October, finally

Two weeks ago I sat at my dining room table, writing to the sound of rain. This is the sound I wait for, every September. The rain was fleeting, but it soothed the edges of my frazzled nerves.

I went for a run after school today. I'm oddly energetic on Friday afternoons, especially on Fridays when I end with a class that never fails to fill my cup. I was in a strange headspace; this week has been particularly hard. But I left school feeling good and wanting to move in the cool sunshine.

It cools off at night now; we still sleep with a fan, but I don't kick away the covers. One night this week I was cold enough to wear socks to bed -- what a lovely feeling. Sunny days aren't oppressive, the way they feel in late August, with our matted lawn, crisp and colorless. The leaves have begun to turn, and they are beautiful. I love the bursts of color on sunny Saturdays in October; this year, I know they'll make me miss our weekend soccer games. 

I missed them last year, too, but I missed a lot of things last year. 

*

These days, our morning routines go like this: Suzannah and I are up early, before the boys. She starts the coffee maker, which Matt has set up the night before, and she drinks one cup with her breakfast. Milk, two teaspoons of sugar. I'm never hungry at that hour, and I don't like to drink coffee quickly, so I simply shower and dress, and the two of us are out the door before dawn. I drive through my favorite espresso stand before we get to school; I discovered them twenty years ago, when I used my lunch break to rush back to my apartment and take my new pug puppy out to potty on the scrap of lawn next to the stairs. In those days, I ordered a black and white mocha and drank it on my way back to school. Now, I stick to Americanos, sometimes black, sometimes with a splash of cream.

On the days when I take Suzannah to school, we park in the teacher lot and walk in together. She gives me a quick hug and heads off towards the Commons area or to hang out with her friends in a patient colleague's classroom, and I walk up the stairs to my new office, where I have extra morning planning time. I've been on a part-time contract since she was born, so I'm not required to be here at this hour -- but Matt and I decided to choice Suzannah into my school, so we share the responsibility of transportation. The extra time feels lovely right now. I'm a morning person by nature, and those extra hours in a quiet space mean it's easier for me to leave my laptop at my docking station at the end of the day. Last year, I never really succeeded at establishing a boundary between work and home, because I taught my classes through that screen at the center of my house.

On the days when I take Isaac to school -- the privilege of a position that is still technically part-time -- we can all sleep just a little longer, or at least we're not as rushed. Matt doesn't need to make himself presentable before he rolls out of bed to drive her to school, and he doesn't need to worry about snagging a spot in the teacher lot -- my school is still under construction, and parking is at a premium. When I go in later, I park behind the football field, nowhere near the entrance that is closest to my classroom. Or any entrance, really. I walk along the track, then up a long paved path to the back entrance next to the health clinic, and then I cross the Commons area and make my way to the stairs that lead to the second floor, where I share an IB office and a classroom.

But it's okay. A year ago, we didn't go anywhere. We drank our coffee and ate our breakfast and logged onto our computers in different rooms of our house. As much as I loved wearing my favorite gray sweats underneath whatever reasonably professional look I managed to put together on top, those gray sweats weren't worth it. As much as I loved having some really sweet time with my family, knowing that it was an unexpected gift -- after all, my kids are not at ages when I would expect to see so much of them, and I really loved it -- it wasn't the natural order of things, and I know how much they need to be with their peers (and please, no one needs to lecture any teachers about this). But I won't write about that here tonight. I tried to write about it a year ago, when I was still trying to justify my paycheck to friends and family who didn't seem to think I deserved it.

I haven't found my sweet spot yet, not at all. I counted it as a victory that I found my teacher mailbox in the main office all by myself for the first time last Friday, without Kailey holding my hand (though she did cheer me on, and I choose to believe it was not entirely mocking). I can make copies now. But I haven't found my groove, that place where I'm actually ready to greet students at my door because everything they need is printed and ready to pick up (and they know the routines to do that) or displayed on a screen (which is now a fancy new Smart Board). Kids haven't had to ask permission to pee in a very long time, so I haven't been consistent with hall passes. We have a system now, but everything, all of these really basic things, are an evolving process. I have to remind kids all day long to wear their masks correctly, which is the only issue I haven't encountered before, and it's the one I care about most right now. Usually, all it takes is eye contact and tapping my own. But it's unmooring, to say the least. All of it. Learning to be human together again. To read each other's signals. To constantly evaluate risk, and maintain that essential connection at the same time. It all matters so much.

This is what it means to be back in a classroom full-time. It's too crowded, of course. I'm no stranger to over-crowded classrooms; my first of teaching, I had 42 students in my first period class. But during a pandemic, when we have to provide seating charts for contact tracing, full classrooms bring a different level of anxiety. The first time I stood in front of a full class, I found it difficult to breathe, and it wasn't because of my mask.

