of life, but both life and literature shine a light on things—like sacrificial love—that sometimes make no sense in this world.  We can't put our finger on it, but there are things we can never explain about literature. C.S. Lewis suggests that beauty is a mere reflection of something greater: "the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited".   It is why it is a travesty to claim that Erich Maria Remarque's masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front, merely teaches us that war is bad and that it takes away soldiers' humanity.  To reduce the meaning of that novel to a clean, precise phrase—which is, unfortunately, what I will be trying to teach you to do in order to pass the AP Literature exam—is to merely look at it scientifically, splitting it up into all its component parts.  And when we write about literature, we can't really avoid this. But perhaps I can convince you, as you read and discuss, to linger over the magic of words and the way they stir our souls in ways we can't accurately express.

So as you journey through the world of Shakespeare, Achebe, Bradbury, Austen, Ibsen, Chopin, and Baldwin, I hope you will discover the sometimes paradoxical truths that these writers illuminate and embrace the fragile, ephemeral, complicated existence we all share, whether you like it or not.