Topic 5 - Interdisciplinary

Though I am still unsure about the direction of my project at this time, a lot of what I do on a daily basis centers around social-emotional wellbeing.

There has been a huge push for social-emotional education in the states over the past 10 years or so, even before the pandemic disrupted education. Many teachers struggle with the fact that teaching content has been pushed to the lower 20% of their workload while being an "informal" (and untrained) therapist is the expectation. With the increased social division in our country post-2016, teachers are now forced into the middle of a political issue with one side being parents expecting teachers to literally parent their children and on the other side parents not trusting teachers to do much of anything. Teachers have become the cause and blame for most of society's problems, it seems.

All that being said, I do take social/emotional education very seriously and do what I can to make students feel cared for. One thing I started to do this year is to photograph my middle school students as they enter my classroom. Through this exercise, I am able to observe subtle nuances to the students' states and emotions which provide important information for me as a teacher and carer.

This image, for example, lets me know that this pair of friends left their lunch block on good terms with one another. If that wasn't the case, one of the students would be withdrawn and put forth little effort. I can tell if they've eaten lunch, if they are heading to their primary caregiver's house after school, if they have sports practice, etc.

It surely isn't science, and these photographs can't offer any real quantifiable data, but in the world of teaching, any little thing helps.