Screenocracy?
If nothing else, a couple of months of teaching via Zoom has highlighted the importance of real, human relationships.
This year at Bishop Machebeuf High School has been a learning experience for me in so many ways. The classical track is rigorous for students but no joke for teachers, either. I found myself reading more than I ever had had to do as a teacher, but doing less traditional "planning" than I would normally do. On balance, I'll take reading difficult texts deeply over the tiresome task of trying to find clever ways to keep the youngsters busy.
Something I've loved about the program at Machebeuf is its insistence that the students can and should do the difficult work of reading, annotating, speaking, listening and thinking required when grappling with Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Virgil, and a cast of dozens more. It's counter-intuitive perhaps to say that the more difficult we make things on students, the more they will thrive but that was in essence the proposal. I should add this necessary qualification: we teachers can and must accompany the students along their academic and spiritual journey.
That accompaniment made it at once exhausting and possible (for student and teacher alike). To say that the virus-we-don't-speak-of put a strain on the work is an understatement. It did but it was not victorious!
