Summer of 2020

I have to say that Covid-19 quarantine for my family kickstarted "summer" for my family in March.   With both boys home all day and no set schedule other than a few Zoom meetings/classes for my wife (who is also a high school teacher), we settled into what my family enters in the summer: vague timelines and responsibilities... important things to do but no strict schedule to follow.  As a parent, the lack of routine has been quite the challenge for everyone including my 2 year old.  The main difference being...well, anxiety induced by the global pandemic and being stuck inside all the time.

100 days later and... I'm now entering "actual" summer.   It typically takes me a few days to transition but after the longest period of "time is meaningless" I have had in decades... I'm fully prepared to get to work.   I've been blessed with an incredible grant that will support my work for my AP Environmental Class and radically expand my professional goals for next year:

Project 1:  Neponset River Watershed Fieldguide.   I started studying the Neponset River Watershed which I had grand plans for this year,  but like any pilot program, it fell apart for Reasons.   This time, I have a vastly better model that I am going to use from the EL Education website and will be piloting some of the data collection (studying water quality and aquaticinvertebrates) with my stellar math colleague and a rockstar Codman Academy alumnus. Depending on what happens next year, we will create virtual labs and have data that my students will analyze remotely or if possible...actually collect data with them in small groups. 

Project 2: Utila Coral Restoration Research Internship.  Utila, Honduras is on lockdown to prevent Covid-19 from reaching this remote island and so my original plans to Utila Coral Restoration are on hold this summer.  I originally thought all was lost BUT we are going to start the internship remotely via Zoom sessions for the theory classes and then complete the actual internship Summer of 2021.  Even more exciting is that because of Covid-19, we need to really think about what becomes possible instead of only considering how Covid-19 prevents us from accomplishing.  To that end, I will be inviting the Director of UCR to lead lectures via Zoom in my classroom next year on various topics.  I am especially excited to have my heritage Spanish speakers interacting with UCR.  And this gets to my final project for the summer...

Project 3: Anti-racism Lens.   Ibram Kendi has basically rocked my world and completely changed the framing around "racist vs not racist" dichotomy into a new paradigm: "racist + 'not racist' vs 'anti-racist'" dichotomy.  I have continually evolved as a teacher over the past 9 years and... I have the wisdom of experience to know that things have to change as scary as that might because I have become quite comfortable in how I do things.  I have to look closely at my classroom practices and policies with an anti-racist lens.  The answers will likely be really hard to hear but one my first steps is reaching out to my former students and asking them directly: What practices and policies in my classroom were racist?