Everyone is a teacher, knowingly or unknowingly. Others are always watching and learning from you, from what you say or don’t say, from what you do or don’t do. Years ago I wrote a book From the Temple to the Classroom; What Every Teacher Can Learn. When I wrote the book I was an elementary teacher serving in an urban area. In educational lingo, that’s the politically correct way of saying I worked in the hood.
I share that fact so that you have insight to my lens. I love teaching. I primarily taught 3rd thru 5th grades for most of those ten years and I was primarily a self-contained classroom teacher. That means that I was in one room with 24 plus children for five to six hours a day. On good days, I had a free lunch - I didn’t have to eat with the children and I actually had a few minutes to use the restroom. On really good days, I had what was known as a prep. A prep is a period of time when your students go to an extracurricular activity (i.e. gym, music, computers etc.). It is designed to provide teachers with time to ‘prep’ lessons and/or time to attempt to put dents in the multiple paper mountains in their lives (i.e. grading, district paperwork etc.).
For now, Covid-19 has halted the aforementioned scenario. Around the world, for professionals and parents, teaching is taking on different dimensions. Over the next few weeks, I will reflect upon concepts in the book in relation to some of the current educational shifts.