Miss, What Does Unprecedented Mean?

February 2, 2021 authise authise

The pandemic has doubled if not tripled the workload and the angst for teachers. Some colleagues I know are physically in the classroom, teaching surprisingly-large numbers of pupils while streaming those lessons live to pupils at home. Fran Hill, author of Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean? tells us what teaching in a pandemic is like, and how you can help support a teacher during these unprecedented times.

---

Full-time teaching is tough enough without pandemics. Teachers are primarily educators but it’s a complex role: add mentor, administrator, resources coordinator, classroom discipline manager, display-board designer, assessor, cheerleader and entertainer.

Teachers are ‘on stage’ all day but, unlike Michael McIntyre, they deliver five or six sessions to a sceptical crowd whilst operating a new and mysterious interactive whiteboard and fielding requests for spare pens. By comparison, McIntyre gets away lightly. He doesn’t stand in the corridor after a gig, controlling the passing hordes. Nor does he supervise the hecklers during their detentions at break time.

The pandemic has doubled if not tripled the workload and the angst for teachers. Some colleagues I know are physically in the classroom, teaching surprisingly-large numbers of pupils while streaming those lessons live to pupils at home. Imagine managing a restless class on a Friday afternoon when fixed to the spot both by social distancing and by the camera.

A career training woodlice begins to seem attractive.

But, also, for those pupils at home without the requisite devices or broadband, teachers prepare hard-copy resources, often individually-tailored.

Pastoral duties have increased. Keeping in touch with individual home-based pupils and checking their wellbeing can take whole evenings or weekends. When else to fit that in?

Other colleagues are teaching from home, doing all the above but from the corner of a bedroom on a makeshift desk. Or they’re working on the kitchen table surrounded by finger-painting toddlers or teenage home schoolers asking for help with describing coastal erosion processes.
I won’t mention the marking and assessment and reporting, the uncertainty over exams or school re-opening dates, and the loss of staff room team camaraderie.

Okay, I will!

It is all – wait for it – unprecedented.

So, how can you support a teacher you know? You can’t make it all better but maybe you can make it easier.

1. Pray for them. Tell them you’re praying. Pray again. Tell them again.

2. Offer to phone, not video-call. Their screen-tired eyes may be crazed like Ka’s in The Jungle Book. Let them rant, and listen. Don’t try to pose solutions.

3. Provide cake. Teachers breathe cake. If you don’t bake, or you’re not local enough to deliver, send cheesecake or cupcakes via Uber-Eats or Deliveroo.

4. Write a letter, in real handwriting, in a proper envelope, sent via a postbox. Fill it with your news. Remind them there’s life outside Google Classroom.

5. Send tiny, cheap gifts. Make them as trivial as possible. Cat brooches. Gargoyle postcards. A heart-shaped pebble.

6. Check your bookshelves. What have you read that made you feel good? Send it to them. No one minds that it’s second-hand. It’s the love that counts.

7. If you are a technophile, ask if they need advice. They may think their question about Microsoft Teams is silly and haven’t dared to ask at work.

8. Send a card via Moonpig. You can personalise it to suit. Include an inspirational quotation if you must, but make sure it’s not glib. ‘Rest in the Lord’ can jar when you’re surrounded by three weeks’ laundry.

9. If their kids are home schooling, can you offer something? Are you a doctor, an archaeologist, a belly-dance teacher or a sand artist? Do you keep parrots or make jewellery out of old dentures? Do you write comedy? Give their kids a free half-hour Zoom session on your speciality.

10. Pray for them. Tell them you’re praying. Pray again. Tell them again.

---