Like many teachers, I usually spend at least part of the summer working on learning. Sometimes, I take a class or join the EMWP Summer Institute. Other times, I read professional literature on my own. That’s what I’m doing this summer.

Usually, my interests and needs guide my reading. When I was working on a teacher research project about argument writing, that’s what I read about. Last year, I read 180 Days because I wanted to think about designing each semester as a more cohesive whole.

This year, our world was thrown into crisis mode in March, and now we’re facing a lot of unknowns for the next school year. My district (along with all districts in Michigan) is working on three separate plans for possible phases of the pandemic that we could be in. We’re currently in phase 4, which will most likely mean some kind of hybrid learning in the fall, but we could move back to phase 3 at any time, which would mean more distance learning, or ahead to phase 5, which could mean less restrictive, in-person learning.

My district is very collaborative and thoughtful in how they plan anything. I appreciate that, but it is a time-consuming process, so we as teachers may not know what each of those three plans actually looks like until the end of this month. I will be off on maternity leave starting in mid October, so I really need to start planning, like, yesterday.

And so, my summer reading this year is focused on planning for the unknown. First up on my list is The Digital Writing Workshop by Troy Hicks. With the possible need to move between face-to-face learning, hybrid learning, and distance learning at a moment’s notice, I know that my students will need to be able to access their writing from home. Traditional writer’s notebooks can be forgotten in a classroom, or lost in a car, and if we have to close down the building for weeks at a time, that could hinder students’ learning. I want to take our writer’s notebooks online, and do so in a way that adds to my students’ learning experiences, so I thought The Digital Writing Workshop would be a great place to start.

Next up, I plan to tackle Balance with Blended Learning by Catlin Tucker. I know that if we were starting school tomorrow, it would be on some kind of hybrid model with students online part time, and face-to-face part time. Even though our English department already uses a digital platform (StudySync) in place of a textbook, I really know very little about blended learning. That certainly showed in our rapid transition to online learning in March. I found myself a little lost, and I just had to do the best I could to keep my head above water. I don’t want it to feel that way in the fall, so I’m hoping this book will give me the basic tools I need to do a better job for my students this fall.

What are you doing to prepare for the fall? Do you know what it will look like in your school yet, or are you planning for the unknown like me? Or are you giving yourself a much-needed break while the districts sort out the nuts and bolts of their plans?