BLOG by Conni Rasmussen
Founder, SImple Teen Life LLC
I just don’t need much sleep. More than six hours of sleep and I feel like I have a hangover. The past two weeks at 9:00 pm I pass out and wake up 10 hours later. Why? Do I have Covid? What is wrong with me?
I have been teaching 120 high school freshmen for eight years while busy raising my own kids at home and I never went to bed before midnight. So why now? I only teach 60 kids now? I must be sick.
So I do what we all do to save a trip to the doctor. Jumping on Web MD to self-diagnose while scaring myself to death with rare disease possibilities I discover my “illness.” Do I have Covid 19? NO!
ZOOM FATIGUE
The proper term used in research is “zoom fatigue.”
Zoom Fatigue is a new form of exhaustion that is defined as “the feeling of tiredness, anxiousness or worry with yet another video call”… or in this case, virtual school!
Please realize ZOOM GLOOM does not exclude Google Meets, Hang Outs and more. They just don’t rhyme with gloom!
Join me as I give a first-hand eye witness account as a ZOOM teacher along with researched based findings to better understand why all the Zoom and Gloom.
How do humans communicate?
When teaching face to face I was able to learn so much about my students simply by decoding their nonverbal cues.
Their emotions, fidgeting, facial expressions, gestures, posture, body language, and yes, the infamous EYE ROLL and the dramatic body language that only a teenager can do were easily decoded when F2F.
During a F2F conversation, the brain focuses partly on the words being spoken while decoding the meaning from nonverbal cues with ease. The ZOOM platform severely limits our natural way of communicating nonverbally.
Our brain is having to “recalibrate” how we communicate and it is EXHAUSTING!
Did you know that teens communicate even when they are quiet?
As their teacher I know that Sam loves to read, and Bree is an artist but they never told me this. How do I know? I SEE them reading and drawing alot! The simple nonverbal communication during face to face teaching is powerful in getting to know the whole teen.
Do they sit with a social group or alone? Did a teen change their seat to another social group in class? With that one simple seat change, with no words spoken, I was able to SEE a very loud form of nonverbal communication telling me to be on the lookout for a possible social fall out in class.
Unfortunately, most things in the nonverbal communication play book are missing in ZOOM classrooms but exhaustion and frustration are on the rise.
Eye contact is a very powerful form of nonverbal communication. It carries the message that you have my undivided attention, my cooperation, makes me appear friendlier and projects confidence.
If I have 20 students on a Zoom screen that means I have 40 eyeballs looking at me. It is humanly impossible to look any of them in the eye.
Teens feel the same way but on a different level. They believe all 40 eyes are on them, while they are looking at themselves as well. Can it get any more awkward for a 14 year old? Anxiety attacks and headaches from overstimulation are not surprising.
I make eye contact continually and naturally with students when face to face but on ZOOM the sea of eyeballs is too much even for me from 7am to 2pm daily.
Remember the old saying, “the lights are on but nobody’s home.” In ZOOM when students turn off their video feed I am left looking at 20 black tiles with no faces. So, let’s modernize the old saying to:
“the tiles are on but nobody’s home.”
When students have an independent assignment during class, my video feed will remain on, so they know I am physically there for any questions. However, students will turn off their video feed to do the work.
Physical proximity and visual scans of the whole class when F2F is paramount. It allows me to keep students on track and focused and teens will do thier work. However, ZOOM tiles allow students to hide, get behind in class and the fall out creates more exhaustion and frustration for the teens.
How do I know if the student is really doing their work behind the black tile? I don’t.
Now I could monitor every move they make on their screen using a security program provided by the school division. However, what message does the use of the security program convey?
It conveys a lack of trust and teens perceive it as another mechanism to control their actions. Knowing the electronic “watch dog” program is watching them, I will never know if the teen completed the assignment out of fear or genuine self-motivation.
