Even though I had the phone on silent, the call still woke me as the glowing screen lit up my room. I rolled over and ignored the phone. A good sleep the night before the first day of school was of greater importance than chatting with a friend from a different time zone. A few minutes later, the room lit up again. My friends rarely call and would never call repeatedly like this, so I peeked at the screen, saw the unfamiliar number, and set the phone screen-side down.
A minute later, I got a message: “Are you dead, sir?” Ominous question to start my thirteenth year of teaching. Part of me contemplated replying to the message with some quip like, “No, but if you interrupt my sleep again, you will be.” But mostly, I just stared at the message and heard Marcie’s matter-of-fact voice asking Peppermint Patty this. Now a month into the school year, I feel like this was the most fitting question to start the year. In many ways, I feel like I traded places with my students from this spring. Last semester, I was teaching middle school second-language students who couldn’t navigate the technology needed for online learning at all. After a semester, I had a folder of over a thousand screenshots I had sent to students to guide them through the cyber labyrinth. Now, I’m the one using a new system that my non-language learning students are marginally more familiar with. I constantly check for reassurance: “Can you see my screen?” “Can you hear me?” “Can you open this document?” Rather exhausting. And the students ask even more questions: “How many words are required in this paragraph?” “Can I read the car manual for my required outside reading pages?” “My wifi cut out; what did you talk about in the last half of class?” From that first ominous question, the questions have continued piling up. Fortunately, from my students last year, I learned the answer to every question: yes. (Occasionally, “maybe” is an acceptable substitute.) Me: What did Pinocchio do? Student A: Yes Me: Did you listen to the chapter or did you read the chapter? Student G: Yes Me: Why did the flying monkeys obey Dorothy? Student M: Yes Me: Can you see me? Students A-Z: Maybe (An exception to this “one answer to rule them all” is questions about lunch. How was lunch? Noodles.) Maybe I can try this ultimate answer with my students this week. At least, I can amuse myself with in the afternoon when I am tired after teaching to a screen for three straight hours and that ominous text message pops into my head again. “Are you dead, sir?” Maybe. Maybe.
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