What might we learn?

These are weird times.  In a normal year I'm teaching math to teenagers, but this year I find myself spending so much time teaching technology.  I have a love - hate relationship with technology.  I appreciate what it can be and how it creates spaces we've never had before, but I hate how it feels like we can't function without it.  This has always been the case with me and technology.

I'm grateful because I've had a knack for making sense of things and learning on my own, especially in the tech world. I don't actually know how to code, but I am darn good at stealing code and making it do what I want. I can teach online and I can do it quite well, but I don't really want to.

Now I find myself in this situation where I am so hyper dependent on my internet, computer, apps, the list goes on and on.... I don't like feeling like this.  I miss the days where the things I remember from class were the goofy kid who made me laugh. Instead I find myself leaving each day deflated that the technology let me down again and I couldn't even enter the breakout room to interact with the goofy kids. I know I'm not alone, but it's hard not to feel so heavy and wonder what's the point of it all. 

I'm thrust in this world of trying to save all my colleagues and trying to save myself and now I find myself trying to save my students as they've entered this black hole of technology with us this school year.

I'm so excited to connect with students in synchronous learning (Why in all things great and wonderful did the education world decide  ASYNCHRONOUS AND SYNCHRONOUS were better than LITERALLY anything else?!) but I find myself trudging through the mud of tech challenges.  That might never go away, but we'll find a way to connect anyway.  It won't be easy, but it will be worth it. 

This year will be HARD. But we can do hard things.  We can learn right along with our students.  We can find gratitude for what was and make way for new learning to happen.