'I Have To Tell You, I Had A Blast Teaching From My #TeacherVan' by Kelly LaLonde

This is me, teaching from my car, in the school parking lot, while my students are remote. 

Yes, that is snow. No, I don’t have a classroom to teach from. Yes I have twinkle lights and an electric blanket. 

I didn’t start out thinking I was doing anything controversial. 

As the beginning of the school year, teachers got an email saying that we’d have to be flexible with classrooms. I work in a small, K-12 urban high school in a building that was originally designed as an elementary school. 

Space is an issue. All of our high school teachers share their classroom space with one other teacher and not always with a co-teacher that worked with them. 

Many specialists teach off of carts or in the hallways.

I’m an ELL teacher. I usually share my classroom with one or two of the other ELL teachers. and during my lunch, the classroom is used for Special Education classes.

I normally put on some headphones and try not to eat anything that smells too strongly. 

This year is totally different. With Covid raging, and high school kids who can’t seem to wear a mask properly, sharing a room with 5 different teachers and cohorts of students wasn’t safe anymore. 

After trying the teachers lounge and realizing that I could never get there fast enough to get one of the coveted spots, I looked for other options. 

I’m an ELL teacher, I like to travel. Before COVID I had done RV cross country trips, and I started thinking…” What if I made a #vanlife classroom set up?’

And so that’s what I did. 

I won the figurative lottery this year- planning periods and my lunch are all in a row. I’ve spent most of them in my “teacher van”.

So what changed? 

Well… Omicron surged and our District went to remote learning, but our Superintendent has made us go into buildings to teach. 

I can not physically teach in the classrooms with my co teachers because of the feedback from zoom,  no classroom can support two teachers on zoom, let alone 3. I need to be able to talk to my students in break out rooms. They are ELS kids, they need my direct support. 

Not to mention there are ppl who aren’t comfortable sharing their space. COVID has hit our teaching staff hard and although we all want to trust one another, we’re wary.

I have chosen to teach in my car because I’m so exhausted from being treated like a child that needs to be monitored, that I’m “leaning in” to the crazy.  Because I won’t let my district make me a subpar teacher or take away my humor. 

I’m teaching in my car because myself and the adults I work with are more comfortable with me not in the same room, and technically because with the feedback we can’t be. 

There are teachers who will say that I’m helping the district by doing “what the District wants,” or those that will say that they would not do this. I get it.

BUT- It doesn’t change that teachers are forced to find ridiculous solutions to keep ourselves and our colleagues comfortable and safe.

It doesn’t change the fact that we aren’t treated like professionals and don’t have working conditions conducive to well- working. 

 It doesn’t change the fact that there are teachers eating and planning in their cars every day. 

It doesn’t change the fact that the district I work in has no plan for the many teachers in my situation. 

You can say it wouldn’t be your choice, you can call it extreme. I call it making the best of a very hard decision that shouldn’t have to be made.

*Kelly LaLonde is a teacher in Rochester NY. While teaching remotely, Rochester schools do not allow their teachers to work from home.