This School Year Will Be Crazy
This 2020-2021 school year is filled with many questions and uncertainties that is for sure. There is an exceedingly crazy amount of finger pointing, passing the buck, and blaming going on in our country with no real solutions.
I teach middle school students. Every quarter when I get a new crop of kiddos, I have to teach them our safety plans and what happens if (God forbid) we had an intruder in our building. And every year, without fail, I get the “what if” questions from the students. “What if the intruder takes down the police officer and steals his uniform?” (I am not kidding, they actually ask that question.) What if there is more than one intruder? What if I sprain my ankle trying to get out of the school? What if…what if….what if…
We as teachers have been asking the “What if” questions for too long. It is time to accept that for many of us, we are going back to school. It is time to start coming up with solutions on our own. We are creative human beings and have been making things happen in our classrooms without much assistance for our entire careers.
We are teachers who are resilient at whatever is thrown at us. We are teachers who make things happen when there is not much to work with. We are teachers who use what little salary we have to buy school supplies for the student who doesn’t have any supplies. We are teachers who will have a stash of snacks in our room for the children who are hungry. We are teachers who will bring in our outgrown children’s clothing to give to our students who have been wearing the same clothes for weeks. We are teachers who make thousands of decisions every day, exhausted when we get home, grade papers until all hours of the night, and are excited each morning when our little cherubs come into our classroom.
In October, 2013, my first year teaching middle school, we were hit with a huge winter storm named Atlas. (I will post a longer story on that one later.) Our school had so much snow on the roof that it caved in. Let’s just say it was mass chaos! We had students and teachers spread out throughout our community, crammed into whatever we could call a classroom, supplies were limited, and we made it work someway, somehow.
So this year my mantra is going to be the Serenity Prayer.
We cannot change that the virus won’t possibly enter my school. It is here. We need serenity so we can change how we protect ourselves and our students. We can wear a mask. We can put our desks as far apart as we can. We can have different types of seating around the classroom. We can also send out an email to our parents requesting our students to wear masks. (Parents will do ANYTHING to get their kiddos out of the house!} We can teach our students that we don’t know what we have inside our bodies, but we can protect others from that by wearing masks.
We need to have courage to be there for our students and parents. Things WILL be different. We might not have lunches with our colleagues. We might not be able to give hugs or high-fives or fist-bumps to our kiddos. (That is going to be tough for me.) We might have to smile with our eyes because we will be covered with a mask. Our staff meetings and grade-level meetings will be a bit further apart. We might even contract the virus and have to stay home for awhile. This should not keep us from doing one of the most important jobs on the planet….educating our students.
My husband has always said, “When you have a complaint towards administration, don’t just go in with a bunch of questions with no answers. Have some solutions to your questions and you might be heard.” I would not want to be in the shoes of our administrators. They have just as many questions as teachers do. We need to have wisdom to come up with solutions and help our administrators with these tough decisions they have to make.
Over the past couple of days I was getting my room ready. The Sturgis Rally is coming around the corner and I wanted to work in the quiet and stillness of my building before the chaos set in. Working in my room gave me a sense of excitement and a yearning to be with my students again. I am ready to go!!
Let’s get fired up for our kiddos!!! Yes, it is going to be weird, not normal, and scary at times. But we are teachers, we are resilient, we are compassionate, and we can teach during a pandemic like no one else can!
Everything is very open with a clear description of the challenges. It was really informative. Your site is extremely helpful. Many thanks for sharing! Hatty Gerik Disraeli
You have made some really good points there. I looked on the net for more info about the issue and found most people will go along with your views on this site. Ynes Wake Cosetta
Thank you for your kind words. I hope you can take something from my blog and apply it to your life.
Wow!!! Tammy, I’m so impressed with your positive attitude! I wish that none of you had to go back in this craziness, and I will continue to pray for all the staff and students.
I miss seeing you so much.
🙏🏻❤️
Becky
Thank you , Becky for your kind words.💜 It is definitely going to be different. We just need to hang on and do the best we can. I really miss having you next door to lean on.