A teacher in our PLC community made the comment below today. We need to look into it. We need to respond. We need to help this teacher come up with a plan of action. We need to make sure that this never happens again. I will bring this to the attention of both my Zoom group and this PLC. We need to act on this by coming up with all the information we can right now in strong response to what happened in that class that day.
“If it ain’t fun, I ain’t doing it.” I read this in a post a couple of days ago and it’s has become my mantra ever since as I hesitantly — skeptical of every tech teacher idea about remote learning as well as the faux enthusiasm to start the school year — began with students today. And it will continue to be my mantra for some time. Thanks, Ben, for helping me get through this.
This what? Well, for example, I was kicked out of my Google Meet session while in the middle of teaching a class. Of course, it was the last class of the day. Students were exhausted and ready for some pranking. I’m pretty sure a student was able to remove me from the session. Apparently they have this power. Other teachers in my building have said that students could remove other students. That power extends to teachers, apparently, too. I sure hope the IT people get this fixed. Honestly though, this doesn’t bother me that much. I just find it indicative of the quagmire we find ourselves in.
After this first day, my inner voice is telling me to just mute kids and if they refuse to mute, remove them from the session. Zap. Done. Move on. Start fresh a new day: Tomorrow. Problem: I lack the power to mute kids at the moment. Someone told me there’s a special extension for that. Seems like it should be a built-in feature. I’m gonna look into that right now.