My Summer Break at Home Is Still My Summer Break

If you read any education-related social media right now, you're probably as flooded with the "shoulds" as I am. Here are just a few of the things teachers are being pressured to do:

• Make a bitmoji virtual classroom 
• Create virtual bands/choirs/orchestras for all their ensembles, the reality of the time it takes or difficulty getting a good result be damned
• Use their own personal devices for work purposes while still not getting paid nearly enough
• Spend their summer break learning to do distance learning "better" in case we're still online in the fall. 

It's that last one I really take issue with. I get paid for 183 days. I always work about 5 more than that getting my classroom ready for the year and prepping curriculum. Which is fine. I choose to do that. But other teachers are telling me that I need to "sacrifice" and "be flexible" and learn tons of new stuff this summer in case I have to do a job I didn't sign up for in the fall. My answer is simple: NOPE. I'm going to take some summer courses (gotta get that pay bump!), but not on how to be a good distance learning teacher. I'm going to pick classes related to what I teach that I think I'll enjoy and will help me be a better teacher in general. 

I'm not going to learn to do a virtual ensemble. I won't be making one. It's not my job, and it's not realistic in my teaching context. I'm not going to learn to do flashy video editing tricks to make my lessons "more engaging". I'm not going to spend my personal time learning things I don't want to learn. 

"But you can't go anywhere anyways! Be a team player". My answer again: NOPE. I might not go anywhere (and will adhere to guidelines regarding travel as long as they are in place). But I can sit outside and do absolutely nothing. I can read a novel that has nothing to do with my job. I can watch hours of mindless reruns. I can be a person, not just a teacher. Global pandemics shouldn't be another excuse to perpetuate the teacher-martyr narrative.

Impossible question of quarantine

"Are we gonna have a concert, or is it cancelled?"

A band kid typed the question that broke my heart. Two weeks before, we had still been operating with hope - continuing to practice concert pieces from a distance, hoping that we'd be together with instruments in hand.

No, fifth grade band won't have a concert this year. They won't have a last lesson in person. They won't get their promotion ceremony, their last day of elementary school, or a day to sign yearbooks with their friends. Coronavirus took all those things from them. 

This was a special group for me, I had most of them for 4 full years. Many of them have been "music kids" since the beginning, playing in Orff ensemble or strings or singing for special events. And yet I can't make a concert happen. I can't give them the satisfaction of taking a piece that they worked so hard on to the stage. 

This was the first year in awhile we decided beginning band would take on a full piece. It's tough since we don't see the full band together (homogenous or semi-homogenous before-school classes only, across 3 different schools) and we only get about 35 minutes per week of instructional time with them. We picked a piece called Dark Towers. The kids LOVED it. They rose to the challenge, we were 2/3 of the way through before school closed and still had almost 2 months until concert day. 

The good news: the piece will go with them to middle school next year, where they'll have a phenomenal director who's not only excited to work on the piece with them, but who wants to have me and my elementary band colleague back to perform the piece with the kids who had their end of year concert stolen. 

The not good news: we don't know what band will look like in the fall. If band will be. If making music in the same room will even happen. The concert is cancelled. I don't have a silver lining of certainty to answer that student question with.

I still vividly remember my own fifth grade band concert at the end of the year. We got to use a local outdoor amphitheater, to stand on the same stage where so many amazing musicians had performed. We played "Hot Hot Hot" and my Grandma brought me flowers. My students this year won't have those memories. But I hope they'll take with them memories of working hard, laughing a lot, and making music together. And hopefully, we'll take Dark Towers to the stage in a few months.