I was really struck this morning with how amazing our teachers have been and are in this remote learning environment. I’ve read and listened to so many stories from so many platforms, but I hardly think the true dedication of educators has been expressed. The teacher in these pictures is amazing. She’s not the only amazing teacher on our faculty but I want to focus on her because she has been pulled from both sides like a thanksgiving turkey wishbone and has exhibited grace, patience, leadership and dedication to all of it. She is not only an amazing teacher, but an amazing athletic director.
In this picture, she is talking to students on a webinar running through the laptop, while she demonstrates a problem using her document camera and one screen of her computer, and consults her role on the second computer. She doesn’t have specialized training or support for making this set up work. In fact, she tends to be a little uncomfortable with new technology. She worked with other teachers and administrators to find the correct cables, download the correct software and learn a brand new delivery platform for students and teachers. Everyday, right up until the students returned remotely, she was given new and changing information, new protocols and troubleshooting help. On the first day of remote learning, she logged on to meet her students who were seeing their classes on this platform for the very first time ever. It took about a week for everything to smooth out, at least smooth enough to get through class. I walked in this morning about 10 minutes before class time, beginning our 3rd week. She was frazzled because her webinar program kept going to sleep, her keyboard wouldn’t work, the document camera wouldn’t come up and she was working with a student who couldn’t get logged in from home. We started working everything out and during the midst of the chaos, she put on her headphones and opened her class on time and began teaching algebra. There would’ve been no way her students could’ve known what she had just been through minutes before.
That is enough to deal with for anybody, but this teacher is also managing the sports programs at school. The decision whether or not to play sports was not made by the local school. Let’s be clear, we did not make the decision to play sports and have remote learning at the same time. The school, however, is responsible for carrying out this decision. Running a high school sports program is difficult and time-consuming under normal circumstances. The school is required to keep
up with eligibility, equipment, physicals and whatever else for every athlete as well as information, training, promotion and the finances of each team. There is paperwork to make sure a coach is eligible and forms for volunteer coaches to fill out. And schedules! There are so many events going on simultaneously. The AD has to make sure each team has what they need, whether it be volunteers to work the gates or reminding the BOE to turn on the AC for the Saturday volleyball tournament. There’s the expectation of attending as many events as possible and making sure it all runs correctly. This teacher/athletic director doesn’t do all of this alone, it’s a team effort, but she takes responsibility for all of it. Then, throw in the protocols for prevention of Covid, which are extensive. Everything has to be cleaned and sanitized, masks worn, and buses loaded correctly. Ticket sales are completely different and event attendees aren’t always nice. It’s too much, but she manages it all.
What’s most remarkable is that there are teachers everywhere doing the same things. She or he might not be an athletic director, but she might be a band director or he might be a theater director or a coach. The routine meetings haven’t stopped either. There are other teachers who, in addition to their regular job, are writing yearly school plans, supporting struggling students, answering additional technology questions or figuring out how to compete in state career tech events. The work is consuming. The fear and unknown is consuming. Answering to so many different school stakeholders, parents, central office staff and state BOE people is consuming. But right on time, the teacher in this picture opened her online class and began teaching.
