Transitions
Finding Our Power Through Choice
The bell rings (I didn’t miss bells.) I wave goodbye to my virtual students, and those with their screens on wave back. I read any final chat comments, and answer questions of those who need clarification. Simultaneously, I say goodbye to the 8–12 students who were in my classroom that hour. I close the class Zoom and start the next class’s Zoom call. I put gloves on and grab a pre-soaked cloth to clean off the desks. As I clean, I hear the Zoom doorbell chime as virtual students arrive. Students arrive in person, too, and I greet them and caution them away from the desks I haven’t yet cleaned. I toss the towel in the bucket, take off my gloves and put on hand sanitizer. I let the virtual students into Zoom, and I reset the lesson on two screens. I exhale as the bell rings.
Transitions can be hard. Frankly, I was more worried about this particular transition than any other when hybrid teaching started four weeks ago. Would five minutes be enough time to do all of this? Would students feel like I was connecting with them behind screens, masks, and gloves? Would I be ok? Would they? Yet as with most transitions, my anticipation and fear of it exceeded the challenge of the practice itself.
But what I didn’t anticipate in this hybrid model transition was how challenging it would be for the students, too. All first semester they spoke of how much they had taken school for granted and how much they missed it, but being back is… well… awkward for them.
“Go ahead and share your write-ins now. You have four minutes,” I say to the class. I send the virtual students to their breakout rooms and the in-person students share face to face. The goal is to read their writing and then connect with each other — build community, build classroom culture.
But two minutes into their sharing time, the classroom is silent. That kind of silence you always hoped for as a new teacher, a silence you thought meant students were compliant and therefore engaged, but I don’t want that silence in my writing classroom. I want a room that bubbles over and bustles and laughs and thinks out loud.
“If you finish sharing, you are welcome to just chat,” I try. To no avail, these amazingly compliant students aren’t even on their phones. They are just sitting, looking forward, avoiding eye contact.
So I ask the in-person students why they struggle to just talk to each other now, and they say it all feels weird to them. What are they supposed to talk about? And they worry that while sitting kind of far apart, their conversations can be heard by everyone, and some even admit they have no idea why they don’t talk. It seems they forgot how to do this thing called school. It seems their efforts to connect are blocked by new barriers.
“45 seconds until they get back,” I tell the in-person students, nearly whispering under my breath. “It’ll be ok. You got this.”
And they do. Because we know transitions are… well… awkward. But impermanent. A flow from one way of being to another. In transitions, uncertainty unsettles us, bringing unanswered questions: Can I? How will I? and What if? But we have a choice in how we answer those questions in transitions. We can choose differently — we are not powerless.
In fact, we are empowered in transitions to create. Now facing an inevitable but welcome transition of more students back in the building, what will we choose to create? Will we work together to forge human connections? Will we innovate, seeing where the good was in the past year? (There was good.) Will we seek to repair harm? Or will we accept the hierarchies and norms in education that have pervaded for years? Will we rush back to normal, shedding pandemic lenses as we go? And what new unforeseen barriers will stand in our way?
I understand our hesitance to innovate; this year has exhausted every human in inconceivable ways, and the energy for recreating feels too heavy. It feels comfortable to race back to what we have known even though what we have always known hasn’t always worked for our students and teachers.
This is the time to show our students how much their voices matter — to listen to them. They are our partners in education; we don’t have to carry the innovation alone. They have forgotten they have a voice behind their dark screens. And we need to help them find their voices again.
Artist Jennifer Bloomer reminds us, “May we grow back not to what was but instead towards what we can become.” And I carry this thought with me in this transition, a hope for pausing, a hope for reflecting, a hope for less awkward and more laughter, a hope for change.
