TEACHER! A Weekly Comic

TEACHER! a weekly comic strip from the eyes and minds of a typical classroom full of curious students.

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One positive about remote learning is less micro aggression and interactions like this. This struggle is not why anyone signs up for teaching, but unfortunately part of the experience in modern teaching. Anyway, I’m not sure how this translates but I thought the idea was cute at first.

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This happened way back when I was a student teacher. I think it was so offensive at the time that I blacked it out of my memory. Kid took a whole pillow out of his bag and just tried to go to sleep while watching Othello with Lawrence Fishburne. I emailed his mom and she was less than pleased. He’s probably a senior in college by now. Or at least that age. I hope he’s getting more sleep.

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We didn’t really have a normal “end of the year this year” but I think regardless of how a year ends, this is always the feeling.

That first look out into the world of summer vacation is impossibly hard to describe. That didn’t really happen this summer but, I think summer is still invaluable to students and teachers. Many of us are gearing up for a VERY unusual school year. Good luck, folks.

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A student said this to me after finishing our unit on Fahrenheit 451 last year. I think the best part about this was that his “favorite movie” was The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Think about that for a minute.

Anyway, in reality I sorta took a football victory kneel in the middle of class.

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I took some liberties on a friend’s story. She’s taught all grades from K-12 and since I don’t really have a good frame of reference of what little kids can handle as far as directions... Or how I would have handled that.

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For many of us, this is the last week of school. I am finishing grades and comments and some student conferences. The “bell” may not be heard for quite a while longer.

Massachusetts released the reopening guidelines yesterday, but frankly I just don’t see those guidelines as possible. Whether schools are small or big, we have often operated at maximum capacity as it is. What does this mean? I wish we knew. 

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Living in the same town as some of your students is a really tricky thing. I know teachers that have and do drive from out of state lines to work just to avoid these kinds of things.

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I’d be lying if I said that the isolation from COVID hasn’t been helping with my teacher burnout. It’s tough not to see students through till the end of the year. It’s tough not knowing what is going to come next fall.

We are also on the cusp of serious social change. It’s impossible not to feel burnt out. But for every candle we burn, we must make another. We must have light.

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A long time ago, an amazing comic artist and I were talking about when they were teaching in Korea. They gave me this idea and I drew it a long time ago. I don’t know if I did the story justice but it was just too good to pass up.

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This one came out a little strange. I think I was just glad to be done with it.

Lessons go quite well sometimes. Even here in distance learning land. But I sort of channeled my early teaching days for this as I was mentoring a student teacher this year. When do we get our backbone? Our pacing? Our finesse? Do we ever?

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Regardless of what kind of “normal” school year we are having, I think this conversation will inevitably happen. How many of us really think of summer break as vacation and not just an extended trauma recovery?

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This story was told to me about a friend of a friend. Not gonna lie, this is probably one of the reasons I don’t work with smaller children.

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I am posting these during our “Quarantine Teaching” but this is actually the only strip that I made so far during distance learning. It hasn’t been all bad, but there are those non-class and non office lulls.

Also, I am teaching Gatsby right now which is my favorite so I threw in a little jab at our favorite lame duck.

Is this what it feels like for other teachers right now?

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I am excited to meet new students every year (even though I usually feel that I just finally settled in with my current ones) but something always lingers in my mind like....”gotcha”

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At the end of every year at my school we have a tradition we call “the long goodbye.” We get kids on the buses ourselves and wave goodbye to them as they pull out of the driveway. Kids cry, we joke and give hugs. It’s an incredibly cute and heartwarming ritual that cannot do this year due to COVID.

Also every year, my coworker holds up a sign at the corner of the driveway that reads “See you in 9 Mondays” which is just cruel. But also...that may not even be true this year. We will carry on.

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These are not my words but ones I found on the internet that really rang true to me as a young teacher. I’ve been meaning to make a follow up to this of some of my own philosophies but they have not fully developed in my mind yet. Anyhow, this is “5 steps”.

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Go with what works. Innovate, copy, repeat.