What’s With Packets?..
I’ve been on both sides of the dilemma. I remember struggling to keep up with planning what would be considered an excellent lesson (according to my understanding then), drained after a long day of talking (over the students sometimes), anxious about what to teach next, having that tugging pain in my stomach, and realizing that today’s planning will drag into midnight.
My first year of teaching I remember coming home, my throat aching and my head buzzing as if I was chased by a bee colony. Sure, there were days when I had no choice but survive at my table, trying to catch some needed emotional distress and hoping no one would enter my classroom to see my high-schoolers wreaking havoc right in front of me.
Thank god, I never hold my first year of teaching against me. It’s over. I grew some tough skin, learned some strategies, and I found my voice in the classroom. And while lame-duck days do happen in teaching, I never could allow myself to teach through packets…
You see, for me using packets is like cheating the system and the kids. I know I might sound annoying right now, but I need you to understand that my voice is coming out of frustration that I see packets create in a classroom.
Have you ever seen blank stares in students’ eyes when they are fed with one more stack of stapled materials they have to digest on their own and spit out into graphic organizers? I’ve seen it.
I confess I’ve seen it on the days when I tried to save my sanity and keep kids at bay at least for 45 minutes on a rainy Friday.
I see it now more and more often as I work with my ELLs in a variety of classrooms where content is given though packets. I’m an adult, professional, having moral principles that keep me calm, but believe me when I say that my blood boils, and my face is stricken with a nervous pain when I see a pack of papers distributed to students with little or no teaching effort.
This is the moment when I want to slip through the crack of the classroom door and scream, “How? How are English language learners supposed to understand the legacy of Sumerian culture within 25 minutes of working with a packet that contains more text than what they can consume and comprehend in three days on their own?”
I see things like this happening because I do ESL- push in services for ELLs in a variety of content areas. Unfortunately, those packets become my pain as well because now I have to plow through tons of information figuring out how 5 vocabulary words I am able to introduce will help my learners understand a multiple-page packet, write a summary and describe the legacy.
Luckily for me, all things pass in life. I move anxiously in my chair waiting for the bell to ring because I want to forget about the boring packets I am destined to read and explain to my students. As I leave the room with relief, most students pack the assignment into their backpacks with a terrible realization of having to finish this monster at home. Those packets…
Packets come in a different disguise. They can be called rotation stations. They can be slim or fat. They can be self-sufficient and requiring to use a 5-ton workbook that can surely break someone’s bones if used as a weapon.
In any case, whatever the packets can be presented as, it’s still this annoying concept of printing information on the paper, stapling it into a pretty-looking resource, and feeding it to students. The pill is disguised in candy but has an unpleasant bitter taste anyway.
My antipathy toward packets, surprisingly, is not directly related to teachers who use them. As I said before, I’ve had my share of bad days and challenging classes. I feel the pain of those who did so much and yet are not appreciated.
I know the exhaustion teacher experience. I know how it feels when you have to pore from an empty cup. I know resources and time are always scarce. I know teaching as a career is tough. However, packets don’t help or fix the situation. They make things worse, much worse for one simple reason: they deprive students of true learning opportunity and communication with the teacher. They do.
But can we fight this practice? Can exhaustion and anxiety be put aside? Can we stop complaining for a moment about obvious and legitimate problems the education system faces? Can we just accept that although we might be pawns in the big game, it’s us who still decide how we treat the students in our classroom?
It’s us who painfully try to fix the feeling of exhaustion and overwhelm by pretty packets that were probably designed by people in offices who never taught, not teachers? The truth is simple, a classroom lacking communication and true teaching is not effective no matter how expensive the resources are that we use.
At the end of my first year of teaching I vowed to master classroom management, and as I was learning more about what a highly dynamic and effective lesson is, I would always go back to classroom discipline which, I learned, was entirely achievable through teacher-student interaction, dynamic nature of exercises, games, and other components. I agreed to it automatically.
Indeed, that dedication to classroom management gobbled up a ton of my time and health as I was on the hamster-wheel of creating a resource after resource that I thought would keep my students engaged. I agree that’s draining, and I know how many things can be automated and simplified.
But once again, communication with students and smart tasks that truly engage students in the process of thiking and creating are a magic wand that can fix a lot of issues our classrooms face.
Remember, every single lesson can’t be perfect, and it doesn’t need to be. However, sticking to the core, the truth, the emotions will create a much more profound of a mark on students’ lives than any packets.