Teens struggle for :
- Independence
- Power
- Sense of belonging
- Sense of being connected but not controlled
We might have the illusion of control by a security program, but teens are resourceful, creative and bold.
If they want to watch You Tube they are going to do just that. Why? Teens are driven to explore independence and want to experience a sense of power in making their own decisions.
Let them learn that there will be consequences for watching YOU TUBE instead of completing the assignment.
We are cheating our teens from learning how to make better choices if we try to control their decisions through fear.
Is it possible to give 100% of your focused attention in a ZOOM classroom? NOPE! Not as a student or a teacher.
Constant interruptions ruin anyone’s attempt to fully focus, student and teacher alike! Here are just a few roadblocks that I have experienced in the past six weeks.
- broken cameras
- poor video feeds
- poor bandwidth
- audio delays
- parents sitting beside teen during class and interrupting the teacher
Research shows that being on a ZOOM meeting takes far more energy and focus then a F2F conversation. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that teens being expected to remain totally focused from 7am to 2 pm on a lap top with just a 40 minute break for lunch is not only ludicrous it seriously unhealthy.
My most feared morning message that brings panic to me as a teacher is:
Do I have their full attention?
I think not!
Is it all Doom and Gloom with Zoom?
By nature I am a very optimistic person, particularly when it comes to teenagers. After six weeks of Zoom I asked myself the age old question, “Do I think the glass is half empty or half full?”
Before I answer that question let’s review some major points that are related to ZOOM GLOOM.
- Exhaustion is real for both teacher, student and parents
- Lap top learning for 7 hours with few breaks for teens is unhealthy
- Absence of nonverbal cues are putting undue stress on our brains as our natural instincts to communicate is lost
- Students can no longer make eye contact as a valuable means of communicating with their peers and teachers.
- Electronic security programs strip teens of opportunities to learn from making poor choices while instilling another layer of fear and frustration teens do not need a this time.
- Giving full attention to a lesson is next to impossible
- Exhaustion, frustration, anxiety and lack of socialization for our teens is in epidemic proportions
Zoom Gloom is real
Exhaustion and recalibration of the brain is real
Starvation for socialization for our teens is real
Don’t minimize this struggle of your teens
The frustration is real
After six weeks of teaching ZOOM for 6 hours a day to 60 teens do I think the “glass is half empty or full?”
“The glass is half empty along with a slow leak. Teens are slowly being starved in the areas of social, emotional, mental and physical well being as the Zoom Classroom lifestyle continues.”
Conni Rasmussen, Founder of STL
Families deserve choices. Our youth deserve quality public education. This is still America despite Covid-19.
Without question we have students, teachers and their family members that are vulnerable to Covid. That group deserves quality virtual school. We also have another population that wants and deserves to return to F2F learning in the school building. Let them in. Hybrid learning should be thrown out the window.
Our youth have become an unofficial social experiment
A little bit about the author:
I have held the role of wife, mother, teacher, administrator along with earning my MS from Oxford University in International Science Education and Research Methods. Despite my fun in my last admin job as a Director of a Swiss IB School I simply missed the daily dose of teenage energy only found in the American classroom. Never looking back I returned to the classroom 12 years ago. It is my love and sincere advocacy for teens which has been my motivation behind the creation of Simple Teen Life LLC in 2018.
Thanks for reading my blog! Please feel free to leave your opinion, comments or personal experiences as a teacher or parent with ZOOM GLOOM!
Conni
You outlined it beautifully! It was helpful to read what many people probably felt but didn’t understand.
This is so real! I wake up feeling like this weight is on my chest. I dread the endless hours in front of a laptop. I dread the endless hours of planning only to have students chrome books spin out, and when they do cut their cameras on, to see the sadness or just lack of excitement that I would normally get in the classroom. I hurt for my son struggling to take three AP courses online. We are all a living social experiment. Than you for posting Connie. Glad to know my feeling are normal. Prayers for a safe return to school.