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I had extraordinarily high bookish ambitions when I realized I was going to be stuck at home for a year. As a fan of classical texts and modern classics, I had some woeful gaps in my reading resume.

I was going to read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

I was going to read Ralph Ellison’s, Invisible Man.

I was going to attempt Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.

Proust was quickly abandoned, but Steinbeck was magnificent. One of the things I learned about Steinbeck was the Latin phrase he used to describe himself: Ad Astra Per Alia Porci – “a lumbering soul but trying to fly.” He even signed his letters with a “Pigasus” logo.

My jaw dropped when I discovered Steinbeck’s erudite attempt at self-deprecation because it perfectly captured my own feelings of teaching amidst a global pandemic.

Lumbering.

Trying.

Yes!

I didn’t want to admit it, but I have felt utterly dejected at times during the first semester of this school year, thinking thoughts I was not particularly proud of. I have lumbered every single day. I have yet to soar.  I know I am not alone in feeling that I am attempting to soar but with a single, wounded wing. It has led me to some dark thoughts.

Here are a few:

#1: Most Students Could Easily Put in A LOT MORE EFFORT. Yes, I know and sympathize: Zoom meetings to eternity are a dreadful way to learn, a seemingly apocalyptic academic perch from which everyone seems ready to flee. An exhaustive enumeration of every drawback of distance learning could become the stuff of a long, heady Russian novel filled with angst, spiritual anxiety, and emotional dizziness. No one thinks this is easy.

But talk to honest students and many of them will readily admit they are taking full advantage of the situation to be lazy, to gorge in their lethargy, to give minimal effort. The most common word used by my seniors these days is “unmotivated.” A lack of motivation is logical, understandable, and completely forgivable.

But it also means students are capable of giving at least a little bit more effort—a modicum, a crumb, a droplet. And what a difference this morsel of effort would make.

Look at all the reporting about the tidal wave of failing grades as we approach the end of the first semester. LA Unified has even decided to delay the ability of teachers to give failing grades. Districts are scrambling to figure out what to do. But a colossal amount of money (hundreds of millions of dollars) and effort (by thousands of school support staff) has been put into giving students home computers for free and mobile hot spots to boot. Teachers, by and large, have been infinitely forgiving of disengagement, accepting of late work, and aware of lax testing protocols. And yet, many students steadfastly refuse to turn in work. They simply will not do it. No matter how easy it is. No matter how much time is given. No matter how many varieties of grace are afforded to them.

Two decades ago, teachers often stressed diligence, organization, and responsibility in the classroom. The presence of these standards was neither to intimidate nor oppress, but to inculcate a sense of unwavering expectations, imbuing young people with a sense that real achievement required real effort, no matter the subject or grade level. This distance learning paradigm is exposing a difficult reality: swathes of young Americans with little diligence coupled with a profound lack of adult supervision is not going to end well.

In fact, it will end in both metaphorical and real failure. The numbers don’t lie.      

 

#2: Our Teacher Friendships Are Frayed and We’re Not Sure Why. Teacher communities are wonderfully diverse. And usually, this diversity is a potent source of strength and vitality. But when we are cut off from all sense of normalcy, when our homes are not just homes but become havens for health and citadels of sanitation, we become more prickly about disagreements. And for good reason: in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic as racial tensions seem to daily expand and contract like pernicious social accordions, when infection and death numbers rise and fall without end depending on the location or season, when a contentious presidential race is more akin to a death match or mimics opposing gangs on the prison yard who seem all-too-eager to pounce at one another, we don’t find our opinionated or quirky colleagues to be as endearing. We walk around raw, easily agitated, and constantly biting our tongues. As CNN recently titled an article on their website, “The pandemic has destroyed friendships and divided families.”              

 

#3: We Daydream About Other Careers More than We Should. Many of us think to ourselves “If this is what teaching is going to be from now on, then find me another career.” Most of us who long for a traditional class setting don’t want to see one more headline about how education “will never be the same again.” Although it hasn’t happened yet, there are strong undercurrents of despair in the classrooms across America as teachers threaten to quit “en masse.”

We long for the halcyon days before a virus imperiled our profession. Things were neither perfect nor easy before March 2020, but at least we knew what we signed up for. We knew what teaching looked like, what it felt like, what to expect from the students and our colleagues.

 

#4: We Wonder If This Entire Year Is a Waste. Should students be able to opt to repeat the year, especially high school seniors missing out on the traditional activities associated with their final year of formal education? Do we need to re-designate traditional markers of mastery to account for this year of altered learning? Countless articles have explained that the most vulnerable students—students with income insecurity, students in homes where parents are losing work, students having to cope with mental health issues on their own now that school services are unavailable or fleeting—are the most likely to gain little growth from this entire experience. In moments of utter honesty, many of us trying our best to pivot towards an altered teaching landscape will admit our students are receiving a fraction of the education they typically receive in a traditional class setting. Why? Because tests are now open book and open note. We are pressured to ease up, not give as many assignments, understand the students are overwhelmed and not to add to their stress and strain. While this is wise and compassionate, it also means less education.

