By all means, continue to cultivate your talent by working on your skills, and continue to grind hard with your insatiable work ethic, but don't leave out the often neglected one third of the equation (and arguably most important), your mind.

As we prepare to enter the new school year, post-school closures due to Covid, with the possibility of returning to “normal” - whatever that means! - almost in our grasp, a lot of words are being tossed around about education. This isn’t totally abnormal, of course. The buzzwords in education come and go, based not solely on their effectiveness or usefulness, but also on the spin they’re given. How sick of the word “gamification” are you, for example? Gamification isn’t bad, but much like songs on the radio, no matter how good they are, you get really tired of them!

“Learning Loss” has been everywhere, from education blogs to webinars to conferences to the news and media. But is it real?

Zoom Fatigue. It is real. In fact, people have been researching all about it. I read an article from National Geographic this week about Zoom Fatigue, who it affects and the inequities present. Check out the article here.

We have lived in pandemic world for over a year. It has been challenging and revealed so many inequities, but we will get to that a bit later. In a recent study about Zoom Fatigue, it shows that not only is it a real thing, but that it affects people in many different ways. They have even developed a rating scale to determine your level of Zoom Fatigue. Let’s break it down.

With the need to social distance during carpool, our school got a little creative this year. We used a free QR code generator (https://qrexplore.com/generate) to make carpool tags. These QR codes are placed in the bottom passenger side window of vehicles to allow easy scanning during carpool. On TEAMS, we generated a TEAM called "Middle School Carpool". At 3:15 every classroom in the middle school turns on their large screens and displays the carpool chat. Teachers who run carpool scan the vehicles using a school issued iPad or iPhone and send it to the team. Names and grade levels appear on the large screens inside. Students and teachers watch the screen and dismiss directly from classrooms. There is very little interaction between students and adults during carpool as students walk directly to their cars when their name is displayed. This has truly been a game changer for us. Carpool is now efficient and safe.

Making plans seems kind of useless these days, huh? Between the weirdness of this school year (and year - how is March AGAIN?!?) and the ever-shifting world we’re living in, planning doesn’t really make a lot of sense on paper. And I hear ya. I do. But for me, planning is not only a way to help ease the anxiety of…all this…but also a way to make sure my goals don’t rely on the world, but on me and my actions.

This isn’t toxic positivity, but rather an understanding that when I plan, and when I’m gentle with myself and consistent with my goals, I can accomplish anything. Here are some of my favorite goal-planning tips!

As a technology teacher, I am very happy to see that teachers are using technology more often in the classroom. Many kids are consuming technology at home (and not always the right kind), but some kids do not have access to technology other than at school and need to learn how to use it. As more teachers are using technology because they have to, I am reminded of how many tools out there are not only free, but offer so much potential for students to be creators rather than consumers of content. Here are my favorite FREE educational tools I use in my classroom and how they are being used.

Can y’all believe we’ve been doing some form of distance or hybrid learning for almost a year!? It seems in some ways like it was just yesterday that we left our classrooms and schools with no clue what would come next, and in others it seems like we’ve been slogging through this FOREVER.

We have a conference coming up on February 13 - What We’ve Learned (So Far!) From Distance Learning - that has some fantastic sessions on tech, organization, and scheduling, but I also think we’ve learned some things about ourselves during this time.

It’s 2021. We have been living in a pandemic world for almost a year. Everything is different—schools, restaurants, businesses, travel, and everything we once considered “normal” is a distant memory. As we get used to living in a pandemic, it seems as though some have accepted it as the “new normal”. Unfortunately, there is no magic wand or calendar that will show us when we can stop social distancing or wearing masks, but we can learn from these experiences and find a way to make our future a better place.

It’s no surprise to anyone reading this but y’all, the world is going through a lot right now. Coronavirus, police brutality, systemic racism, economic troubles…it’s a rough time for so many, and we can only hope that this time of struggle brings a revolution of thought, word, and deed in our country. The humanities - including social studies and history - are often the first subjects to be on the chopping block when budget or time cuts are announced. Who needs a history class? What can you even do with history degrees? (Everyone, and it turns out, a lot.) I believe, with my bias as an historian completely out in the open, that rather than cutting the study of our past, we should emphasize it. We should be training our students to be critical thinkers, researchers, and consumers of the past. We should be training them to think like historians.

We have had an amazing two weeks at Lausanne Learning! From the amazing conversations and vulnerability at the Diversity & Equity in Schools virtual conference to the tons of resources and tools shared yesterday at the Math & Distance Learning conference, there was a lot of learning going on!

