It's Monday evening, and my house is blessedly quiet. Suzannah is hunkered down in her room (because teenager), Isaac is in the family room with the iPad and his giant Lego organization project, and Matt is at Trader Joe's buying everything we might need for the dinners I have not planned yet for this week because that part of my brain stopped working sometime last Friday. I finished up my fourth day of remote professional development, promptly headed outside with Isaac for some biking (him) and jogging (me), came home and soaked in a bubble bath for a bit, and now...here I am. Just breathing. Just being.
To say I'm overwhelmed is just the most hilarious understatement of all time, but I am also grateful. I am also okay right now.
Friday was hard, and I stumbled into the weekend feeling exhausted and disheartened, my brain on a hamster wheel I couldn't quiet. There are so many unknowns. It's hard for me to begin a year feeling so unmoored, so unsure of what I'm doing. Back-to-school planning in August is something that usually fills me with so much joy, because I love this stuff! So much! I'm lucky to have the trust and relative freedom to teach my passion. I'm lucky to have a classroom space that feels like another home, falling-down moldy old building and all. One of the heartbreaking things about this pandemic is wondering if I taught my last class in my room back in March. Our new school is slated to open one year from now, and I'm sure it will be beautiful, but my classroom has held so much of my heart, and so many others' hearts. Hearts have been broken and put back together there and I feel it every time I walk inside. One of my favorite things about August is the quiet afternoons spent planning there, just sitting in that space. I'm still spending some time in that space this month, planning and writing and thinking, but it's different. The quiet isn't as cozy; somehow it's just a little nervous all the time.
I know what I need to teach, and the context doesn't diminish my passion for it. It's the "how" I'm still trying to wrap my brain around. But I keep reminding myself that we're all in this together, that we're all figuring out the how. And I really sat down here to write about that, I guess. I opened up this blog and found a draft of an entry I started a week or two ago, but what I started to write that evening isn't want I want to write tonight.
Tonight I'm not writing to convince my non-teacher friends that I deserve my paycheck. I'm not writing to my friends who think their children will fall behind (behind what, exactly?) in a remote public school setting, or who are frustrated because we can't give them what they think they need, which, I'm sorry to say, isn't possible in a pandemic. Those folks can just stop reading here and have a nice evening.
Tonight I'm writing to and for my colleagues. I'm writing to say: Thank you. Thank you for reminding me why I love where I work, that I'm not in this alone, that we take care of each other. Thank you for reminding me that the what and the why matters more than ever, and we will figure out the how together.
Thank you for reminding me that building authentic connections is not only possible but essential. We can still do that, and I truly believe that we will be creative and intentional in new and amazing ways this year.
Thank you for your willingness to be vulnerable, for your fierce love of our kids and your fierce support of each other.
Thank you for reassuring my terrified mama heart. My daughter is starting ninth grade in a new school while her friends head to a different one, and the thought of her trying to make connections with other kids over a computer screen breaks my heart a bit but not completely, because I am trusting her with the best of the best. I truly believe that she'll gain as much--if not more--than she'll lose. Thank you in advance for loving my girl. It has been my prayer, every single September of her school-aged life, that her teachers will love her like I do. Today we all posted little videos to introduce ourselves to our students, and when I mentioned this to my daughter, she was so excited to see her teachers. I watched some of the videos myself, and it reinforced my deeply-held belief that I work with the most phenomenal folks. It is no small thing to trust a school with your children, and when parents get a little crazy at me sometimes it helps to remember that. Thank you to my friends, my colleagues, for making that an easy choice for this mama, and apologies in advance if I ever get a little crazy. I'm lucky you already know me enough, probably, to anticipate that anyway (and please don't hold it against my girl, who is probably far more level-headed than her mother. She's a good girl).
While Friday found me disheartened, anxious, and exhausted, Monday afternoon left me literally weeping with gratitude, right there on the Zoom screen. I don't think that's ever happened at PD, but there you go, and I wasn't alone. I'm still so overwhelmed, and it's easy to start to panic if I look beyond the exact moment I'm in. To feel like I'm floundering after so many years of trusting that this is what I was born to do is a scary place to sit, but somewhere in all of this there are life rafts that not only pull me to safety but offer me a blanket, a glass of wine, a shared knowing glance, some real belly laughs, and the belief that even in this strange context, I am deeply privileged to be exactly where I am.
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