The Teaching

The online teaching is sometimes exhausting, and I'm not sure why.  I went to bed around 7:30 last night.  There's stuff about real life teaching I don't miss that much--- trying to get kids to line up to go somewhere, trying to get kids to clean up the room at the end of the day.  But here's some stuff I do miss--- Being the main person that's with them all day. Helping them get their work done.  Hearing their stories.  Telling them my stories.

Some stuff is the same.  I'm happy with the lessons I'm coming up with.  I'm happy to talk about books with them at our weekly meetings.  I'm happy to see their ideas for their writing. I'm happy when they appear on our morning announcements page by typing, "Hi Dr. H," always adding 10 to 50 emojis.

Some stuff is different.  It's hard to figure out how much to assign for the kids to have 2 to 3 hours of work.  I've gaffed a few times and as they continue to submit assignments into the afternoon, I get more and more stressed out, thinking that the parents must be hating my guts and that I'm torturing little kids who are already having tough lives. This results in depression and anxiety. Also, sitting in a chair for hours at a time with little messages coming up on my screen every few minutes gets me a bit cranked out.

In short, the teaching work continues to be emotional and that's probably why it's tiring me out.  But it's good work.  I like being connected to the Thirdlanders on the daily. Today we're going to start writing our zines.  I wish we were all writing in the same room, but if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.