Brain Dumps, Teachering and Too Much Tech

How does technology make you feel? More often than not, getting off my phone, especially after a long period of time will make me a) gross (zombified, unproductive, vegetative) b) sad – either depressed about the future, angry about something or anxious in someway.

I love movies, shows, and the like but binging Netflix, Neon etc often has me coming away at the end of more than one or two episodes and going ugh. I feel yuck. I’m not sure how much of it is conditioned and how much is a natural response to being seated for a long amount of time: a passive receptacle of a stream of glittery visual information.

My mind used to work harder than this, I swear. Even right now, as I’m writing*, my hand feels laboured, and like I can’t keep up with my thoughts. I make more spelling mistakes than I used to, thanks to reliance on autocorrect. I used to pride myself on spelling as a (nerdy) little kid.

*yes, I handwrite my blogs first sometimes, okay?

Still Teachering

My students are awesome, but I can’t help worrying for them. Many face low literacy, exhibit high dependence, have goldfish attention spans and (like the rest of us) harbour real addiction to smartphones. I am thankful I don’t have to be a teenager in this day and age.

Cruising the subreddit r/teachers, I’m aware, is probably not super helpful… I keep seeing posts from experienced teachers detailing the decline they’ve watched in their students over the decades and it is more than a little miserable.

I feel for them. There’s so much stuff going on in the world, and the internet means a barrage of open access to any and all of it. Yes, I grew up like this to a degree, but not in the same way. I got my first smart phone at 16, not 10. I was still using a shared family computer until I was about the same age. Content wasn’t as bite-size or clickbaity and curated for my specific interests. Social media didn’t have everyone’s data fine-tuned to inject into the algorithms yet. At school, we still hand wrote stuff for the most part, especially for tests and exams. I didn’t have to look at a screen for 4+ hours per day. Times have most definitely changed, and it wasn’t even that long ago.

I’m grateful that school is almost never dull and the day goes fast. I think clock-watching, thumb-twiddling work which drags would be my personal hell.

Something I love about my job is connecting with young people getting to know them and those moments where I can see, I’m making a difference. I love the occasional emails from grateful parents, going on outings, seeing them excited. I like having silly jokes, and when I can tell they’re trying to distract me from teaching by asking random questions, but I indulge them anyway. I like chats with colleagues sharing laughs and shrugs and phews.