A Virtual View
I read last week that shares in Zoom have just doubled. An unsurprising fact given that the world as we know it has shut down. Real human contact has become a thing of the past as our schools, offices, meetings and even social occasions have now become entirely reliant on this innovative piece of technology. I even hosted a birthday party for my friend last week via Zoom, a strange but surprisingly enjoyable experience. And one, I suspect, may just be a regular occurrence for the foreseeable future.
Rewind two weeks and off went teachers up and down the country, into the unknown, quietly optimistic about how we were going to be able to continue to provide an outstanding education to our young people in these troubled times whilst being away from the school buildings that are so integral to our practice.
For me, working from home has always had a particular romantic allure that I’ve always associated with my ideal “on paper” life. Visions of early morning stretching rituals, followed by freshly pressed celery juice and a leisurely bathing, I’d be put together with perfect simplicity and elegance, poised for productivity by 8am. I mean without the commute time to factor in, why wouldn’t that be the case?
Do I really need to ask that question?
My first week of working from home went as follows:
Day 1 - early to rise, clean, dressed in casually smart attire, heading to my first Zoom meeting post healthy breakfast, ready to hit the ground running after having already done half an hour’s work prior. Smug AF.
Day 2 - grab a cup of tea as the meeting is starting, I’ll make a quick breakfast immediately after we’re done before I start work. Realise how comfortable tracksuits really are. Still feeling good.
Day 3 - realise that make up is probably a waste of time when there are 30 people on the screen - no one can really see you anyway right? Skip breakfast and replace it with mid morning cake. Novelty starting to wear off.
Day 4 - the snooze function on my alarm is really coming into its own.
Day 5 - sleep pattern is now completely out of the window. Last night I started hoovering my flat at 12:45 am and I attended my morning meeting in my pyjamas. I wonder if anyone noticed...
But it was this week, my second of working from home that posed the real problem. I taught my first English lesson on Zoom.
My relationship with technology so far, both personally and professionally, has been turbulent to put it mildly. There is a running joke in my classroom about my appalling technological aptitude, which has even resulted in my students regularly amusing themselves with the remark ‘Katy versus technology”. You can imagine what was running through my head at the announcement of school closures with regard to my teaching practice. Once the reality of a new normal of teaching from home had set in, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t wracked with anxiety about how I was possibly going to manage my classes. Just to give you some context, typically on an average day in the school building I make at least two calls to our technician, usually to help me with my interactive white board (usually something that I’ve somehow broken myself). Nearly every lesson will involve me pleading with a student to help me with either audio, video or wiring and when it comes to technology outside the classroom? Well let’s just say that my colleagues regularly look at me with horror when I pull out my numerical data tracking tools to reveal that whilst the whole school is revelling in the incredible automated calculation functions and features available to them through Google Sheets (the new school Microsoft Excel for anyone not up to speed with the google suite), I am operating on a strictly Word document, manual entry setup, old school. What can I say, I’m just not built to understand technology.
But, we all have our differing strengths and, after ten years of teaching, I am pleased to say that behaviour management is something that I have now nailed. To be clear, this was not always the case. As someone who is definitely far from a natural authoritarian (I’ve mentioned before how following and enforcing rules is not something I’m overly thrilled about) I have certainly had times in my career when I have struggled with controlling behaviour. But, fortunately those times are no more.
Well. You certainly wouldn’t have thought that if you have been in my Zoom classroom on Monday for my first online lesson...after observing my colleagues throughout the week and attending staff meetings I thought I was going to be okay. It was not okay. Trying to log in, navigate the waiting room function, take the register without being able to automatically save the list of attendees, make yourself both visible and audible, share your screen and work out how to see and hear your students (it’s a lot to fit on one laptop screen) is hard enough for your average person. For me, the only word that captures it accurately? Bedlam. For starters I had combined two of my classes into one. So aside from the fact that I was attempting to control 45 young people in one virtual space, the students in question were a combination of rowdy and spirited music students alongside quiet and introverted gamers, normally taught separately but brought together in what I had initially considered to be an ingenious ploy to avoid the torture of Zoom teaching twice in one day. That certainly came back to bite me in the arse. You wouldn’t have really expected there to be a rivalry between these students but I guess quarantine brings out the worst in people.
I battled with my screen for the first five minutes attempting to find the “mute all participants on entry” function as I had a cacophony of students either screeching to each other over the screen, excited at the novelty of this new lesson setup and seeing each other for the first time in days or helpful faces trying to instruct me on where to find my desired button. Eventually and purely by accident, I found it. Mute and deep breath. Control regained. But only momentarily. I had obviously forgotten to disable the live chat box which was now popping off at the rate of knots. The kids were showing all kinds of new sides to themselves as they insulted each other, cracked rude jokes and typed explicit content. Ten minutes in and I was cursing Zoom from every angle. Even the overly enthusiastic name was annoying me. The onomatopoeiac suggestion of speed seemed only to draw further attention to my bumbling inefficiency. Next was my attempt to share my screen. Instead of sharing my lesson slides, I somehow managed to share my email inbox and it was at this moment that my laptop decided to freeze on me. Thankfully there was nothing classified on display but it was still pretty risky business. I can’t even recall how I managed to get things in order but by the time I had, what I did know was this. A huge chunk of my teaching (along with my dignity) was gone, and it was safe to say that I felt like a trainee again. But much to my relief, upon speaking to a friend and fellow teacher over a much needed bucket of wine later that evening, it appeared that teachers everywhere had suffered the same teething problems.
So, a week of lessons later, despite my initial fear of Zoom and the haunting memory of my disastrous first lesson, I can say with sincerity that I am truly grateful for the access that we have to it. Without this technology, millions of young people across the country and indeed the world would have their schooling majorly disrupted. Our young people need routine and the familiar to make them feel safe and if we can provide that one way or another, I’m willing to continue my ongoing battle with Zoom until I’m able to give them the normality that they deserve.