by Michelle Caswell
Winner- Best Creative Writing
- Even with weight on our shoulders and masks on our faces, we still want to be goofy.
- Our students can collectively solve literally any tech problem that exists if we abandon our egos and let them.
- Juniors can still be emotionally 11 years old one minute, and 35 the next.
- Freshmen are so intensely the future, and so much better than I was at 14.
- Offering a squirt or spray of hand sanitizer is a new bonding experience.
- Masks make a daytime Halloween costume cuter.
- Masks make it infinitely more difficult to tell that set of twins apart.
- Reading is still the easiest way to escape reality.
- Zoom fatigue is real.
- Mental health matters more than curriculum content.
- Dogs at school make everything better (for the dogs and the people).
- Everyone has a favorite font (mine is Cabin).
- If you sleep with a spoon under your pillow and your pajamas inside out, you’ll get a day of remote learning.
- Acorns in your pocket make the wifi work.
- Class inside jokes still exist over zoom (see above: acorns).
- Sarcasm translates over zoom. So does exasperation. So does respect.
- Teachers can love students we’ve never met other than through a screen.
- Late work penalties don’t need to be a thing. Extensions are a form of grace.
- Everyone – literally everyone – is doing their best.
- Ask “how are you?” and really listen, and you’ll get an honest answer.
- Ask for feedback and you’ll get it, and it’ll keep coming.
- Ask for feedback and you’ll have to act.
- Ask for feedback and you’ll have to follow through.
- Ask kids to hold you accountable, and they will.
- Not knowing and actually finding out is better than pretending you’ve known all along.