I Didn't Expect That

After you have taught for a while, you get a sense of what questions are going to be asked about certain topics, and you plan for them.  When I'm teaching about sound waves, for example, I do one day on how the human ear works.  Because it is responsible for more than just sound processing, I work time into the period for questions about tubes, ears popping on planes, dizziness, ringing in the ears, etc.  If, by some chance, they don't ask about these things, I say something like, "Sometimes, people wonder about ear infections, and . . ." After a few years, it would be easy to think you know what is coming but occasionally, something you didn't expect derails your planned lesson.

When I teach about the atom, it is important for students to know that the standard model we all learn is an oversimplification of the real thing, so we do a little imagining of what it would be like if protons were the size of bowling balls.  If they were, electrons would be roughly the size of a thumbtack, and the first one away from the nucleus would be across the street.  I'm used to them being surprised by that and a little taken aback by the idea that there can be empty space in the atom.  It bothers them that there is nothing there.  But once, a girl was floored by the idea that 99% of the atom is empty space.  "It can't be empty," she said.  "There's got to be air or something."  When I explained that air was made of atoms and, therefore, could not fill the space inside atoms, she got very quiet.  Then she started saying, "Wait . . . wait . . . wait."  I waited.  She finally said, kind of slowly, "So, you are telling me . . . that everything . . .  is mostly made of nothing."  I had never thought of it that way before, but yes.  Everything is mostly made of nothing.  They were so floored that I didn't get to move on for about five minutes.  I wasn't expecting that.  This doesn't happen very often, but you know when it does, and it stops the show.

When moments like these happen, it is my obligation as a science teacher to let them play out.  I can finish tomorrow or leave something out, but it would be educational malpractice to halt these moments of awe.  It is also a good idea in those moments to think about further implications of the realization the student has had.  While we were marveling over the idea that everything is mostly made of nothing, I said, "That 1% that is something is just really important."  That's an important consequence of the idea, and it comes up when talking about electrons as well.  (Just because they are small doesn't mean they don't matter, given that they are almost completely responsible for chemistry.)  It's also a good opportunity to imagine what it would be like if it weren't that way.  If all that nothing were something, even small objects would be too dense to lift.  As a Christian school teacher, that will lead to an opportunity to naturally discuss how wisely designed creation is, right down to the smallest level.

Science, by its nature, is obviously replete with opportunities like this, but I'm betting your subject has them as well.  One day a student came out of my friend Jenny's math class and started pacing back and forth.  She came out and said, "It's okay.  Just walk it off."  A gave her a strange look, and she said, "He's just had his mind blown by the concept of limited infinity."  (In case you don't know what that is, think of something like all odd numbers.  It is limited because there are no even numbers in the set, but there is still an infinite number of them.)  He just kept muttering to himself, "Infinity can be limited.  That's crazy.  It's infinity, but it can be limited."  She had not planned for this to be a show-stopping concept, but it definitely was, and those students left with an awe for math they would not have otherwise had.  You never know who it will come from either.  This boy was not a future math major; he didn't even like math.  He was just someone for whom the words "limited infinity" became magical and had a teacher who pulled back the curtain.

We spend a lot of our time equipping and challenging our students, but these are the moments where we inspire them to love learning.   It's not about a test or a state standard or what job they might have in the future.  It is about noticing something amazing in the world and pausing to be amazed.  We should model that.  That's our primary job.

Is there something in your discipline that you were surprised by when you first learned it?  Share that with your students, and give them a second to realize how cool it is.  You can plan some of these, but there will be some you don't expect.  Keep your eyes and ears open for them, and take full advantage when they happen.  

Little Did I Know

Because I teach middle and high school students, most of my adult life has been telling people to calm down, get some perspective, and stop overreacting.  That's definitely what I was doing a little over a year ago, when the first cases of Coronavirus arrived in Washington.  That's when students started asking what pandemic meant and asking me if schools would close.  Little did I know at the time that I was under-reacting.

On this date, one year ago, we got the email.  We had been planning for it for three weeks, but we had all hoped we were just being extra prepared.  Wake County had made the decision the night before not to go virtual yet, and we assumed we would follow suit.  Then, the email came from our head of school that said we would transition to a virtual environment.  Two days would be devoted to teacher preparation, and we would teach our first classes virtually on Wednesday, March 16.  A year later, I have learned a lot, and I am doing things I would have never dreamed that I would be.  I was so naive a year ago about what the year would bring.   

My Granny has said to me dozens of times that if there were a book in which you could find out what would happen in your life, she would not want to look at a single page.  I'm glad that book does not exist because I think I would have definitely looked at every page of this past year and then been overwhelmed by what I read.  If I had known what was coming, my mind and heart could not have absorbed it all.

