This isn’t the first time I’ve had the idea. “Ooh, I should start a blog! I love blogs.” This isn’t even the first time I’ve created a WordPress account and started jotting down my thoughts. But, it is the first time I’ve committed to launching a site for this purpose.
If you were a student in my classroom, you’d already know two things:
- Wry comments and playful snark are my trademark. I invented them. Look it up.
- I don’t mince words when I feel I have something to say.
If you were a student in my classroom, you’d also know one more thing: my classroom, the lessons that are delivered in it, and my students are quite literally (literally, figuratively) my world.
I’ll spare you additional platitudes, sufficed to say I am passionate about my work in education and miss my students.
I’m here in this space, drafting this post, because my world disappeared on March 13, 2020. Like many teachers in the United States, and globally, I was summarily booted out of my classroom and sequestered in my home because of the novel coronavirus. Covid-19. A microscopic sphere of respiratory hell armed with billy clubs.
I’ve been busy, regardless. Re-configuring my curriculum to function as best as possible in a digital environment has been no easy feat. It’s been especially difficult trying to find ways to effectively communicate with students whose lives have equally been turned upside down.
In doing this, though, I’ve had to reflect on my instruction, its design, assignments to complement learning. I’ve been asked by my district and school leadership to identify the most essential topics and skills my students need to be successful in the next level of their English instruction. It struck me that this is the question that would ideally be asked when all curricula are designed. The circumstance of coronavirus closures is enforcing the most essential of the essential. It is by its nature reducing instruction to its bones. It’s forcing reflection and uncomfortable, untimely opportunities for stretching outside of comfort zones.
I’d like to explore those reflections in this blog. Make suggestions where I can. Harness the potential in tragedy.
So, I’m blogging now.
Teaching from the Balcony 