One of the most challenging years of my career in education started off in typical fashion. Excited and anxious students, rested faculty and administration, the sights and sounds of a new school year.
To prepare for the new school year for the schools I manage, I spent the summer as I typically do, taking advantage of the fact that no one is in the building. I replaced all Dell SonicWall Firewalls with Unifi UDM Pro Controllers. I also installed new Unifi POE switches and Unifi Dual Band Access Points in almost all of the classrooms of each school. Making managing a number of school’s networks much simpler. (Yes, my cable management leaves a lot to be desired.)
I also oversaw the demolition and reconstruction for the second year in a row at Saint Saviour Catholic Academy. This year they demolished the 2nd floor to make room for more classrooms. This required re-wiring of the wired network and installing new switches.
In addition, I was busy replacing old Smartboards by installing new Promethean boards in a number of schools.
Another summer ritual continues, Chromebook domain enrollment.
In January of 2020, I began to see a discussion brewing on NYCIST, a listserv of New York City Independent School Technologists, concerning the Coronavirus and the possibility of school shutdowns. I immediately sought out my principle to begin preparations for such an event.
In my all my experience as a Director of Technology of 15 years, I’ve stressed the importance of continued professional development of teachers. I’ve conducted many optional, and therefore sparsely attended sessions, designed to prepare teachers to use technology in more productive pedagogical ways. Not one school I worked with had experience with virtual learning or any idea what best practices looked like for online classes. I thought to myself, this is going to be a nightmare.
By early Spring of 2020, I was in high demand. I conducted a string of mandatory professional development classes at three different schools on Google Meet and how to manage and conduct virtual classes. On March 19th, 2020 we began, in my opinion, the largest technology professional development experiment in the history of education. I’m proud to say it was a success.
Some highlights:
Virtual Gospel Choir – Since I was stuck in the house, I thought why not learn Adobe Premier Pro. This was one project that I worked on inspired by some of the work being done by others around the world and in collaboration with the Saint Saviour High School Gospel Choir.
There were so many different project ideas that we worked on as a faculty. We had a virtual art show: https://sites.google.com/stsaviour.org/artshow2020/home
And finally we were lucky enough to pull off an in-person graduation ceremony that I setup the A/V to record for those who could not attend.
What I learned throughout the 2019-2020 school year is that you have to be ready when something breaks down. You have to work together as a community to support the students in your care. I witnessed countless acts of support and selflessness by my colleagues for the students they were charged with. For the first time in my career it felt like teachers were finally getting the recognition they so truly deserved in this country. My hope and prayer is that it doesn’t fade away.
PS: I also got to have a little fun with my band The Threads working on a video project for a song that, in my opinion, truly summed up what the pandemic experience in NYC felt like. We had a song called Stoop that hadn’t been played in a while. I produced, edited and played on the video we released.
Anthony Tricarico 