There are so many things I'm glad I didn't know, but here's what comes to mind today.

That we wouldn't be back at school for the remainder of the 2019/2020 school year - When we walked out the door in mid-March, the plan was to return after spring break, April 14.  I truly thought that would be it.  We had heard that the incubation period was two weeks so often that I thought four weeks would certainly be sufficient.  It was not until April 24 that we learned we would not return to school in person or have graduation or a senior dinner or a yearbook celebration.  If I had known that On March 14, I might have curled up in a corner and remained in the fetal position.  I'm so glad that I would knew things about three weeks at a time.

That taking precautions would become political - I probably should have seen this one coming.  After all, the guy in the white house hadn't been thriving on division and chaos for only the three years before, but for at least the three decades I had known his name.  Knowing that didn't make it any easier to see people I love treat each other badly for things like mask-wearing and getting vaccinated.  I had to snooze and mute some of my friends online because reading their posts was taking too much of my mental energy (which was already in short supply).  I never dreamed staying home would become a red v. blue issue.  If I had known, I would have been too cynical, so I'm glad I didn't.

That I would teach a full school year masked - When we found out we would return in person, I didn't care what it took.  Being alone so much had not been good for my brain, and I knew it wasn't good for kids either.  I said, "I'll teach in a mask.  I'll teach in a hazmat suit.  If you need to wrap me in bubble wrap and roll me to my classroom, I'll do it."  I still feel this way, but I had no idea what a difference teaching in a mask makes.  It turns out that I do a lot of things in my classroom that require my mouth to be seen, from mouthing words silently to ask kids if they are okay to blowing air across paper to show Bernoulli's principle to playing the panpipe and harmonica (and nose flute) as part of our unit on sound waves.  I had no idea that my sense of humor is communicated largely through mugging faces, so it took a long time this year to convince my 8th-grade students that I am hilarious.  I have found that being heard in a mask is not the challenge I thought it would be (because I've been loud for my entire life), but there are daily moments in which I think, "Oh, wait, how am I going to do that in a mask?"  I'm glad I didn't know that when the year started because I would have been overwhelmed trying to figure them all out at once instead of one day or week at a time.

That I would not be in church at the times we most need Christian community - Last year, I walked to the church on Easter Sunday, knowing there would not be anyone there.  I just desperately wanted to do something I would normally do.  I thought that might be the hardest day not to be in church.  Then, George Floyd was killed.  I had a few chances to be with other Christians in the days after that happened because it was right before school checkout time, and we had returned to do some packing up for the summer, but that was it.  My church wasn't meeting in person yet, and I was largely left to process the lessons and pain of that time, including watching the riot as it unfolded downtown, without the presence of Christian community.  That's not a criticism of anyone.  My pastor addressed it in our online services, and my head of school created a group to address some of the issues, and we met virtually a couple of times during the summer.  But, as we all now know, processing painful things is just not the same in a virtual meeting as it is when we are together.  We are made for real community, not virtual community.  God walked with Adam; he didn't just download knowledge into his brain.

That hybrid teaching would be so hard - I try really hard to balance being genuine with professionalism, so I don't talk much publically about how hard hybrid teaching is.  I don't want to communicate that I wish we hadn't done it because that it is not accurate.  For this year, it was the loving thing to do.  Because of vulnerable families, fearful students, and required quarantines after exposure, it is necessary to have virtual as an option for our students.  It is also hard to communicate how hard it is to plan for some students to be virtual and some to be in person (especially in classes with hand-on components, like STEM classes).  Keeping two groups of people engaged requires a constant switch of attention, which burns glucose, which drops your blood sugar, making you more tired and hungry.  I never dreamed how much harder it would be to grade work that is submitted digitally because you can't just write on it.  Giving appropriate feedback takes ten times longer than it normally would and matters more than it ever has.  In the best of years, teachers suffer from a phenomenon called decision fatigue because of the number of choices they have to make every day.  In the hybrid environment, the number of decisions is at least double, possibly more.  Staying pretty much planted in front of my computer goes against all my teacher instincts about moving around in my classroom.  Not being able to have a private conversation with a virtual student (or really an in-person student either as staying distanced and wearing a mask means you can't have a quiet conversation) has made simple follow-up far more difficult.  There's a lot more to this list, but I'll stop now because I don't want you to think I am just whining.  There's just no way to communicate how much harder this is than I expected.  I'm just glad I didn't know that in August or the jaw clenching I was already experiencing might have broken my teeth.  