 

#5: COVID Has Amplified the Bad . . . A LOT. Long before the world had ever heard of COVID-19, young Americans were living lives largely disconnected from the values, world-views, and expectations normally associated with adulthood. This crisis has exacerbated these problems ad infinitum.

Many young Americans were already cut off from adults and from each other, fostered in large part by monomaniacal obsessions with devices, the tyranny of time devoted to social media platforms, and the cult of celebrity that is endlessly indulged. Young Americans eat alone. Socialize alone. They are less likely to date or go out in group activities. They had quarantined themselves long before a state governor made them do it. But at least they learned together and gathered in a communal academic setting every day.

This crisis has added hours to device usage. It has made the distance from one another a virtue (food good reason, of course). But worst of all, it has created a sudden vacuum of adult influence in their lives. Being on the other end of a Zoom call is not the same as a classroom. Screens are virtual, not tactile. Distance learning is not just geographically distanced, but emotionally and personally distanced as well. Our students were already too distanced from their parents, their teachers, and other ameliorative and supportive adult relationships. Now we are witnessing not seas of separation from adult life, but oceans of opaqueness. Stunted development, stymied maturation, and a further delay in the process of growing up is certain to ensue.

 

COVID Truths

Jeremy S. Adams is the author of HOLLOWED OUT: A Warning About America's Next Generation (2021) as...

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1 Comment

  1. I want to bring up a point you didn’t. I don’t believe children are hurting just because schools are closed. I believe they are hurting because they are stuck inside with adults who don’t think it’s their job to parent. This is not all parents. Just a few, very vocal parents.

    Our society has changed radically in the last 40 years. The traditional housewife no longer exists. Somehow, the job of child rearing has been insidiously handed over to teachers. Teachers didn’t know what hit them, it happened so slowly. Little by little, more and more has been asked of teachers. And this year’s crisis has brought that truth into sharp relief. There have been opinion pieces in newspapers shredding lazy teachers who don’t do squat as remote teachers. In reality, teachers were working long hours trying to adapt their craft to a new kind of classroom. The only thing they couldn’t do in their new remote classrooms is provide daycare. That’s what people are upset with: they’ve lost their daycare.

    There has always been a huge divide between adults and children in this country. Not too far in the past, there was a saying, “Children should be seen and not heard.” I believe that the pandemic has revealed just how much of the traditional parenting job has been handed over to teachers and schools. Schools are now providing hot breakfast and lunch, plus boxed up school supplies. They provide counselling and special support teachers. Students can have individual plans made up for special services and a school has to honor it. When did all these things become a norm? Is it good? With this pandemic, American parents have had to face the responsibility of having a child, and a lot are having trouble with it.

    Our society is confronting its social belief that teachers are supposed to give their lives to raising our country’s children. If they aren’t doing this, then they are doing squat.

    In the middle of a surging pandemic, Americans have decided they are no longer willing to keep their children home. They claim they care so much about the damage being done to their children, yet they are willing to throw them into harm’s way. They are rallying at State Capitals, threatening public officials if they don’t fully open schools. And local leaders are complying. Could it be that parents just don’t want the added full-time work, don’t think it should be their job, of trying to raise a rational human being any more? Have they forgotten that this has always been, should be their job, especially during a surging pandemic? Schools are supposed to educate. Parents are supposed to supervise, support, and guide the character of their child. Could it be that many haven’t been doing this all along, explaining why there has been a slow escalation of difficult behaviors in schools? Via Zoom, I witness so many parents dismissing their children, or worse, putting them down, telling them to “go away, I’m working!!” I ask myself daily, “Why did these people even have kids if they didn’t really want to be involved with raising them?”

    It frightens me that people would rather send their child back into the ultimate, poorly ventilated indoor gathering place of unrelated people than to creatively figure out how to be better parents/co-teachers during a pandemic. So many people argue that children don’t get sick with this virus, so they should go back into schools. It’s as if people think schools are just unsupervised warehouses for kids. There’s no consideration of the adults who will be in these gathering places with these children from different households, some households that believe Covid19 is real and others that don’t.

    Another 2 or 3 months of closed schools isn’t going to make a huge difference in any child’s life in terms of missed lessons. As far as socialization goes, I hear from plenty of students about weekend visits with friends and family. And they act online the same as they do in class. Some students I have to mute because they want to dominate the room. Just like in any classroom, there are the quiet kids, the ones who pay attention, and the ones who don’t. Most children show up everyday, trying to figure out who they are in this new setting, and to just see their friends. Yes, they may not be putting in much effort in the traditional things that we have labeled as important. But they are putting in effort. And we should be defining what that effort is and giving credit for it. Let’s embrace and support our new normal without putting ourselves in danger. No one should have to die supporting another’s convenience.

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