Teach It But How

I have added “We are building the plane while flying it” to my scrapbook of COVID-speak. It’s an apt description for teaching during the pandemic. I can barely remember what it was like to be in a classroom without a mask and face shield; where students could sit together rather than two metres apart; where we could roam freely and pass objects back and forth without having to disinfect everything, including ourselves. Those carefree days before PPE replaced PE seem like a distant memory, a hazy dream. When life as we knew it changed last March, that dream quickly became a stress nightmare. It was as if I had turned up to a test I hadn’t studied for. Or as if I had entered an altered reality where my school had been reduced to a blank void. Welcome to the “new normal.”

It’s not just students who’ve done a lot of learning this past year. It’s been back to the drawing board, or...