The Dilemma of Doing Less

In the face of pandemic school, as a classroom teacher I am being pressured from administrators, politicians, parents, students, and to some extent fellow colleagues and myself to continue to offer the same level of access to opportunities to learn as pre-pandemic. What is social-justice and anti-racist work as a teacher if it isn’t holding all students up to high standards? And who am I as an anti-racist change agent if I am not offering the high levels of support needed to elevate student outcomes? Access to quality education, in my opinion, is the elevating factor, elevating communities to a better quality of life. This is what I believe is the gift of education. 

But I sometimes don’t let myself see the whole picture. The whole picture includes holding those in leadership accountable to the lack of support for students and their families, for teachers and their families. Holding leadership to account for the unwillingness to go beyond “reimagining” education...for the unwillingness to denounce the presence of white supremacy in our district. Educational leadership has failed in the face of the pandemic. I don’t think this is being said enough. Educational leadership has failed. 

On a daily basis I am asking myself “Am I doing enough?” and while the committee in my head gathers to run the analysis of the tasks I’ve assigned, the structure to my live synchronous sessions, and the format of my home page, how many messages I’ve personally written, phone calls made, efforts to translate material, and the amount of planning I’ve done for future units, I eventually, and somewhat ironically end up with investigating the question “Am I doing too much?” instead. How soon do I venture into the overwhelm? Or the unhelpful?

Data collection is really hard right now. It has so much potential to venture into the unsustainable, considering my district has done little to not just gather information but share what has been found with teachers. I use check-ins at the start of synchronous virtual sessions and ask students to fill out surveys so that with their help I can identify the barriers to access to opportunities to learn and elevate quality of life. But even with this information, as one teacher, what can I do if leadership fails to open their doors to student and teacher voices.