CPS Wants In-Person And Remote Learning | WBEZ Chicago

The image is taken from WBEZ. Courtesy of Rovonna Baldwin. https://www.wbez.org/stories/cps-wants-a-mix-of-in-person-and-remote-learning-this-fall/dac763d8-30d6-43cb-bf14-732bd1b803fc

H is a first-year Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teacher who teaches fifth-grade and sixth-grade Math and Science. After transcribing the audio file of my conversation with H, I edited together segments of his speech into a continuous monologue—a technique often used in the published works of oral historians such as Studs Terkel. Here, H shares some of the challenges of leading a virtual classroom:

On a scientific level, the communities that we’re in aren’t prepared for the infrastructure of internet learning. A lot of these parents leave their ten- or eleven-year-olds at home alone to do the schooling, because they have to. Some leave their children with their grandparents, and the grandparents are not with it enough to keep track of the kids. 

There was a kid who told me yesterday, “I’m out of town with my aunt. I brought my Chromebook. But I didn’t bring my charger. So I’m on my phone.” 

“Okay, so what do you want, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to come out of town with you and teach you directly? Like I can’t do anything about that.” 

On the one hand, as a teacher, you want to move the world, but on the other hand, it’s like, throw me a bone, please. “Child, you know how to charge your devices because your phone is charged, your video game is charged. You know what to do. You’re just not doing it.” 

It’s also a frustration with the system, knowing that you can’t blame the families. But there are some things where it’s like, “Okay, you guys are not being as supportive as could be. And we have to rely on you a little bit more.”

If I’m in person, I can see you face-to-face and I see you getting off path. I can say, “No, no, we’re here.” But if a kid’s walked away from the computer the entire period, I have no choice but to fail them. If you don’t come to my class, then what am I supposed to? I could drive to your house, but I can’t because I have fifty kids. I could call your parent, but a lot of parents do not have phones that are connected, or the information isn’t updated.

What am I supposed to do? A kid told me, “I want to get my GED.” A kid told me, “I want to go to high school. That’s my life’s dream. I want to go to high school.” 

I’m a teacher. I’m supposed to want more for my kids. I’m also supposed to be good enough to say to a child, “You are not doing what you’re supposed to do right now. You’re not even doing what you can do to get to high school.” And yeah, it’s gonna have some fire behind it. And it may not always sound loving. But you have to be able to say that, while also knowing when there’s nothing else you can do. 

But when you decide there’s actually nothing else that you can do, you feel like you’re not the teacher that you should have been. You know?

 

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Alisa is a fourth-year student of History and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago. She aspires to go into a content producing field either as a screenwriter or a journalist. She contributes arts and culture writing to Rescripted and food writing to Bite. You can follow her on Instagram at @alisa.boland.