Virtual tax school was even more boring.

In August or September, during a “normal” year, I attend a tax school in some big city where I study very hard for three days, eat at nice restaurants, take in a show, and shop a little on the way home. I’ve been to Chicago, New York, San Diego, and Denver. And … I can take it off my taxes as a business expense. Of course, not the show and the shopping, but most of everything else.

This year, … the 2020 tax school was virtual. So, I traveled into the office in my pajamas, sat down with my cup of coffee, and got on-line. For an hour, every morning (Tuesday through Thursday) and an hour every afternoon, I listened and learned. The rules were strict. I had to check-in before the designated hour, answer four questions randomly asked during the presentation, and fill out a survey at the end of the hour. There was no “set it and forget it.”

This went on for four weeks. We got two hours of credit for each day. That’s twenty-four credits … if you were on-line on time, answered all of the questions, and filled in the survey at the end. I guess I could have asked the smart little girl across the street to sit in front of the computer an hour occasionally, but I’m not that mean.

Tax law is interesting … if you have nothing else on your mind … no recreation outside your home, no interesting food to fix or eat, no one to talk to, no laundry to do, no grass to mow, or no butter to churn. If so, it might be a good field to go into. The thing is, I need to know this information, no matter how boring … and you’ve got to understand, I paid two hundred dollars for the course.

I’ve been feeling sorry for the kids attending virtual classes. At least, they can see their teacher and even some of their friends on some programs. As a retired teacher who sometimes “punted” if the lesson I tried to teach first period didn’t go over well, I feel sorry for the teachers with virtual classrooms. They must hit the floor running … bells and whistles … warts and all. Not only that, most of the kids have a parent of a sibling in the room with them, listening to the teacher “perform.”

When I first started teaching … back in the 1970s, I couldn’t find a job in secondary education, and ended up teaching second grade for the first semester of the year. I knew nothing. Oh, I could read, and I could sing, and I could color. So, we did a lot of singing, coloring, and reading. We even threw in a little math. One day in October, I was teaching about pumpkins. I told the kids that pumpkins grew under the dirt like potatoes. It was an “open concept” school without doors, and one of the teachers heard me. She came down and called me into the hall for a quick horticulture lesson.

If I had been teaching virtually, my lesson would have gone out over the web where my reputation would have been ruined. Parents, older brothers and sisters, grandparents, and the Superintendent-of-Schools would have rolled their eyes. It would be on Facebook. The President would have tweeted about it. Maybe God would have sent a pumpkin seed to my flower bed.

Looking back on my month of Zombie School with no hotel room, room service, and no touring the city on the top of a bus … I guess it could have been worse. I could have been teaching those tax classes.