Zoom Environments

This morning in my first Zoom class meeting of the day, my professor asked us to reflect on our schooling experiences in the past vs our current Zoom environment. I realized that I had a lot to talk about. As a senior in college with two more years until I graduate and become a teacher, I have had a lot of experience in and around the classroom.

In my experience of being taught through elementary school models, I realized very quickly that there were flaws in the system. However that may be, I was never taught to recognize those injustices both at home and at school yet I knew something felt weird but never really knew what. Once I got to college and took my first FACET (Family and Community Engaged Teaching) course, I was finally in a room of people who were saying the things that I was thinking in my brain but never had the words to say out loud. It was a completely new experience for me. Something that I wasn't expecting but something that I craved even more now that I could put words to what I was seeing and experiencing.

In my experience being taught how to teach elementary education models, I have found so many holes not only in our education system but also in our society as a whole. One of the worst parts of our current education model is the power dynamic we are controlled by. The power dynamic between teachers and faculty and the students in which we are trying to relate to and teach are very unhealthy and do not foster a sense of community that the children in our classrooms need to feel. Schools should be a place of fun and community and through that we can learn collectively and more productively than in our current cookie cutter system.

I am really struggling with holding myself accountable to being productive similar to how I used to be productive while attending class face-to-face. I am used to having school and home separate as home life can get quite chaotic and triggering. I like to generally do my homework and school work at school so as to keep the distance and feel a sense of relief when I come home at the end of the day.

The Zoom environment has a lot of positive and negatives. Zoom allows students and teachers in any part of the world to interact with one another and learn virtually through video. Learning virtually is extremely powerful yet generally virtual learning is thought of as a negative and something that hinders students rather than helps them. We need to change this train of thought and realize the power that the technology we have access to allows us to have. We can as educators and citizens of this world change the way we educate ourselves because the current way of educating is ruining creativity, creating larger economic gaps, forcing people further into debt and unhealthy living situations, increasing poverty and increasing our food insecurities around the world.

I think that the current way we are using Zoom during this pandemic is not the best. Nobody planned for this and yet it is the easiest way to plan and teach lessons that include the rest of our global society. Hopefully one of the positive outcomes of this whole situation is that the education system, in the States as well as other countries, is seriously reconsidered. There is so much work to be done to change from the ways in which our governments are stuck, yet the change wouldn't take very long or cost more than we are spending on the "ever important" sports events and merchandise. That's another thing that is completely changing right now, is that sports are cancelled and are non-essential. A concept that should not be new to people, sports are an important part of our world culture but they should not be taking up more space than REAL LIFE issues and successes.