Speaking of which: teaching through a mask isn't my favorite, but it's infinitely better than teaching through a screen. I'm watching schools in other parts of the country -- and, this week, a private school in my own state -- close because Covid is tearing through their classrooms, and my anxiety rises. My anxiety rises, and so does my anger. My whole body thrums with it. I am so grateful to live in a state with a mask mandate, because it is the best chance we have of keeping kids in school without putting them at even more risk. I'm furious at folks who think that doing this tiny thing is giving into "fear." I'm furious at folks who think that protecting vulnerable members of our community is an imposition on their personal freedom, that we should expect them to "stay home if they're scared." As if we should render them invisible. As if we haven't already. 

Right now, I just want my son vaccinated. Sometimes I think it will be a miracle if he can avoid quarantine until then. I found myself murmuring in the car two weeks ago, Please let him just get to run in his first cross-country meet. And please just let him not get sick. Sure, he'd probably be fine, right? But look, this mama has already experienced what it's like to have a healthy child suddenly hospitalized at Mary Bridge Children's, with a pediatric nephrology team taking care of him. 

Is that what it means to "live in fear"? 

We were lucky. We were so lucky. And on a normal weekday, we waited for hours in the ER for a bed. I would be so terrified to need any sort of hospital care now, when we can't assume a bed will be available at all. Washington is taking on transfers from Idaho. My home state is rationing medical care. My best friend who works for a clinic in Minnesota reports that they're struggling to find open beds for non-COVID patients.

Most healthy children don't suddenly go into kidney failure, but some of them do. Don't come at me with your statistics, especially if you're too precious to wear a mask for twenty minutes inside a grocery store. I think a measure of our humanity might just be our willingness to wear that stupid mask to protect someone else's child. That's the only sort of world I want to live in. So I'm pretty depressed these days.

*

Anyway, my son managed to escape quarantine before his first cross-country meet last week. And my greatest fear was not, honestly, that he would get sick -- because he is incredibly conscientious about wearing a mask and because we are lucky enough to live in a district that requires them. I just know that he needs these experiences, these connections, and I want him to have them.

He ran hard, with absolute determination, and he took third overall and first for his school. Yesterday he shaved something like forty-five seconds off his time; he threw himself against the fence, panting and red-faced but clearly pleased after he crossed the finish line. He did not get any of this from me. I require a tremendous amount of validation from for huffing around my neighborhood for awhile. I was highly allergic to P.E. and running the mile until P.E. classes were no longer required. Listen, I was the kid vomiting at the side of the track because I really wanted that stupid A on my report card. (I'm told P.E. doesn't work like that anymore and I am so glad.) 

Cross-country is a perfect pandemic sport, and perfect for my high-energy son who is very active but has zero interest in "organized" sports. I watched him run, and then I watched him bounce up and down and cheer for every single teammate until they crossed the finish line. This is what it means to be part of a community. Toxic individualism tells us that our "personal freedom" is what we should fight for, instead of the greater whole. But we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

*

I've tried to write here so many times in the last two weeks, since the afternoon when I sat at my table, listening to the rain. I don't know how to tell all the stories that matter right now.

I want us to be better

Seven years ago, my four-year-old son went into sudden kidney failure. And by sudden, I mean sudden, following what seemed like a typical end-of-summer cold. Matt took Isaac to the doctor while I prepared to start another school year. His doctor thought it could be a virus, but he took one look at our son and ordered a urine catch and blood work. When the tests came back a few hours later, the doctor called and said the safest place for our son to be was the hospital. Immediately. So we found ourselves tossing toothbrushes, pajamas, and Isaac's stuffed beagle into a backpack and the soup that hadn't finished cooking into the sink. My brother and sister-in-law came over to stay with Suzannah and we drove to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital, where I spent the first few days of the new school year.

Instead of meeting my students, I met with a pediatric nephrologist. I held my sobbing son through an EKG, many blood draws, an IV, a failed attempt to get him to drink a huge cup of sludgy medicine to lower his potassium levels, and albuterol treatments. 

We spent that first night in the Emergency Room, waiting for a kidney ultrasound. Isaac fell asleep on the padded exam table behind a privacy curtain and we wrapped him in Matt's sweatshirt to keep him warm. I watched the clock discard the minutes, my eyes burning. By the time a bed was ready, it was five o'clock in the morning, and I was covered in my son's dried tears and the remnants of the medicine he had thrown up all over me. We tucked him in with his stuffed beagle, and Matt and I curled into each other on a small pull-out couch where we dozed for an hour or two.

It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, but all things considered, we were so lucky. We took him home a few days later, and several months after that, all his tests came back clear. 

