Happy New Year!
We can all agree and say that 2020 was a crappy year because of the COVID19 pandemic. Despite the upsets, I tried to make the most out of it while being stuck at home the past 9+ months. Some of these takeaways will definitely have its uses in my classroom and beyond.
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Hope everyone is able to get some well-deserved rest this break! As for me, I am trying to catch up with a LOT of reading. I'm going to share with you what's on my reading list for this Holiday Break. It's a fairly diverse range of books in education, personal finance, and marketing & user experience. My goal is to get through at least 3 of these books in the next week and a half.
We're (almost) there! Congratulations, my fellow educators for making it this far! Can't believe the first semester is (almost) over! Hopefully all of you are able to get a well-deserved break during the coming holidays! And most importantly, stay safe out there!
After distance teaching for a semester, there's quite a bit to reflect, especially lessons learned. I'm here to share with you what I learned. Perhaps you relate to some of these. 2020 just couldn't catch a break. We're all exhausted from this year. We're stressed. We're burnt out. And we still have 2 months left of 2020. This past weekend finally brought some sigh of relief in quite some time.
I've been distance teaching for nearly a month now. Many of us started at around the same time. Others are barely starting. I'd like to take a moment to share with you the lessons I learned so far. It can be summed up in 7 lessons.
The school year is starting around this time now and it probably has already for a few of you. To help you along the way, I've uploaded my Beginning of the Year resources.
There will be curriculum updates on my site this week, modified for distance learning! Stay tuned!
Let's face the reality. We cannot go back into the classroom in the fall. The new school year is just around the corner and the number of COVID cases hasn't even dropped. In fact, it's been spiking with record numbers on the daily. Trump and DeVos want schools to fully reopen, but they have no plans beside "schools have to reopen." There is no way to guarantee student and staff safety. My state of California is rolling back reopening plans and yet we're still pushing for schools to reopen? It makes no sense. It's unrealistic for so many reasons. We have no plans to reopen schools SAFELY! So many unanswered questions.
This post/letter is dedicated to the Class of 2020.
Keeping with a tradition I started since my first year teaching, I would like to write and dedicate a letter to the Class of 2020. Dear Class of 2020, Today is the last day of school and honestly I have been sitting on writing this letter to you for a while now. I really don't know how to get started. So much has happened in the last 2 months. Your class holds a defining place in my heart, and not it's not simply because our time together was cut short by COVID-19. Those who had me as sophomores, 90+ of you, were my first group of World History students and my first guinea pigs for thematic World History teaching. Some of you were my first QuIP World History students. A few clubs I advise now started with your class. By now, most of us have converted to distance/remote teaching or in the process of doing so. My school started distance learning at the beginning of April 2020. There's definitely been a lot of confusion and obstacles along the way, not to mention the equitable access issue and countless others!
To make the transition easier for you, I am sharing with you my resources. |
ABOUT MEI'm Jayson, a high school social science teacher with a strong passion for social justice and public education issues. Topics
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