When you’re in college, it’s amazing what can pass for a sleeping surface in the absence of an actual bed. Seriously, I used to have the tolerance to sleep just about anywhere: futons, couches, easy chairs, the trunk of my car, the ground. I remember visiting a friend in DC during my junior year of college, and being thrilled that he was allowing me to sleep on the common room floor of his one-bedroom apartment. At a certain point, I lost the inclination to sleep anywhere other than in my bed. It’s not just a matter of preference; it’s that my back no longer physically allows me to do it. Last week I dozed off on the living room couch for a half hour, a couch that would have made a fine sleeping option twenty years ago, and spent the next twenty-four hours hobbling around like a nonagenarian.
I can’t say I bemoan having higher standards than I used to,
but then again, there are situations in which it would be helpful to be able to
sleep anywhere, any time, on anything. For a veteran teacher, the act of classroom
instruction is a bit like sleeping. Hear me out. I don’t mean that it requires minimal
effort or that we’re just going through the motions. (Although then again, I’ve
come across a handful of teachers for whom the analogy fits a little too well.)
What I mean is that we like everything to be just so. Just as in bed we require
a stack of three pillows, the thermostat set to 66 degrees, and the Sleep
Number set between 35 and 40, in the classroom we have can’t fathom being
without our Smartboards, our laptops, a strong internet signal, and our own
meticulous arrangement of desks.
Of course, to state the obvious, teaching is, unlike
sleeping, a communal activity. Students are counting on me to guide them, or at
minimum, to determine how they will spend the next hour of their lives. The
stakes are higher, and so are the chances that things will go off script.
Teachers need to be able to roll with the punches. Every
teacher learns this lesson on the first day the power goes out in the building,
or there’s an unscheduled fire drill. Class
is now twenty-five minutes long instead of fifty. What are you gonna do,
hotshot? It’s just that we didn’t know until this year just how many
punches there could be.
Oh you like teaching? Try teaching online. Now try teaching
half online and half in person. Now try teaching everyone in person (except for
one kid, just to keep things interesting). You’ve spent fourteen years making
copies? Now try teaching without paper.
I’m not sure what’s next – Teaching by pantomime? The return
of the overhead projector? The replacement of facemasks with spandex body
suits? – but whatever it is, this past year of teaching has left me feeling like there is
no adaptive challenge I can’t face. Like the college kid looking for a place to
crash, I’m flexible. I can roll with it. Just tell me where to do it, and I’ll
do it.
Set aside the lyric about making love on the floor and this song is basically about teaching in a pandemic.