Last week, I took him in for his well-child visit and middle school immunizations (the ones that are required for school, a mandate which people do not seem to be protesting, interestingly enough). I am grateful for every single one of those vaccines, and I am grateful for my son's health. He is a boisterous, active, healthy, hilarious, absolutely wonderful kid and I am grateful for him always, but particularly every September now, when I remember the moments in the hospital when Matt and I were brought face-to-face with everything we stood to lose. 

And the thing is that I never believed we would lose him, because such a loss is unsurvivable. Right? 

But here's the other memory that stays with me: the children we met that week on our floor who would not be sent home with their families after a few randomly frightening days. 

I still almost can't breathe typing this. 

I remember, for instance, sitting in one of the game rooms with my son and a child in a purple bathrobe, completely bald, smaller than my son, dragging an IV pole over to a table with coloring books and games. I still think about that child all the time. Where are they now? Are they okay? Are they also getting ready to go back to school? Fourth grade, maybe? Fifth? Sixth, like my son?

When I think about hospitals filling up with COVID patients these days, I think of that child. 

When folks who showed nothing but love and support for my son seven years ago post on social media now that we need to open up, get back to normal, and live -- I think of that child. I think of that child and I think of my son when those folks post, "If you're scared, you should stay home!" I am honestly too afraid to ask these people if they believe that our "right" to not feel uncomfortable in a mask is more important than a vulnerable child's right to an education. Or to a place in our society. Just stay home. Don't inconvenience us with your "underlying condition." Don't ask us to value your life as a necessary part of our community. Don't ask us to care about a person we don't know.

You cared about my son then. What if things had turned out differently? Would you say the same things?

We're starting another school year, together again. We need it so much, and I will do anything to return safely in person. I will wear the mask, even though I don't love teaching through a mask. Teaching through a mask beats teaching through a screen, and all of that beats spreading a virus to folks who cannot be vaccinated yet. To vulnerable folks. We are going to have to take some risks, yes. But we also have the tools to protect each other, and some of us just don't want to use them.

I think of my son and all the what-ifs. I think of that child in the purple bathrobe. I think of the parents holding their children in a hospital room, or waiting for one.

Today I looked at the pictures of my son in the emergency room, small and swollen and wrapped up in my husband's gray sweatshirt, and I cried and cried. I looked at the picture of my son curled up with his stuffed beagle in his hospital bed. I thought about how lucky we are, and how it could have been otherwise. I thought about the folks who love him, and about all the folks who don't know him, and about all the other children currently tucked into hospital beds, or waiting for them. I thought about how in a week ago in Dallas County, Texas, Judge Clay Jenkins said, "If your child's in a car wreck, if your child has a congenital heart defect...and needs an ICU bed, or more likely if they have Covid and need an ICU bed, we don't have one. Your child will wait for another child to die."

Don't fucking talk to me about percentages, because those are children. You are talking about someone's child. 

I thought about how terrifying it was to rush my son to the hospital seven years ago. I cannot fathom how terrifying it would be now.

Percentages don't mean a lot when you're a terrified mother holding your baby in a hospital. 

I think of the parents of that child with the purple bathrobe.

I'm so thankful -- so far beyond thankful -- that my state now requires vaccines for school staff and masks for everyone, regardless of vaccination status. Anything less is failing our kids. Period. But I see protests even in my city, because some people believe that individual comfort matters more than someone's life. And I see what's happening in other parts of the country. This is why my anger is spreading like a can of spilled red paint. This is why I cannot fully embrace the back-to-school joy I've missed so desperately. 

My son still sleeps with that stuffed beagle. I think mothers understand this: sometimes I tiptoe into his room after he's asleep, even now, even as I'm preparing to send him to middle school. I still need to see the steady rise and fall of his chest, to ground myself in the gift of his presence, to offer a desperate prayer of thanks that we still get to have him, and beg the universe to show mercy to our babies when the adults around them turn away. 

I want the world to be better. I want us to be better.

I know how to breathe in the water

When your child challenges you to a water balloon fight on a hot afternoon in late July, I believe in saying yes. Always. Even if you're not wearing a swimsuit. Maybe especially if you're not wearing a swimsuit, because there is something about getting soaked in shorts and a tank top that feels whimsical and freeing. Although I do have to say that fifteen years into motherhood, I still frequently put on a swimsuit for an afternoon of Serious Water Play in the backyard, because that signals commitment, and I am a mother who pities the parents who do not find joy in this, at any age.

I've written about this before, but my perfect summer happens in my backyard.

We didn't make it to Bozeman last summer, or almost anywhere else. Our story isn't unique. We're in a Pandemic (yes, still). Matt changed jobs. The IB Global Conference was cancelled. By this time last year, we had just learned that we would begin the school year remotely, which was both a relief and a source of anxiety and dread. Last year at this time, we were about to leave for a quick trip to Glacier National Park, where we met my parents, my brother and his family, and Matt's parents. It was the only time all summer that felt something like normal, the only time all summer where I could just breathe. And I did, mostly by swimming in Lake McDonald. Put me in the water, and I am home. 

