This was a really hard week.
I was not expecting so many teary interruptions, piling up in spite of my attempts at pre-planning to accommodate kid needs. I was not expecting so much kid anxiety. I was not expecting such a relentless quantity of teacher email.
The transition to junior high is always tricky. There's a huge jump in the executive function requirements, and most kids experience some degree of overwhelm, in my experience. In person the teachers have always been great about acknowledging that difficulty.
"Great" is not the descriptor that springs to mind for this week. It makes sense that if you haven't taught brand-new sixth-graders online before, you might not be able to predict where there will be gaps between what they actually know and what you expect them to know.
I've always been fairly hands-off with my kids' education, because they need to learn to be in charge of their own stuff while the stakes are low. I'm all about learning from cheap mistakes. But I do not know how to translate that philosophy into pandemic education. And I do not really know how to make week #2 of online learning better than week #1.
I do not have a "tie-it-up-with-a-bow" ending for this post.
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