Dangling Feet

 

First day (back) writing assignment - Capture this moment.

There was this moment that happened early on the first day back with my students. A Dorothy and Toto moment when we all realised we weren't in Kansas anymore. One student joked that she felt like she was in the fifth grade because of the way the classroom was set up. My mind flashed through images of all the flexible seating and different learning spaces that our Elementary School has worked to hard to create over the past few years. I did respond that it reminded me of my first year as a high school teacher almost twenty years earlier,  and that they all reminded me of very little high school students. Many of their feet still dangled as they sat. 

We had just come in from trying our first collaborative learning activity. I had planned a few simple prompts that they would respond to with a partner, and, while the activity didn't fall flat, it was clear that many of these students hadn't spoken to another 3-dimensional kid for quite some time. But we were here, we were happy, and we were ready to jump into this new-style school.

The first day back was to be filled with new ways to do old things that we never had to think of as we did them before. Now we needed a new way to enter the school, a new way to go up stairs, a new way to go to the bathroom, recess, and home. How bizarre it must have felt, to be a seven or eight year old, staring at your teacher standing at the front of the class with his face smiling at you from behind a welding mask. 

I wanted them to try to capture the moment. To write about the time they went back to school with half of their classmates, while the majority of the world's children were still learning from home. To write about the first building that they had been in, other than their own house, in months. The writing came in the form of letters to parents, letters to me, and newspaper articles. While most students did make note of some of the differences they saw, there was one simple theme that connected them. A theme that ran through every part of the day. Everyone was just really happy to back, including their welding-mask-wearing teacher.

T-Minus

Ready, set...

I never make snowflakes with my classes. I don't like things hanging from the ceiling. This year was the first - a bit of a gift to my co-teacher (who loves to hang things in the classroom) as a way to say thank-you for putting up with all the things that it takes to co-teach with me. 

As I entered my classroom for the first time in months, they were the first things I noticed. 25 beautiful snowflakes gently flapping in the summer breeze. Pictures of Australian animals staring at me from their wildfire posters, seemingly saying - "Remember us?". The date on the calendar still read: Monday, March 9th. My furniture had been removed from the room or stacked in corners, replaced by eleven large, individual desks spaced evenly across the classroom placed by someone with a ruler in hand and brand new rules on their mind.

For a class that has always been built with collaboration, small group instruction, and conferencing as three of its core pillars, this set up wouldn't do. 150cm between desks is the rule, yes, but so is creating our learning spaces - even in the time of Covid-19.  Time to rearrange...