I know how to breathe in the water.

*

We did make it to Bozeman this summer, and I was so grateful. I missed the smell of my parents' house. It's a smell they probably don't notice, but to me, it smells exactly like home the moment I walk in the door, the smell I've known for most of my life. I love it so much, in exactly the way I love the smell of my own house after we've been away for a week; it's a very specific smell I never notice any other time except after days away. 

(How many homes is a person allowed to have? I have asked myself this question for years. My best high school teacher told me one night before I left for college that I would put down deep roots wherever I went. And it's true, I think. I can still smell, in my memory, the apartment I shared with Carmen in Moorhead, Minnesota. Or the smell of the heavy, late summer air there. Home is the way the air smells.)

We also spent a few nights in Glacier. We didn't camp this time, like we have since my son was in diapers. I've missed it, those nights spent breathing the sweet pine-scented air under the stars, settled into the quiet of a tent, with everything that matters held in that space. COVID changed things, yes. But pandemics do eventually end, and at some point in the last few years I have learned how to set boundaries for myself and for my family. We'll share communal spaces again, but until then, we'll gratefully accept my mother's gift of a cabin and days at the lake. Paddle boards, kayaks, the sun setting over the water. The cool water of Lake McDonald against my body, which I prefer over any kayak or paddle board. It's a strange thing: to so fully enjoy the water, to acknowledge that this lake is warm enough to swim in all afternoon, which it shouldn't be. Growing up, it wasn't. We are incinerating the planet, and this is obvious in a heartbreaking way when I visit this place where the glaciers are shrinking into snow fields.

Pam Houston writes in Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country: 

For now, I want to sit vigil with the earth...I want to write unironic odes to her beauty, which is still potent, if not completely intact. The language of the wilderness is the most beautiful language we have and it is our job to sing it until and even after it is gone no matter how much it hurts. If we don't, we are left with only a hollow chuckle, and our big brains who made this mess, our big brains that stopped believing a long time ago in beauty, in everything, in anything.

Montana is burning. It's too hot, too early. Again. I returned to my home state hoping to breathe the sweetest air in the world, but smoke filled my lungs instead. Weeks later, friends there post pictures of a red sun in a yellow sky.

Montana might never truly welcome me home; I'm an Outsider now. And yet. And yet. My soul still knows how to breathe in the water there, and the Montana prairie is not so different from the ocean tides. I'll always love it.

*

I moved to the Pacific Northwest twenty years ago. I've lived here longer than I've lived anywhere else: my entire adult life. I was born in a prairie town, grown and nourished near the mountains, returned to the Midwestern plains, and given my wings to wind up exactly where I am now. All of it, all of it, courses through my blood. My heart beats to the rhythm of the ocean tides and prairie winds. I cherish my trips home. But home is also here now: in the Pacific Northwest, in the mountains, at the coast, and quite literally in my backyard.

*

Matt and I were extraordinarily lucky to stumble into our little house, in this neighborhood, just six weeks after we were married. Before we had kids, I spent August afternoons reading in the shade of our enormous tree, or reading in the sunshine on our deck (I won't tell you which books led to my most painful sunburns, but I remember them clearly). After Suzannah was born, I spent countless afternoons in the backyard with her, taking pictures while she splashed in the little plastic wading pool we bought at Target or Toys R Us. I remember sitting on the edge of the deck trying to read while she ran through the sprinkler. One of the books I was supposed to teach for IB Literature still bears her scribbles; she grabbed my blue ballpoint pen after she tired of the water, and I didn't really care for the book anyway -- it was a complete chore to read (and I no longer teach it). Temperatures hit 100 the summer I was pregnant with Isaac, and I sat in that plastic wading pool while Zannah poured water over my belly. The next summer, Isaac kicked his fat legs on a blanket on the grass. And after that...well, the yard was his, too. The sprinkler, the lawn, the deck. The concrete patio that replaced the old, rotting deck. The swing set and sandbox, built by my husband and father-in-law before my son's first birthday.

I'm supposed to want more. More square footage? More house, less yard? Newer? Bigger? I wasn't thinking about "forever" when we bought our house, only about how we loved it then. All these years later, I still do, and even more in Quarantine, when my daily walks introduced me to so many neighbors I'd never known and showcased spectacular views of Puget Sound, only a few streets away. I've learned that what I need is not the same thing as what we're conditioned to want.

*

I love our summer travels. I do. Our trips have mostly always been to Montana and Minnesota, because our families are there, and I have no regrets about that (Montana and Minnesota are wonderful places to be, in any season). I've had some wonderful trips around the country for the IB Global Conference each summer, and once Matt and I went to Vegas on his company's dime (I'll go anywhere and enjoy it when I don't have to pay for it, but I'd be okay not going back). I have a list of places I want to go and things I want to see and experience in the next few years. But I've also learned that the summers I love best are the summers that give me the most time at home here in the Pacific Northwest. We keep discovering places that fill and feed my soul near my home here. At the coast, in the mountains, on the trails to the Sound near my own house.

