Item

Teaching Middle and High School Virtually in the Pandemic

Media

Title (Dublin Core)

Teaching Middle and High School Virtually in the Pandemic

Disclaimer (Dublin Core)

DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.

Description (Dublin Core)

I taught both middle and high school during the pandemic, which required virtual learning. I lived with a roommate and both of us couldn’t teach at the same time in the same room, so I taught exclusively from the floor of my walk-in closet. I sat on the floor of that 5’x3’ closet every work day for 9 months. The carpet was scratchy and my legs would often fall asleep from sitting in one place too long. I often woke up just before class started at 7:30AM and was groggy. Many of us ate breakfast during first period. The thing that bothered me most however was the silence. The only sound of class was me, talking. My lecture, my out loud readings for accommodated students, and my replies to students typing in the chat were the only things I heard for 5-6 hours of the day. There were none of the usually noises I associate with my job: idle chatter from every corner of the room, tapping of pencils, the pencil sharpener, a student blowing their nose, clicking of pens, hoody zippers, crinkling paper, students moving around in their chairs, chip bags opening, metal water bottles falling on the floor and a student yelling “foul” afterwards, occasional shouting, crying, and groaning. Students very rarely, if ever, turned on their cameras or mics to talk to me. I surely was isolated more than the average remote worker; yes, I talked all day, but it felt like it was talking to no one. I don’t have much tangible evidence to show from the pandemic. Frankly, I didn’t do anything noteworthy of documenting. The three pictures attached are from the beginning of the pandemic, around December 2020. Google Meets hadn’t quite caught up to some of their pitfalls technologically and teachers had to “kick out” each student manually, and when 7-10 of your students are AWOL, it can get tedious. I started to make up dumb games and sing songs to entertain myself, please enjoy my new line to the Oompa Loompa song. You can see that all the students are just icons—no faces, no voices. For reference, I have attached two videos of the end of the school year from before the pandemic. You can hear how loud the classroom is with all the students talking to each other, or playing games and dancing to music. After seeing these small clips, you can understand just how soul-destroying it was to teach to a bunch of digital circles who made no noise.

Date (Dublin Core)

December 8, 2020

Creator (Dublin Core)

Cheyenne Wilson

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Cheyenne Wilson

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST643

Partner (Dublin Core)

Arizona State Universitu

Type (Dublin Core)

screenshot
video
text story

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Education--K12
English Online Learning
English Technology

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

junior high school
high school
teaching
online learning
Google Meets
sound
silence
noise

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

Phoenix
Sensory History
teaching
Google Meets
isolation
school

Collection (Dublin Core)

K-12

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Sensory history submissions and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

05/25/2022

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

05/29/2022
06/17/2022

Date Created (Dublin Core)

12/08/2020

Item sets

Covid 19

This item was submitted on May 25, 2022 by Cheyenne Wilson using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://www.covid-19archive.org/s/archive

Click here to view the collected data.

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