Today’s read is from brutally honest Auguste Meyrat, an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership.  Here’s an excerpt:

All of a sudden (during last school year), our only goal was for students to stay physically healthy and work on something that merely resembled normal school. We had to be careful not to overwhelm students with too much work or too many expectations. We were mainly there to keep the peace and offer assistance, not to move forward and guide. Our role became passive and we had much more time on our hands.

That’s why other teachers found last year liberating. They no longer had to worry about a standardized test, students passing their class, or even classroom management (classes were either virtual or extremely small, masked up, and spaced out). The most administrators wanted from them was to take care of themselves, keep up the district’s regulations for COVID-19, and do what they could for attendance and grades.

Moreover, the climate of fear made doing this bare minimum somehow heroic. 

There’s more. Read the entire column here.