(I almost wrote, "in my home state." Is this my home state now? I think of the privilege inherent in claiming a state this way in the first place. In having a childhood bedroom that still exists somewhere else. Surely, claiming a home shouldn't be limited to those of us who still have a bed in a place we lived in decades ago.)

*

I spent some time this weekend reading through old journals, which is a thing I tend to do in late summer, before I dig into preparing for the next school year. The year after I moved here, after I chose this place to begin my adulthood, my "real life," I wrote about returning to a place of wet and green Januaries after Christmas in Montana, about how I felt like I was going home. And yet, for years after I left Montana, I still wrote about weeping as I drove east or west out of Bozeman -- to Moorhead, Minnesota or to Washington. Bozeman is a hard place to leave. But those tears meant that a heart can expand to hold these other places, too, and to call them home.

*

I've lived here, in this state, in this little house, longer than I've lived anywhere else. 

My dream house is this one, I think. Maybe a few streets closer to the water, so I could drink my coffee with a view of Puget Sound instead of having to walk to that view in the mornings (all summer) or the afternoons (when I'm teaching). What I have is close enough. My perfect summer day happens right here, when I pour myself a glass of iced green tea ("Enjoy your alien pee," my son says) and read in the backyard until it's time to cook dinner, which we also frequently eat in the backyard. My perfect summer day happens when my children fill water balloons with our backyard hose and throw them at each other, and at me. My perfect summer day happens when all we need is a backyard hose, a sprinkler, a grill, a fire pit. A comfortable lounge chair, or one of the Adirondack chairs I bought in May, along with a side table -- perfect for that glass of tea, a can of lemon-flavored La Croix, or a Pinot Grigio in the late afternoon.

I'll never say no to the water. 

*

School starts again a month from now. I'll be teaching full classes in person again for the first time in a year-and-a-half. My daughter will be a sophomore. My son will be a middle-schooler, which is harder for me to process, since the last time he attended in-person school he was only in the fourth grade. But the world happens to all of us. We'll figure it out.

In the meantime, we'll run through the sprinkler, we'll have water balloon fights, we'll spend afternoons at the beaches in the state parks near our home (two of them are ten minutes from our house, in two different directions, with sandy beaches and swimming and trails), and we'll make one last drive to a National Park and a beautiful lake in the mountains near the sea. This is what feeds my soul.

But even if I don't want to drive those ten minutes on a hot afternoon in late July or August, I can bask in summer days exactly where I am. I've never needed more than our back yard, a slip 'n slide or sprinkler, a camp chair under a towering tree that shades our home. I've added better chairs, I suppose. We have that fire pit. A patio umbrella. A grill, for when we don't want to heat the kitchen. But the magic that happens here is simple: an arc of water from a garden hose, catching the sunlight like diamonds. A book. A glass of iced tea. Dinner on the patio, maybe. The cool night descending over the water, the breeze that pairs with our bedroom fan to ruffle our bedroom curtains.

And always, the water. In whatever form my children want. Because isn't this it? The moments we miss later?

(Maybe it's the Pisces in me, but I'll take the water in any moment, on any day. I want the hose, the sprinkler, the slip 'n slide, the spray park, the pool as much as my children do.)

So I say yes to the water balloon fights, the water gun fights. I suggest the spray park, or the beach when my son whines that he's bored. I don't care what we do there, whether we splash in the water or dig in the sand or buy hot dogs or hike the trails near the water. I love it all. It's a life I couldn't know I was choosing all those years ago. It's a life I wouldn't trade.

So much can change in an hour

Sometimes it's hard to know how to dress for a walk at this time of year. Late April in the Pacific Northwest is often gorgeous, with bright blue skies and soft breezes, but it's been a cold and dry spring; sometimes sunny days hide a biting wind. Last week I thought the afternoon was warm enough for a thin, long-sleeved shirt and I shivered through the first two miles. A few days later I wore a t-shirt and a hoodie and wound up with sweat trickling down my back before tying the hoodie around my waist and arriving back home with a sunburn.

This morning, I taught through a drizzle that turned to rain. My classroom door was propped open, because it always is; the district has provided air purifiers to classrooms, but my broken window is still broken and my unventilated building is still full of mold. I'd likely have left my door open, COVID or no COVID, because I like fresh air and I love the smell of spring. 

(I've missed the sound of a steady spring rain outside my classroom door, singing across the tops of the covered walkways. I won't miss the broken concrete sidewalks when we move into our new building in the fall, but I will miss the sound of rain.)

