you really just never know

You really just never know.

With a heartwarming memory, Facebook reminded me that, a year ago, that particular phrase summed up my feelings on a special day:
​

I remember that day vividly.  I also remember rolling my eyes a few days earlier when I pulled the next book out of my Lucy Caulkins Units of Study kit and saw what it held in store me for me to close out 2019 with my writers.  I remember how the kids got completely sucked in the very first day, and I remember how it turned into one of the most unexpectedly rewarding and flat out fun stretches of time in my teaching career.

You really just never know.

Those may have been the words that came to mind as I wrapped up 2019, but they are even more appropriate here at the end of 2020.  They’ve even really helped me reflect back on just how unexpected my whole career has been so far, and just how often I have found myself, long before 2020, saying

You really just never know.
​

Most of my teaching career has been, much like that memory, a series of experiences that I didn't choose that turned out to be better than if I had.  When I graduated from college, like I said in the post, I wanted to be a calculus teacher.  However, I wasn't able to find anyone to hire me to teach anything in high school, much less calculus.  I settled for a position in a middle school - the only one I was offered - and it turned out to be wonderful.  In fact, by the end of the first year, I knew I'd lucked out, loved middle school, and would never make the move to high school.
​

On our way to the 8th grade promotion ceremony on the last day of school my second year teaching middle school

You really just never know.

I loved middle school so much that, after finishing my PhD in 2010 and after four years away from it, I decided to go back.  Except I couldn't.  In fact, the economy was so bad at that time, I couldn't find a job teaching anything.  At any level.  Again I settled for the only job I could find, this time for a position as a technology manager/trainer/coordinator in an elementary school.  That was probably, to this day, the most fun job I've ever had.  It was also the most influential one, as my position in the school gave me an inside look at a lot of master teachers' classrooms and showed me that teaching could be very, very different and much, much better than I had done myself years before.  I was so excited by what I saw that decided, after nine years of support roles, I wanted to teach again.  In 2015, I threw my name into the pool of openings for teaching spots in my district for the following year with big dreams of what I could accomplish with a class of my own.​

If you’re following the pattern so far, you might be able to guess how many options I was able to find for that classroom of my own the following August. 

One.

But yet again, it turned out to be great.

You really just never know.
​

I lucked into another great situation in 2015.
​

Fast forward to now, and I’m teaching - for the first time in my career - in a school and classroom that I chose for myself.  If it were any other year, I’d probably be reflecting back for the first time on a year where “you really just never know” finally didn’t apply.

Except this year is 2020.

I’ve never met 60% of my students. I only recognize the top half of the faces of the other 40%.  Every student and parent has my personal phone number, and I accept student work via text message.  I spend hours re-writing test and quiz questions so they can’t be Googled or PhotoMath-ed.  We play a song about penguins several times a day that adds some laughs to our scheduled breaks to spray down the room with virucide.   Younger siblings and pets make frequent class appearances to the point that we know them by name.  I spend my evening commute on the phone (hands-free, of course) with students who stay home just so I have some way of staying in touch with them.  My classroom management procedures include things like turning off YouTube, turning yourself right-side up, and not laying in bed during class.  Students who get frustrated with me can mute me, or even simply turn me off entirely.  Instead of being over-scheduled with after-school activities, almost all of my students end their school day with almost nothing on the calendar day after day.

You really just never know.

It sounds bleak, but it isn’t entirely.  With teaching, there are always problems to solve, and I’m not sure there have been more problems to solve in my classrooms of 2020, just new ones, as plenty of the typical challenges of teaching are actually reduced, or even gone entirely, too.  With so few students at school, time spent on issues of discipline, routines, and classroom management has basically disappeared. Explaining problems to parents is faster and easier than ever because the parents can actually see the problem happening. I’ve yet to give a standardized test (or attend a training meeting on how to give a standardized test, or waste time triple-counting my standardized tests when I check them in and out, or deal with paper work related to protecting and complying with standardized tests, or have follow up meetings to make sure I pay attention to the results of standardized tests, or enter the results of standardized tests onto spreadsheets and copies of spreadsheets….).  Sports, clubs, fundraisers, and other non-academic school functions to manage are mostly off the calendar. Our focus is on “the big stuff.”

Finally, if I’m willing to be honest, while there are obvious drawbacks to this situation, there are some bright sides to it, too.  Students who are too shy to speak up now express themselves in a classroom chat rather than not at all.   I’m seeing certain kids do the best they’ve ever done…. by NOT coming to school.  Students can sleep more without the commute to school to worry about.  Kids who are struggling are getting more support and attention than I’ve ever seen before.  We also get a more complete view of those struggling students and can more easily locate the causes of their struggles.  Parents have unprecedented access to our classrooms.  Schools have caught up to the rest of the world technologically.  Every teacher on earth has learned that he or she can change, adapt, and learn very, very quickly.
​

I don’t know how this will look on the other side of the pandemic, but I do know far too much has happened for us to just “go back to normal.”  2020 was supposed to be the year I could start to expect the expected and look forward to a predictable teaching existence.  In the end, it has been just the opposite.  With any luck, we’ll learn from it and make our schools better places for the experience.  Hopefully it will leave me looking forward to many more years of saying,

you really just never know.

We've all learned that we can change, adapt, and learn very, very quickly.

​
​If you enjoyed this post, please share it!

Want to make sure you never miss a new post?  Subscribe below for email notifications of new content.  ​

Want to read more right now?  You're in luck - you can browse past posts by category:

• ​Building A Thinking Classroom
• Leaning Into The Science and Engineering Practices
• Classroom Practices
• Classroom Stories
• Ideas and Opinions
• Pandemic-Related Issues