As the yellow buses once again grace our roads and streets, carrying that most precious of cargo back to our school buildings, I want to pause and say a giant thank you to our teachers. Unless we are in the educational trenches ourselves, I doubt we can fully fathom their world this past year.
Rewind to February, when the first indications of something life changing began to surface. Staff were told to begin to prepare a month’s worth of lessons online ... “just in case.” Schools were in various stages of readiness for e-learning, so for some it was a much bigger learning curve than for others, but here’s the point: they did it.
Blessed technology specialists in each school patiently and competently walked the professionals through the layers of how to use a platform like Canvas to transfer what otherwise would have been explained, shown, explored, reviewed, quizzed, discussed, corrected, consoled and re-taught in person. Teachers helped each other. Ideas of what worked and what didn’t were shared. They. Got. It. Done.
And remember, this is happening simultaneously with educators’ normal lesson planning and teaching to their kiddos face to face. As the weeks wore on and March 13 loomed, like an enormous machine that suddenly had to be thrown in reverse and then head a new direction, they rose to the challenge. Once everyone was sheltering in place and the classroom became the dining table, many teacher-parents were coordinating devices to accommodate accommodate their children’s multiple zoom meetings with their own student lessons.
Being able to roll with the punch is a must-have skill for an effective teacher anywhere. As full-time, hybrid and full-distance schedules are faced this fall, with the chance of that changing tomorrow, join me in saying “an impossible job well done” to our brave, capable and adaptable teachers.
Leslie Warren
Crawfordsville