The rain tapered off throughout the morning. When Suzannah I arrived at home before lunch it had stopped completely, and by the time I'd signed out of afternoon office hours the sun was peeking through the clouds. My son went outside to blow bubbles; Suzannah bounced a basketball in the driveway. I shut down my laptop, put it away, changed my clothes and pulled my hair into a ponytail, and headed outside to walk the streets of my neighborhood like I've done almost every single day since March of 2020.

And I was cold at first. Five minutes into my walk I have the choice to walk down the hill to the edge of the water or up the hill for more panoramic views that take me through the streets overlooking Puget Sound. Both are lovely, but I chose to walk uphill, away from the wind, and soon I found myself sweating as the clouds dissipated. The water was a brilliant blue, and everything was blooming. I wished I'd brought sunglasses.

I turned on to a shaded side street, and this time I relished the cool breeze.

So much can change in an hour. In a month. In a year.

*

This is what our mornings look like now: 

I wake up early, like I always do, but instead of reading on the couch in the pre-dawn light before my family rises, I shower and dress right away. I put on jeans instead of lounge pants underneath my shirt. I do not drink coffee at the dining room table while I prep for the day; I don't drink coffee at all, actually, unless I pull through my favorite coffee stand on the way home before lunch. Which I do. Partly because I love coffee, even if I have to wait until after ten o'clock in the morning to drink it, and partly because I miss the familiarity of that routine. This week I pulled up to the window and the barista cried, "You're back!" And she still knows my order, even after all this time.

My daughter is also an early riser, so there are no morning battles. She gets herself up, dressed, and fed, and the two of us are ready to leave the house an hour before she can check in for her daily health attestation. This is the life of a teacher's kid. We drive to school together and she hangs out in my classroom with me until it's time for her to check in, pick up her laptop for the day, and head to class.

I didn't expect that we'd be back in the building this year, because COVID continues to spread, school districts continue to be less than transparent about reporting, and we continue to learn. But here we are. We have two classes on campus in the morning, followed by an hour break for lunch and travel time, and two classes in the afternoon. On Thursdays and Fridays, we switch. Each class meets on campus twice a week, for those students who have chosen the hybrid model. Teachers manage both at the same time. Or we try. Two weeks in, and I'm still spinning. How can I make everyone feel included? How can I teach in-person from behind a desk, six feet away? How can I teach sitting down, through a screen? How can I do both, at once, and let them all know they matter? I have never been a teacher who sits while she teaches. Teaching energizes me; it calls me outside of myself. Forcing that energy through a screen, or through a mask from a distance, feels impossible.

But it also brings me life, even now. Because the alternative is -- what? Not teaching?

*

We made it three whole days into Hybrid before we had to quarantine a few classes due to a positive COVID case on campus. And I know perfectly well how many "friends" on social media think that quarantining, at this point, is an overreaction, and masks are merely "virtue signaling." I wonder how many of those folks have sat with a student (even virtually) who lost a grandparent -- or a parent -- to COVID. (For the record, I can't think of anyone even semi-close to me who has died from the flu, and certainly not multiple people. Just saying. For those of you who keep saying it's no worse, no different than the flu.) I wonder how many of those folks have lost a friend, or worried about a child. I wonder how many of those folks actually care about anyone other than themselves and their -- rights? Is that really the word we're using? Is this toxic individualism, or is it ignorance? Does it matter?

My son is still fully remote and will be through the end of the year. He isn't "muzzled" (and if you've used that word to describe children wearing masks, you're an asshole). He's thriving with his absolutely wonderful teacher and his classmates, and he -- as an eleven-year-old -- understands that sometimes we make sacrifices to keep other people safe. I wish more adults did.

My son also went into sudden and total kidney failure when he was little and we spent some time at Mary Bridge Children's Hospital. He has a clean bill of health now, but since we're seeing a lot of "oh, well, they had an underlying condition" comments regarding kids and COVID, you'd best believe I am not fucking around with that. You'd also best believe that if you're one of the folks who says, "If you're scared, YOU stay home!" then I think you're the very worst of humanity. (If we're friends on social media, I literally have no idea why. I keep saying this, and folks keep not believing me.)

As a teacher called back to the classroom -- a place I belong -- I understand exactly why our kids need to be back in school. I do not understand folks who are outraged about sending their kids to school in masks. Look, none of us love them (though they are nice when it's freezing outside, or when one has a zit on one's chin), but decent human beings understand that being uncomfortable sometimes is the very smallest price to pay for someone's life, or even for someone's well-being. Unless you're an asshole.

*

Years of journals reveal that I always think that May is the worst month to be a teacher. This is from 2017:

There is something about this time of year that I love, even when it's hard, even when I say (and mean) that May is the worst month to be a teacher, so far from the romance of September. Everyone is so done. But also, the promise of summer, of long, languid afternoons spent sprawled on the patio with a book and a glass of iced tea while the kids run through the sprinkler -- it's still just around the corner, far enough away that I'm not yet afraid of it slipping through my fingers. The anticipation is delicious, and it's just close enough.

