As mentioned in my bio, I am a third-grade teacher. This is my thirteenth year, and the most unique yet because of this pandemic. In mid-March I left my classroom and wasn’t allowed back until August to prepare for the following school year. Teachers were told to work from home for the remainder of the school year. Without any of their materials and no technology training. I will be honest until this point in my life I never even heard of Zoom. Boy did I quickly found out what Zoom was and wondered how we survived so long without it.
You can imagine how this was for any teacher, let alone one with anxiety like myself. You know what really bothered me most with this huge shift in my profession was that I didn’t get to say goodbye. When you are a teacher your “students” quickly become your “kids.” My thoughts were with them throughout each day. Were they getting what they needed at home? How can I still provide them with the education they need? How are their parents doing with all of this? Can they afford to not go into work? I worried about not just their academics, but how this is going to affect them socially. You know when you are a young child, school is all about the social aspects. Who you get to sit by at lunch, who is your best friend for that week, and who is dating who. As an adult I can’t make sense of this, so how can we possibly expect children to?
When I realized I wasn’t going back to school that next Monday, and the panic subsided. I began making A LOT of phone calls. I tried to reach each family. Not to tell them what the next assignments were going to be, but rather to see how everyone was holding up. It was such a wide variety of responses. Some families were grateful to still have their jobs. Some families were struggling with working from home. Some were just worried about what this means for our country. You have some of those special parents too that asked how I was holding up too. If they only knew how much I needed to be asked that in return. I just listened. Some phone calls were a few minutes, but others closer to 20 minutes. It put a lot in perspective for me in those conversations. I quickly realized the bigger picture. As a country we are all going through this, but each of our stories is just being played out differently. Yes, I was having to suddenly wonder how I could possibly take care of my 2 children and work from home. However, I was still getting a paycheck. My husband never stopped working. This was going to be a challenge, but we were going to be better off than so many others.
With this newfound outlook, myself and my incredible third-grade team came up with a plan. Together we scrambled to come up with how to somewhat provide ELA and Math lessons. Each district had their own way of providing curriculum for the remainder of the school year. The district that I worked for believed parents are not teachers, so we can’t expect them to be. So, we were told to just stick with curriculum that has already been taught. We just had the students do small and simple ELA and Math activities that have already been taught (review). Then we would hold Zooms to just check in on our kids and allow them to see each other. Was it the best ending to a school year? Absolutely not, but we did the best we could. Our team worked together to “see” our kids the only way we could and that was by driving by their houses and having a Third Grade Parade. So a plan was made with a route that we followed to be sure we didn’t leave out any student. We met at a local golf course with our cars covered with posters expressing our love and how much we missed them. Our train of cars drove by each student’s house beeping and waving obnoxiously. Five hours later we had reached each student. It was a bit sad to see their faces and not be able to get out and hug them, but it was better than nothing.
When I wasn’t on Zoom meetings or creating activities, I was trying to not let my own children fall behind. My 2 children (were in kindergarten and first grade at the time) attend the district that we live in and not the district I work in. Their district sent a lot of new material home that they expected the students to learn (i.e. the rest of the curriculum for that school year). It was tough. I am a teacher, and it was tough. I quickly found that routine was best. After they had breakfast, it was schoolwork time. They got all their work done in the morning. Then every afternoon I expected them to do some independent reading for at least 15 minutes. My kids like to be lazy at times, so making them do activity (i.e. bike ride, walk, trampoline) daily was a must. I will be the first to admit when I was on work meetings, I would put the fear in God in them to be sure they didn’t interrupt me. So, yep these quickly became my new workdays. Then my husband, Josh (who thinks he is oh so funny) would return from work and say things that I really didn’t want to hear. Like “Man what I would do to trade places with you.” “It must be so nice to stay at home.” “Why do you seem stressed?” “I probably just wouldn’t even worry about them doing their schoolwork if I were home.” These comments weren’t helping relieve any stress.
I hope to never end a school year this way again. But I think everyone can say we have learned a lot from it. I mean I am not much of a hugger, but what I’d give to hug my students and my coworkers again. We had more family time (like it or not we weren’t going anywhere). We realized how flexible we are. I learned more about technology than I ever thought possible. So I guess what they say is true, it is important to always look at the bright side, even in the most difficult situations.
Ruthless Lifestyle 