That I would find some unexpected sources of joy - One of the things I started doing during the summer was writing letters to people whose work brings me joy.  I have written to the hosts of my favorite podcasts, people who made the TV shows I like to binge-watch, even a few singers and authors.  There are two that really stand out because they have become a part of my daily routine.  I knew who Stephen Colbert was long before 2020, but it had mostly been the occasional YouTube clip that got shared on social media.  For the past year, I have found him a source of great comfort, entertainment, and joy every day.  I hate it when he takes a week off.  He's a comedian, but he is also a very open man who shares his faith, his love for his wife, and his emotions rather openly - I just wish I could be friends with him and Evie.  Watching him at the end of each rigorous school day has helped me through this time in many ways.  I have also discovered a British show that's been on for fourteen seasons without my knowing it.  It's called Would I Lie to You, and I'm not sure anything has ever made me laugh harder than this show does - like tears running down my face, snort-laughs.  I don't watch it every single day because I am starting to run out of episodes, but when I especially need a good laugh, I go to YouTube and watch the next one on the playlist.  You may be wondering why I would put this on a list of things I am glad I didn't know a year ago.  It's because they have been a delightful surprise in my life.  If I had known about them before, they would have been expected and probably somewhat mundane.  Finding them during this time has been an unexpected blessing.

There are more, but this post is already longer than I had anticipated.  I am thankful that Granny's book of your life doesn't actually exist.  Living this past year one day at a time has been the only way to stay sane, even for a planner like me.  I guess it's why God designed time and human interaction with it the way he did.

Commitment to a Value (and the Value of Commitment)

Yesterday, I submitted the last page of our school's yearbook for publication.  

As you can probably imagine, it's been a strange school year in which to produce a yearbook.  There have been few events that we would normally have had.  No Grandparents' Day in the fall, the day in which I usually take the bulk of photos for chorus, band, and elementary school students (and obviously, no Grandparents' Day page in the book).  No homecoming dance for which I often get coverage of the high school students who aren't athletes or theater kids (and obviously no homecoming dance pages).  No field trips that usually provide an opportunity to get variety in photos.  When the school year began and yearbook planning started, we weren't even sure if there would be sports to cover or clubs that met in person.

When this happens, you have to re-evaluate your practices, but if you have been operating from a set of values, you have a place to start.  For our yearbook staff, the primary value has always been coverage of people.  Events give pages a theme and a structure, but we don't cover events; we cover people.  Jostens has helped with this for the past 15 years or so by tracking all of our tagged photos as they are placed.  (The coverage report is the greatest tool I have.)  For years, I have driven into my students that our primary goal is trying to get as many people as possible to have a minimum of three placements in the yearbook.  When I grade their pages, they lose points if they have left a member of the team out (assuming we have a photo of them, which we work hard to get).  At the end of each class, I tell everyone to save their page at the same time, so I can announce our current percentage.  We celebrate coverage milestones by coloring in a chart on my bulletin board.  

As this year began, we knew this would be a challenge.  It is difficult to tag pictures of students in masks.  Facial recognition relies on several structures of the face, including cheekbones and chin, so it was less reliable than usual.  Smaller class sizes this year mean more classes and schedule changes made finding the time to take photos more difficult.  

Because we are committed to the value of covering each student, we had to find ways to make it happen.  I spent a day going from classroom to classroom on our elementary campus getting teachers to identify students.  I emailed list after list of names of students still needed, and teachers responded by taking photos of whatever they had going on that day.  Students attending class virtually means some photos were of faces on a computer screen.  There are a number of photos of an iPad with just a smiling face and even photos parents sent me of their students working on their computers at home.  My staff conducted interviews with students to replace some of the pages we would normally have with "profile" pages.  They emailed me when someone was present in-person who had been virtual or came and got the camera to go take a shot of that one kid we hadn't been able to get.  Our vocal ensembles had strict restrictions on in-person signing, so we didn't have lovely group photos of singers in formal wear (or at the Christmas event at the governor's mansion), but we do have a statement from every member and a QR code that links to the videos of their virtual songs.  It's been . . . a lot, but because they were committed to the value of coverage and the help of dozens of people, we ended the yearbook at over 99%!   I cannot say 100 because there are three students on the coverage report that are not at 3 placements.  Two left the school during the first semester (and I guess it would be creepy to follow them to get another photo).  One virtual student simply would not answer my emails, asking for one more.  She has her reasons, and we are all doing our best right now.  

For all the reasons listed above, I would have cut my staff enormous slack if we had not been able to reach this goal this year.  But because they are committed to a value, there is value in their commitment.  I hope that someday, when they are adults and this COVID year is a memory, they will hold onto the idea that commitment to a goal based on a value means they can meet challenges and do hard things.  I hope they will remember the value their commitment had and what their hard work meant to others.  I hope they carry the value of commitment with them and that it is especially meaningful when that commitment is to something they value.

A sneak preview of our cover