Even in a Pandemic Year. There is something about this time of year that is awfully sweet, despite everything. And in this Pandemic Year, something about being back on campus after a full year away is more than that. Maybe it's everything. And for six weeks, I can do anything. 

And it is not lost on me that I am lucky to teach exactly where I am. That I am lucky enough to raise my kids in this community.

*

Teaching, right now, feels a bit like going on long walks in late spring, in a strange year. I never really know what to wear. I'm freezing, and then I'm dripping sweat down my back. I pass a lot of friendly neighbors, folks I feel I've gotten to know over the past year. I know who walks their dog early in the morning, who jogs, who takes ambling afternoon walks, who mows their lawn on Wednesdays instead of Saturdays. And then there's the glaring man in the house that, until a few weeks after the storming of the Capitol, displayed a huge "NO MORE BULLSHIT, TRUMP 2020" flag that covered half his siding. In February, he replaced the flag with what looks like a tiny Trump bumper sticker in his window, but he still stands in his yard, smoking a cigar and glaring.

A year ago, I couldn't have imagined this. A year ago, I couldn't process the possibility that we wouldn't be back in school September. I couldn't imagine my fourth grade son not setting foot inside a classroom before middle school; I mourned my little girl's lost freshman year. 

I roll with it, as well as I can. If the last year has taught me anything, it is that the world happens to all of us, and all things considered, we are senselessly privileged. I can't control the anti-mask assholes; I can't control much of anything, really. But I can try my damndest to advocate for and protect my family. I can try my damndest to serve my students, knowing full well that I can't give them enough of what they need.

I have no idea how to effectively use multiple screens, cameras, or any other tricks to engage both in-person and remote learners at the same time and make them realize that they are a class and a community, together. I can only hope that the energy I try to project shows them that they matter. 

We have six weeks left. In a Pandemic Year, that's enough for teachers to admit that they're exhausted and done, and the same is true for our kids. But the pandemic isn't their fault, either, and they still deserve our best.

And to be clear: that doesn't mean our best teaching, because that isn't possible in this context. But maybe we can give something else. Maybe we can extend grace to our kids, and to each other. Maybe we can hang on to the reasons we're here to begin with. Maybe we can take what we've learned from this year and make ourselves better. I need to believe that all is not lost.

*

I walked and walked after school today, trying to clear my head through sunshine and clouds, spatters of rain and fresh breezes. I was chilled, and then I was too hot. I waved at friendly faces and ignored the one who wasn't. 

The air smelled like heaven.

Hope, or something like it

The other night I was clearing out my medicine cabinet, getting rid of long-expired cold medicine, separated nail polish I haven't worn in a decade, things like that. A small container of muscle relaxers caught my eye. They expire tomorrow, a year after they were prescribed.

Isaac and I were driving home from his dentist appointment on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon last March when an older woman slammed into us from behind. We were completely stopped behind another car at a red light; she didn't even slow down. When she rear-ended us, our car slammed into the car in front of us.

Isaac didn't see it coming, and while he was terrified by the crash, the sickening metal crunch -- we both screamed -- he was perfectly fine afterwards, both immediately and in the days that followed. Our CR-V was only three years old, well designed to protect its occupants in a crash even when the car itself was a total loss, and his limber young body was relaxed when the car hit; he didn't see it coming.

I did see it coming, unlike everything else that would unfold over the coming days, weeks, months. I saw her speeding toward us in my rearview mirror, saw her not slowing. I couldn't do anything to avoid what I suddenly understood would happen, and my entire body braced for the impact. The next day I left school early with a terrible headache and a stiff neck and took myself to the doctor for X-rays. They came back okay, but the doctor recommended an appointment with a physical therapist.

I remember sitting in the waiting room with exactly one other patient, a flushed and lethargic woman who kept coughing weakly, her head dropping. She sat near the door; I sat as far away from her as I physically could. In early March, we weren't wearing masks yet.

*

That night I swallowed one of those muscle-relaxers before drifting into an uneasy sleep. 

I knew things were changing, but forty-eight hours earlier I was only beginning to adjust to the idea of holding student-led conferences by phone instead of flooding the school with families for three days. The next day, we learned that schools would be closed for six weeks. We had twenty-four hours to process this, and one day to gather up what we could and say good-bye to our students.

It's been nearly a year since I hugged one of my kids in D-7.

That last Friday, I expected our classes to be empty, but almost all of my students showed up.

“What about our assignments that are due this month?” 

“What about IB testing? Does that still start at the same time?"

“Are we really closed for six weeks? What about graduation?”

