Michelle Winter ’18 MAT Reflects on Remote Learning

Mrs. Michelle Winter (’18 MAT) is a first-grade teacher at Charles H. Bullock Elementary School in Montclair. Nearing the end of the school year, Ms Winter reached out to her class with a beautiful letter addressing the social and emotional learning needs of her students and their families.

She wrote:

Back in September, on one of the first days of school, we had a discussion as a class where we talked about what our jobs were in the classroom. I explained to them that my second job is to help students learn; my first and most important job is to keep students safe. I can only teach when that first condition is met.

Remote learning has made it very challenging to do that first job. I cannot shield students from the physical effects of the virus; I cannot protect them from the emotional, mental, and social toll I can see it is so clearly taking on them. As our time apart accrues and the weeks seem to roll by with increasing speed, I can tell from our video chats and their writing that many of them, while glad to be home with loved ones, feel fearful about whether things will get “back to normal.” They miss their classmates. They miss recess. They miss school. Some don’t quite know what word describes how they feel, but they just know it isn’t good.

Our staff provides assignments each day in order to create some sense of normalcy and structure- a sense that the institution of school, which up until this point in their lives has seemed like a reliable constant, is still there. It’s not the same as being “in” school. For a multitude of reasons, it can’t be. Our time all together in person is too multi-faceted and precious to ever be satisfactorily “replaced.”

I say all of this because if you are struggling, if your child is struggling, physically, emotionally, mentally, with the reality in which we find ourselves, know that I understand. My expectations regarding assignments are that students and families do what they can. Reach if you can reach, challenge if you can challenge, modify if you need to modify, skip if the emotional weight of the day is so immense that any work done is grudging and full of anger or sadness. Just let me know. As long as your child is checking in every day, I will mark them present. As long as your child is doing what they can to keep up with our assignments, I will consider my standards met. As long as you are there to facilitate communication between student and teacher, school is still in session. Your child is still my first grader, and I will always be their first-grade teacher, no matter how old they get.

I cannot speak specifically about what these last few weeks will look like, but will provide my own information and “itinerary” once the picture is clearer. We’ve made it this far and we will finish strong. We come from a variety of backgrounds and faiths, and during this time I find myself often thinking of the serenity prayer- “Grant me the courage to change what I can, the serenity to accept what I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Please feel welcome to share the thoughts and beliefs that have been helping you and your family during this time. I would love to put them together in a document that I could then share with all our families.