jumpingfish

They sit at home in front of their computers in their rooms taking a quiz on Zoom.

Two students were working on an assignment. They hovered over the handout, holding yellow pencils and talking in hushed voices.

“See, you divide by a fraction right here,” one said.

“But that’s the hard way,” the other replied after a moment’s delay.

You see, fractions are a mystery to most of them. Their understanding of numbers consists of three categories: integers, decimals, and fractions, and they seem to think these are distinct concepts.

The sight of fractions causes many of them give up. And division by fractions is a flagrant abomination.

“That really is the hard way,” the second student repeated.

“Yes,” the first conceded, “but I like to do things the hard way.”

Correction: division by fractions is an abomination to most of them.

1. So Many Steps

“I did the assignment,” she said in an email.

She’s pretty good at keeping up with her grades. And when she sees something that she thinks is wrong, she lets me know. I depend on that. 

“Thanks for letting me know,” I replied. 

I checked Google Classroom, suspecting that I might have forgotten to copy her Google Classroom score into our grading system.

(The life of a teacher is peppered with such manual interventions to compensate for school district budgets that can’t afford to pay for “seamless integration”. After all, why pay for expensive automation when inexpensive teachers can do it by hand. And teachers are so accustomed to doing whatever’s necessary, that they just deal with it. And so we log into one system, open a PDF file, copy what we see, log out, log into another system, and paste in what saw. Log out. Dang, I’ve digressed…)

I brought up the assignment and clicked on her name. There was nothing there. 

“I don’t see your assignment.” 

“Well I remember doing it.” No doubt she did.

Here’s the thing of it (and this I thought only to myself)…

There is a difference between doing it and turning it in. And, there is a difference between clicking the turn-in button and confirming that is got turned in. (As in: don’t close the browser window until your credit card purchase has completed.)

“Make sure you turned it in,” I suggested.

A day later, her assignment appeared in Google Classroom.

2. Upon Reflection

Objectively, there are many steps to remember. Many things that can go wrong. Some students get it and some don’t. Many must throw up their hands and give up.

Get a laptop. Get a hotspot. Turn them on. Log in. Get them to talk to each other. Did you sync with the campus network first? Get the Google Classroom code. Were you on Zoom that day? Check your Google Classroom to-do list. Open the assignment. Read the PDF. Solve the problems on separate sheets of paper. Take pictures of all your work. Attach the pictures to the assignment. Click the turn-in button. Make sure the turn in succeeds.

Yep. Many steps.

I am reminded of an old video about a medieval monk help desk technician explaining the new “book” system that was replacing the old “scroll” system. A struggling monk throws up his hands in exasperation.

If you haven’t seen it, you really must. It captures the challenges that many of our families are facing. (It also captures perfectly the life of a help desk technician.)

Was that the wrong dream for this particular day? 

On a day of dreams of freedom and peace. Of casting aside manacles and chains. On this day of struggle. Of black and white. Of justice. Was this the wrong day for that dream?

You might say so. That the day should not be stolen. Should not be repurposed for Covid or Zoom complaints, as legitimate as they might be.

But I say it was a fine day for it. Because dreams of freedom and dreams of peace, dreams of overcoming, these dreams will never come to pass as long as our children are isolated. The dreams we dream on this day in particular, demand that all our children come together again. 

“Mister,” said a disembodied voice from the monitor on the wall.

This rarely happens. So few remote students speak up. Certainly none as loudly.

“It’s Yolanda!” a student in the front row said.

 “Go ahead, Yolanda. What’s up?”

“Mister, is that because…”

She proceeded to ask a question related to simplifying square roots. It was a fine question — the best of the day. Perhaps everyone else was wondering the same thing. 

“That’s a good question,” I said. “Think of it this way…” 

A few minutes later, she asked another good question. And a few minutes after that, yet another.

Oh, I so hope that she keeps this up. Maybe it will be contagious.