Educator misses interactions with students

Although I’ve taught online college classes, online teaching will never be my first choice. I miss having spontaneous conversations with students and getting them to laugh at my bad jokes.

As librarian at Whitefish Middle School, I find my online life to be more about promoting online tools and finding brain snacks to spark curiosity. Of course fifth grade and eighth grade interests differ wildly. So I continue to thread many needles with little feedback to gauge my success. As your students absorb and interact with our online lessons, encourage them to email questions to individual teachers.

What I’m thinking about the instructions may not be what a student takes away. For that matter, not every idea will be a good one. I thought reading a novel to my dog, Oreo, would be interesting to my younger students. On my third attempt to get him to sit still I realized my folly.

Then I thought I might be able to just tease a chapter a day out of him and post different teasers to advertise books available through our elibrary. Not only did I have trouble with Oreo, but the updated “relaxed” copyright notices from publishers would only allow me to post a video for 24 hours. Balancing the time I need to get it right, and lack of student access leads me to the conclusion this was a fool’s errand. I know my colleagues will get better at this, but please remember nothing takes the place of face-to-face learning. And we miss your children.

Dana Carmichael is a librarian at Whitefish Middle School.