Bye-Bye Wi-fi

This morning we got an email from the Board Office telling us that yesterday’s wifi issues had been resolved. Yesterday’s wifi issues were, in fact, minimal. Today’s issues, on the other hand, were dramatic: the internet was out all afternoon. We did not get an email about this. Many teachers threw up their hands; some lessons are impossible to teach without the materials you prepared. I had made it to the photocopier in the morning, so my classes proceeded more or less as planned.

If you work in a school for long enough, or even for not very long at all, at some point the wifi will go out. If you are not a teacher, you might imagine that the worst timing for this would be in the middle of a lesson, but in fact the worst timing is any moment before you have photocopied the day’s handouts. And these days, the photocopier will inevitably require an internet connection to function, so if the wifi is down, no photocopies for you. Luckily, even in the age of Chromebooks and Google Classrooms, if you have handouts, friends, you have a lesson.

I am old enough that I started teaching – wait for this – BEFORE the internet was part of school. Heck, I am pretty sure the first school I worked at was still using dot matrix printers. I used to stand in front of a classroom with *chalk* and pre-planned examples. Students had to write down what I wrote on the board. If they were absent, they had to ask friends for notes. Even contemplating this now is vaguely mind-boggling.

All of this made me think of my interview for a job at the Lycee International just outside of Paris. I was traveling in France with a school group when I got the call offering me an interview. I was brimming with excitement. They wanted me to come for a day, meet with people and teach a few lessons. They were willing to fly me to Paris for this. I told them I was currently in the country and offered to come for a half day and do the interview while I was there – saving them some money and me the complicated travel during the school year. They said yes. 

When I agreed to teach a few classes, I hadn’t really considered that I had no resources with me – just the novels I was reading for pleasure. This was the mid-90s, so the internet existed, but it was nothing like what we have today; it was slow and housed significantly fewer resources. Plus, the school group I was with were doing homestays, so I was staying in the home of an older couple whose dial-up connection barely gave me access to my email. What to do? What to do?

What I did was taught what I knew. It was mid-February, so I dreamed up a lesson on Shakespearean sonnets and love poetry for the 11th grade class. I knew the sonnet form and knew enough of a few sonnets to be certain I could manage it. Read, think, write, share. Got it. Then, for the 8th grade class, I decided to go with James Thurber. You can’t miss with Thurber; if nothing else you can always spend time making noises – ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa – or laughing about unicorns. I knew I could turn these ideas into lessons – even for students I’d never met, even in France – without too much trouble.

Once I arrived at the school, I asked if I could use their internet to download and print the poems and the story. The Director looked at me, incredulous. “You planned your lessons in your head?” I shrugged. It was all I had available.

Luckily, the internet was working that day, so the staff gamely printed and photocopied the texts. My lessons went well – love and funny noises really never fail – and I got the job.

Today, I handed out This I Believe essays I had copied before the wifi died and dug through my teacher’s closet until I found books that I had long ago annotated in the way that I wanted the students to understand. If anything, pulling my own books with my own handwriting out of a closet in the classroom showed the students that I actually believe in annotating things. They sat with highlighters and pencils, reading texts on paper and noticing how they were constructed. It was kind of great.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll pull out some Thurber, just to see if it stands the test of time. Only, of course, if the wifi is working.