A Couple Important Points from Parents' Night

 Thank you for coming to parent night!  If you were not able to be there, then let me know if you'd like to zoom sometime.  It's a joy to me to connect with families.  

Before I "chat" with you in this post, I'd like to share a link with you; last trimester, parents loved the links in this particular post.  Some of you may be familiar with, "The Most Interesting Man in the World," of a beer ad who is the object of my post. The story of this actor is genuinely hilarious, but the idea for the students is important and is basically, "To be interesting, be interested."  One of my goals this trimester is to help students create new interests and this post explains part of why.  The link to my post for students: https://mmxxiga2tri3.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-most-interesting-person-in-world.html (and feel free to read other posts to which they have or will respond.)

Today, I'd like to write to you about how the classes I have this trimester are different from any other class I've had --ever.  I started teaching math in independent high schools in 1986 (I was 3 years old? Will you buy that?) so I'm not a newbie to the field.  Immediately, I see two distinct differences (I'm sure there's more, but we are barely 2 weeks into the trimester) between my classes this trimester and other classes I've had. 1. These folks are hard working. I mean REALLY hard working.  They don't give up.  2. These folks are tech-savvy without being aware of how good they are with technology.  I did mention both these qualities during parent night, but let me record and expand on my observations here.  

These folks are hard working.  The benefit of submitting work on-line is that their entry is time stamped.  When one of your children submitted an assignment at 1:30 am (no kidding), I followed up with her. She said, yes, she'd spent 3 hours on the assignment (oh no, that's too much!) because she was driven and she did not have an A block and could thus sleep in until 11 am. I follow up with students who submit work after 11 pm; my high priority is to support a healthy lifestyle.  A healthy lifestyle includes sleep!  And balance.  I tell your children to stop after one hour OR if they become frustrated or upset with math then to stop working and send me an email telling me what was difficult.   Your kids simply keep plugging. They have a well-spring of energy, focus, and determination that flows freely and is evidenced in pages of written work and commentary.  I'm impressed that a two-hour math class is a walk in the park for them. They have the focus to make this experience a success. 

These folks are tech-savvy. The story I told during parents' night was about setting up a blog.  I've required my students to keep a blog for about 10 years; they enter their ideas, projects, responses to extra topics, and the like into their blog.  In every year (and even in the earlier trimester of this year), I would plan on spending 45 minutes -- the entire class period -- helping students set up their URL, posts, links, etc.  This year, I said, "You will set up a blog through 'blogger' or 'blogspot.' " I was distracted by a question about the nature of the blog and within 30 seconds, the first student responded through chat, "I'm done setting it up."  Within 5 minutes, the entire class had set up their own blogs.  Even though they had never used this application, they were skilled and confident enough with the vocabulary and workings of tech that this was simple and straightforward for them.  

Much has been written about this generation's flexibility and resilience developed during pandemic times; there will be more written about the skills they developed.  Employers in six years (when your kids graduate from college) will be pleasantly surprised by what they see in these young people.  And better yet, our world will see new creations from them -- creations the likes of which we can't begin to currently fathom.

I return to in-person instruction on Monday, and I'm thrilled.  We all are social beings; teachers uniformly thrive on their relationships with their charges.  My excitement returning to the classroom is heightened by all I've learned during this episode of on-line learning. I know there is an adjustment for all of us; I'm wondering about the impact of keeping a physical distance, of wearing a mask, and of having some students on-line.  But we made it work when we suddenly were learning on-line a year ago, we will make this work, too.