Zooming in and out

Here is a good illustration of why I choose to not participate in Zoom instruction** (and why I am no longer a middle school teacher).

Picture this:

Jack, sitting at his desk, hits the "join meeting" button on his iPad.

We are immediately face-to-face with a grid of 10 squirmy 6th graders and their patient teacher. We'll call her Ms. Frizzle. She tries to talk to the class, but it's hard to focus since one student keeps changing his background from space to Hogwarts and back to space, no Hogwarts. One kid is spinning in his office chair. Another keeps zooming in on what looks like a guinea pig?  In one square you can only see the top of a kid's head. All are fidgeting, and the mic is picking-up all of the sounds.

The patient Ms. Frizzle decides she would like the kids to... and she's frozen.

The kids all start saying "Ms. Frizzle? Ms. Frizzle?" They all say, "She's frozen!" And therein begins the cacophony of "Where did she go?" "She's not the host anymore, I am!" "Ms. Frizzle ?" "What do we do?"

Ms. Frizzle's  image returns to the screen. Her audio is muted as is her mic.

The children start trying to tell Ms. Frizzle they can't hear her by yelling practical things like, "You're muted!" "We can't hear you!" "Turn-on your audio!" as they make unusual gestures with their hands. Finally, the message is received.

Ms. Frizzle , audio back on, tells the students they will one-by-one, share what they've learned this week as they continued their research on the independent projects they've been working on for at least a month. She tells the students they will each have two minutes to share. She says, "Tommy, you go first."

There is a moment of silence, and then the class erupts with questions like, "Wait. What are supposed to do?" "When?" "Why?" "But I wasn't in class on Tuesday."  "Ms. Frizzle what's the point of this?" "Can you explain it again?"

She regains control and again, very patiently explains.

Finally, the students begin sharing, one at a time, each receiving feedback and praise. After all of the students have shared, she, obviously weary from this 20 minute interaction, tells them that it's about time to sign-off. Abruptly,  one girl interrupts and shouts, "Wait! I need to show you a magic trick!"

Before Ms. Frizzle  can object, the girl performs the trick. Ms. Frizzle  says, "Good one.  Ok, well that's.." and then another student yells, "I didn't see it! Do it again!!"

This, my friends, was actually a highly successful lesson.


**We've just finished our first week of virtual teaching, and it has been a steep learning curve for many of us. We've had to completely change the ways in which we organise information. We've had to sift through the complexities of topics to get to the rudiments, and we've had to figure out a way to present information in an accessible way - something that we took for granted when we had the luxury of asking direct questions, interpreting what a kid is trying to say, and reading body language to determine how to follow-up. In a good way, this is actually a decent challenge for teachers. We should 'up' our technology game. We should be reflective about what is accessible and what isn't.  In a not so good way, we're having to jump through hoops we've never encountered before. One of those hoops involves Zoom, our safeguarding approved, face-to-face meeting platform. Teachers can't just jump onto any on-line platform. It has to be monitored by administrators; paperwork for each meeting has to be completed, nothing can be recorded, and if only one kid shows-up, you have to end the meeting immediately. All of this is important, but it doesn't acknowledge other things, like actually understanding how the meeting platform works: figuring out how to access, navigate through, mute, un-mute, host, enhance, etc.. the platform.

I've decided not to do face-to face interactions because of the complexities involved and instead have focused on creating micro-podcasts and step-by step, condensed instruction sheets for assignments. I've focused more on the roadmap and independent learning and less on the direct teacher guidance. I have that luxury in a more literature and research based class. (I feel sad for all of the math and language teachers out there.)