Hi to my kids’ teachers!
You probably know me best by the disheveled face you see at the beginning of a Google meet as I set it up and hand it off to my son. You may also recognize me by the sound of my voice in the background of his voice recorded lessons, yelling up the stairs to my daughter to please get out of her pajamas today for a change. Or, from the repeated back and forth emails where you politely explain to me for the third time exactly how to upload what you need uploaded and I try again.
Man, I’ve never been so aware of how technologically inept I am.
I’m pretty sure I need to sign up for a virtual school class on “how to proficiently use any app that isn’t Amazon.” Anyway, you clearly spend hours digging through the endless online content available to find engaging and interesting lessons for my kid. On top of that, you record yourself teaching lessons, update the class calendar, run online kindergarten group chats (every teacher who does this should be up for sainthood and also receive a complimentary bottle of alcohol of their choice from each parent).
That said, I hope you understand that most of the time, while my son is watching his lessons, he is also coloring, eating a snack, pestering his sister, playing the “floor is lava,” arguing with me about whether or not he needs to put on long pants in 27° weather, and generally, not paying attention. All totaled, it takes him about an hour to complete his lessons most days and for a kindergartener, that seems just about right. It gives us plenty of time for hikes and board games and bickering and watching too much Disney+.
At the beginning of this year, I told my kids that if all we did was stay safe, have some fun together, and maintain the knowledge they had from last year, that I would consider that a successful school year, and we have stuck to that mantra. I really didn’t expect much more than that.
But today, I had to give the end of the first semester writing assessment to my kindergartner.
I remember doing this in the first couple of weeks of school as a baseline assessment. It did not go well. He knew most letters of the alphabet, I think he knew two sounds, and he certainly didn’t know how to sound out any words, let alone write them. If you go back and listen to his recording, you can hear him say “I’m not doing this. No. I can’t read these words. No. I’m not doing it. Turn it off.”
And so I did because I’m not going to push him to do a test that he isn’t ready for, and I know that if he were in the classroom with you and said that, you would have also said, “If this makes you uncomfortable right now, then you can be done!”. Kindergarten teachers are lovely in that way.
Like I said, today I set him up for the assessment you needed us to give and then stepped back to let him work by himself as you instructed (read: sat down and scrolled Instagram for four whole minutes). When my son yelled “DONE” and sprinted out of the room, I walked over to upload his work and my mouth dropped.
I assumed he wasn’t paying attention over the last four months. I sure fuss at him like he’s not paying attention. But I need you to know, it turns out that he is, in fact, listening. Your work is paying off, his work is paying off, and you are getting through to your students.
This wild child of mine whines when it’s time to do any work of any kind ever. He asks why this Jack Hartman guy spends all his time writing weird songs about letters (which, Jack Hartman, if you ever read this, my kid dances and sings to every tune you play and then plays it too cool for school when it ends but we all know he really loves you). My son writes “butt” on my calendar when I’m not looking, but suddenly knows how to write real, more useful words and it’s just so darn exciting.
He’s certainly missing out on the fun and the community of school because, despite anybody’s best effort, there’s just no way to replicate that at home, but he IS learning. Sure, I read to him, just like I’ve done every night since he was born. I got a set of easy decodable readers for him to practice with and we read and reread those every other week or so. But the time that I can invest in his learning is so small compared to what he would be getting in a traditional classroom right now that I expected very little growth. After all, I haven’t drastically changed what I’ve been doing to encourage his reading in the last four months.
That means, dear teachers, it’s you.
You’re the spark behind reading growth I’m seeing. He’s putting in the work, but only after you’ve put in so much work to make his work possible. So, thank you. This school year has been a mess of unknowns, muddling through things that you probably could have never imagined calling “class.”
My expectation this year is still simply to survive with our sanity and good humor intact. But the fact that my child has, in fact, been able to learn how to read and spell is a huge credit to the astronomical amount of work that you are putting in to make this school year count. As we’ve known all along, teachers really are amazing.