This is a hard time of year for many even when we’re not dealing with a pandemic, an election, natural disasters, and everything else 2020 has thrown at us, and many of us (myself included!) are feeling more stress than usual. And - sorry to be the bearer of bad news - we can’t always avoid stress. Sometimes, stress finds us, no matter how much we practice self-care or avoid over-committing or whatever. If you’re an educator reading this, you’re probably not even close to being able to avoid stress right now. Parents? Yeah, you’re stressed too. Students are in the same boat.

So if we can’t avoid stress (and you can’t always), we have to manage it. Here are some tips - some scientific, some I’ve just found work in my own life as an educator, parents, AND student - for managing stress:

There is no doubt that, for many of us, we are in the hardest teaching environment we’ve ever experienced. Many of us are teaching remotely (while often watching our own kids!), or teaching in-person and online at the same time, or teaching in a place that is back to “normal” (or thinks they are!) with all students at school. We have been talking for months about what education is - how a school is not just a building, but a community, how education doesn’t happen by a proscribed set of rules set by bureaucrats, how education is teaching, learning, sharing, not just desks in rows with teachers delivering facts and figures.

But what hasn’t been talked about nearly enough, in my mind, is what education is NOT.

Fear is powerful. It is paralyzing. It causes even the most talented individuals to shy away from new opportunities. But fear has a much worse effect than not taking risks--it causes you to wonder “what if”.  

As an educator, fear simmers in me, making me question my self-worth and creating paths of possibilities that could go untried. I consider myself an adventurer and seeker of new technologies and experiences, but when faced with the unfamiliar, fear takes over. What if I fail?  What if my students don't learn what I expect? What if I disappoint them?  

This time of year, we ARE busy. But that also seems to be the default answer, the default setting, for most of us. But does anyone else get embarrassed if they aren’t busy? If they aren’t hustling? I do. I feel like most educators do. And you know what?

I’m DONE glorifying being busy.

We’re all a little anxious about going back to school this year, no matter what that looks like. There’s no perfect choice, and although some of us are lucky to work at schools and in districts that listen to educators and science, teachers are, in many cases, being put in impossible situations this year. No matter what your back-to-school situation is, I’m betting you’ve got some anxiety about it. Anxiety is worry about the future and, I hate to be the one to tell everyone this, but we can’t really control the future. We can plan and work hard but sometimes decisions about the future are just outside of our control, and, as humans, that gives us anxiety. Here are 5 ways I’m managing my back-to-school anxiety this year:

“Teaching is a calling.”

“Well, I know it doesn’t pay much, but I love teaching.”

“Teaching is so noble.”

“We didn’t become teachers to get rich!”

How many times have you heard (or said) that teaching/education/working in education is a calling? For many, teaching IS a calling. But educators are also professionals, something that can be easily overlooked when we focus on the calling aspect of teaching.

We aren’t psychics, and we don’t know what school is going to look like for everyone in the fall. It probably won’t look the same for everyone, honestly - some of us will be back in-person full time, some of us are going to be fully remote, and many of us will be working with a mixture of the two. And for real, that’s anxiety producing. But! We have an opportunity to rethink how we create engaging hybrid projects for our students.

It’s no surprise to anyone reading this but y’all, the world is going through a lot right now. Coronavirus, police brutality, systemic racism, economic troubles…it’s a rough time for so many, and we can only hope that this time of struggle brings a revolution of thought, word, and deed in our country. The humanities - including social studies and history - are often the first subjects to be on the chopping block when budget or time cuts are announced. Who needs a history class? What can you even do with history degrees? (Everyone, and it turns out, a lot.) I believe, with my bias as an historian completely out in the open, that rather than cutting the study of our past, we should emphasize it. We should be training our students to be critical thinkers, researchers, and consumers of the past. We should be training them to think like historians.

Especially after this semester, where many of us faced new challenges and had to adapt to new technologies, teaching methods, ideas, and needs - by the way, you did an amazing job! - it’s tempting to just STOP now that school has ended for the summer. And you should! You should take some time to rest and take care of yourself.

This school year is coming to a close. It doesn’t feel the same. It is distant, cold, and sad. We are not in our classrooms and we do not have the same celebrations or passions as we have in years past. There are no awards ceremonies, no end of year parties, and no hugs - at least not the same way we know them. While this school year seems to be a blur, one thing stands out - our need for more.