Flat Mrs. Cora

After writing last week’s post, I realized that I haven’t actually explained my Flat Mrs. Cora experiment. It did not go how I expected, but I want to share what I expected and what actually happened so that you can go into a similar experiment with more realistic expectations!

I can’t take credit for the Flat Teacher idea; I got the idea from a coteacher who got it from a teacher in another grade level who got it from a teacher on the internet (I think every new idea in teaching comes around that way). What I’m hoping to add is my experiences so that you can take on being a Flat Teacher with eyes open.

When I knew the school year would start online, I thought it would be fun to send myself home with each student so that we could learn together. I would put my flat selves into my students’ folders and asked them to take me on an adventure. It was supposed to be a fun writing prompt and a way to get to know the students. Unfortunately, I had too much empathy for my little selves.

It started feeling weird right away when I laminated and cut out a tiny army of myself. That should have been the sign that I needed to stop. I kept flipping them over so that they would stop staring at me, and I ended up distributing them into folders pretty quickly so that I could get the congregation of selves off of my desk.

Then the real adventure began. One student took tiny me on a four-wheeler ride. Another student put me in a rabbit cage. I was sent a family picture where my tiny cut-out was put in the dad’s front shirt pocket. I knew to some level that it wasn’t really me in all those places, but I was not comfortable with all the places I would go. I visited a friend’s house and she had her daughter’s flat teacher stuck to the fridge with a magnet. I think I take myself a little bit to seriously to let myself be stuck to a fridge or put in a rabbit cage.

The coteacher who was stuck to the fridge ended up using her flat teacher as a writing prompt every week and had a lot of fun with it. For me, it was just too weird to continue. I’m all for finding ways to help online students feel a connection with me, but I don’t think I’ll be making any more cutouts of myself anytime soon.