What It’s Like To Be An Online Teacher During a Pandemic
By: Jessie Dumont
Tags: Teaching, Pandemic, Teachers, Opinion, Education

What It’s Like To Be An Online Teacher During a Pandemic

It’s like that saying: everything ends up in a landfill somewhere. That’s what online teaching is like. A dedicated educator knows that we do not enter into this profession for the money or the perks. Most of us are here for the good things and the magic the comes from believing in the future leaders of our world: our students.

Recent data from online teaching this year will show that teachers across the United States have not folded under pressure, despite the thousands of demands and opinions thrown at us, daily, we continue to navigate a landscape never explored before in education. We met the pandemic online teaching year with a shrug and a will to keep our spirits high for our students who were forced to do the same thing. The decision to reopen schools feels right for families who really need it and families that really want it. What is not being recognized right now is the tremendous opportunity we all have to make education for our children better. The chance for real change in a profession trampled and traveled many times going in the same direction.

What makes this year interesting is that educators and most schools across the country were forced to create a new path for the first time in the history of education. Before the country-wide shutdown, education had always been seen as an afterthought. Schools continued to teach from old textbooks, rarely updated from our parent’s generation, curriculums look the same as they did in the 70s and 80s, teacher training continues to preach instead of practice new ways to deliver the curriculum.

This year, the media has grabbed education for the chance to spotlight a time when teachers are needed the most, a time when educators have finally wanted by families who finally seem to value them. The education seemed “good enough”, until a pandemic hit and suddenly it wasn’t good enough anymore.

Currently, I am an online teacher. In my county schools are currently closed and are forced to learn online. This topic of online teaching has been heavily debated as it is seen as a disadvantage to children of all learning styles and social needs alike. I’d like to remind everyone pushing for an immediate reopening of schools that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, schools are not safe, and frankly, they never really were.

Online teaching isn’t the solution by any means, unfortunately, it is the only option for districts scrambling to come up with a solution. Online teachers are simply trying to normalize a system that continues to be broken, except this time, it’s online.

In another timeline, this would be a great plotline to a sci-fi movie.

Currently, I teach 6 classes with 35 students each online. As a high school teacher, I have an added bonus of having the responsibility to wrangle teenagers online and get them to participate in a 45-minute class period. In a perfect world, these class sizes would be much smaller, instruction would be centered around real-world applications and strategies to help one’s mental health. Instead, the school day is quite draining and high schoolers are forced to sit in front of their computer screens for 7 hours a day.

On a typical day, my day starts at 8:30 AM with my first class. This is an hour later than our normal school day in-person. All of my classes are 45-minutes, a radical change from the 80-minute time blocks I taught in-person last year. I have found that the 45-minute time blocks are barely enough time to build meaningful relationships with my students and balance the expectation to get through the curriculum at the same time. The curriculum has been modified for online consumption, yet, teachers are expected to teach to the test, and students are expected to complete everything in the curriculum in order to keep up with grade-level standards.

Prior to this new change in professional scenery, teachers have not been provided adequate training to actually teach online. We’ve been forced to face and figure out the new system entirely on our own.

I’ve cried weekly. It’s become a normal response to cope with the daily grind that ceases to stop for breath. My teaching style revolves around building student relationships, so the online format isn’t one I enjoy regularly. Like most teachers, I’m putting my all into a system I was not prepared for. I’ve spent more time in meetings, professional developments, and figuring out new technology platforms to teach students than actually building relationships with students. Nothing could have prepared us for this.

My current schedule starts with a 45-minute class period at 8:30 AM. Next, I am required to teach a 45-minute “class” called Community Wellness. It is basically a homeroom where I am required to give district-made wellness lessons to inform students about self-care, mental health, and healthy habits. I then go right into teaching my 2nd-period class for another 45-minutes.

Luckily after this block of time, I have 5–7 minutes to pour my next cup of coffee before I have to be on FLEX time. This is an hour-and-a-half block where I must sit at my computer screen and wait for students to show up to my Google Meet to ask specific questions about homework or get extra help. Sometimes I have more than ten students at a time, sometimes it is one student who asks a question then leaves. Sometimes no one shows up for the hour and a half I’m waiting.

Another 10-minute break is when I grab a quick snack before being present for the two clubs I was required to sign up for. During another 45-minute block I must meet with two clubs I am required to head to before a lunch break. Most clubs last the whole 45 minutes.

Lunch is about 45 minutes as well. It’s just enough time to step away from my computer and eat something before I have to be back at my screen at 1:10.

I then teach two 45-minute blocks back to back.

This schedule repeats the rest of the week.

This might look like an easy schedule to some who are used to odd hours, long hours, and more responsibility. But for a teacher who is used to seeing students in person, this isn’t ideal for teachers or students. Expecting students to retain material in 45-minute time blocks the same way we were teaching prior to the pandemic is a tough sell. We can do better. We deserve better.

Crying each week is something I expect every week. It isn’t because I can’t handle it, it is because of the demand placed on teachers to continue a system that has long been overlooked. This shouldn’t be a time to revert back to the old way of doing things, rather we should see this as an opportunity for teachers and students to discover new ways of learning, beyond a test.

What if we took a really good look at education and changed it? What if we let go of our need to teach to a test and see this new online-teaching frontier as an opportunity to finally serve students the way teachers want to be served, through support and encouragement.

I feel torn on most days. I miss being in the classroom, but I have seen the places in education that need a new facelift. Online teaching hasn’t made my job easier, in fact, I would argue that this new job title has come with challenges I couldn’t have thought up in years prior. What I do know is that the educational system is broken, and it isn’t because of the emergence of online learning. Online learning has made this fact even more present and pressing.

As an online teacher during a pandemic, this is my swan song. I’ve spent an abnormal amount of time staring at a screen with little to no human interaction, a massive change from what educators experience on a daily basis in the classroom. I don’t miss my classroom, the poor dear is falling apart at the seams, I have one window that doesn’t open, the ventilation never circulates and it’s vents and old crevasses are susceptible to vermin. But,I don’t enjoy teaching from home either, I miss student interactions, the social aspect of it all, and the magic that comes from building student relationships face-to-face.

While we wait for the virus and the vaccine to sort itself out, I sit here typing and wondering how teachers can ever go back to “normal” again after completely changing their entire profession online. I wonder how the students are doing, and of course, miss the ones I know would have sparkly personalities in real-life in a real-classroom. But, I also am full of hope. I hope that this opportunity will force students to start thinking for themselves with the whole world at their fingertips online, I hope that this opportunity will encourage students to develop habits outside of school that is good for them, hobbies that they are proud of, skills they wouldn’t otherwise have time for in their busy schedules. I hope this opportunity will be the white flag educators can wave from their windows to show the world that we really are kind superheroes who only want the best for their children, I hope this opportunity promotes schools to rethink testing and create new, innovative ways to develop curiosity and creativity in the very students that crave it.

This isn’t a debate about reopening schools anymore, this isn’t a time to wallow in how hard everything is. I know how hard this is, I know that my students are suffering because they don’t have normal social interactions, I know some of my students are not in safe homes for critical thinking and learning, I know this isn’t ideal or convenient for anyone.

As long as we keep fighting against our circumstances the harder it will be for all of us. For education, it has been fighting against its circumstances for far too long, and it’s ever-present that the public education system in the United States has been falling apart just as quickly as my classroom walls and ventilation system, and that this time we can’t ignore the places that need real fixing.