I couldn’t require my students to work during the break, or assign anything for grading. An issue of access and equity, we were told. I thought of my students who would be caring for younger siblings, who only had internet access at the public library—which, I was sure, would close as well. I thought about my students who would work extra shifts now, to earn money or to escape or both.

“None of us are going through this alone, even though it’s going to be hard to be apart," I said. "We’ll still figure it out together. I’m not really going anywhere. I’m going to check my e-mail at least once a day, and I promise I’ll respond to you. I’ll post ways to practice for the exams and we can have online discussions. It’s totally optional, so if you can’t do it don’t worry about it.”

They nodded.

“Try to get outside if you can,” I said. “Don’t stare at your phones all day. Clean your backpacks. Clean your rooms. Read! Read something that’s not for my class! Borrow one of my books!” I pointed at the bookshelf along the wall.

“Wait, we can borrow those?” asked one of my kids.

“What do you mean, can you borrow those? Why do you think I have them here? They’re not decorations, Babies. If you don’t borrow them, they’re just going to sit there.”

“I’ve borrowed tons of Winslow’s books!” said another. “I think I still have a couple, actually.”

“What do you think I’d like? Can you recommend something?”

I walked towards the bookshelf and they jumped up to follow me like little ducklings. When I pulled On the Come Up by Angie Thomas from the shelf and tried to hand it to one of them, her friend grabbed it before I had a chance.

“I’ve been waiting for this! Mine! I get this one!”

“Bro, what the hell."

“You can have it when I’m done. I’ll probably finish it, like, by Sunday."

“I beg and beg and beg you all to read,” I muttered. “And you do not read. And now look.” But I didn’t hide my smile.

At the end of class, I said, “You all drive me crazy. But you have no idea how much I’m going to miss you.” As I said that, I felt a sudden rush of tears to my eyes. 

I calculated quickly: if we returned in six weeks, I’d have two or three classes before they began their IB testing in May. My time with them as I had known it for the past two years had come to a sudden end, no matter what lay ahead.

They lingered after the bell, leaving slowly. Most of them stood in my doorway, waving.

“You have to go to French,” I said. “You have to go to history.”

(I didn't let the tears fall; I try to reserve that for my last day with my seniors, if it comes to that, because kids are burdened by enough without having to deal with a teacher's tears, and it felt like an important time not to fall apart. But I didn't know it was, in fact, my last day with my seniors.)

One of them turned back suddenly and threw her arms around me. By then, we weren't supposed to touch each other. But in the end, I couldn’t turn away from these kids, not with so much looming unknown. A year later, knowing what I know now, I'm so desperately glad for that last hug.

*

There are few folks I want to talk to these days who aren't my students or other teachers, frankly. I'm tired of the headlines pitting parents against teachers (what about those of us who are both?). I'm tired of the vitriol from folks who claim teachers are making excuses not to return to work.

Another teacher friend expressed a familiar sadness: friends she had always thought of as like-minded kindreds suddenly had plenty of things to say about teachers and returning to schools. Once, I tried to argue back -- yes, some schools can do it safely. But I hope my last post made it clear that not all of us can, and not before we're vaccinated. 

If you think I wouldn't give anything to be back in the classroom with the kids I know and love, already accepting the reality that I would take a bullet for them, then you don't think much of me as a teacher. Please don't consume the stories of my students for your entertainment, or to feel good. Please don't imply that I am looking for an excuse not to be with them (as our oblivious, dismissive, and tone-deaf governor has), or that I think you don't work hard too. Otherwise we know why you want us back and it has little to do with the kids.

(That said, I am so thankful for my friends who have reached out with kindness and solidarity. Please believe it matters. This has been one of the most demoralizing years I've experienced in a twenty-year career.)

Still, there are moments of magic. There are moments of joy, every week. I deeply appreciate my community, I love my students and my colleagues, and the work is worth it. I won't leave the work because it is hard right now; this isn't my time to go. I almost left teaching once, and I'm not in that place now. (But damn, have I struggled this year. I'm also a seasoned teacher who has had enough therapy and experience to understand that the world happens to all of us and still believe that I am where I'm supposed to be. I have the support and access to resources to take care of myself. Even in this struggle, I am senselessly privileged.)

*

I received my first dose of the COVID vaccine on Sunday morning. Because I write about everything all the time, I know that date fell exactly one year after the last time we dined inside a restaurant, which is? was? something we enjoy and miss. I'm looking forward to sliding into one of the cozy wood booths at the Elliott Bay Brewery with my family again. In the meantime, ordering takeout is not a burden, and I'm glad to support our favorite restaurants each week.

On Sunday I drove across the tide flats in the early morning light, parked on a quiet street, and walked into a building next to Tacoma General. I took a seat, answered some questions, accepted some papers. Vaccine information. Call this number if.

I scanned the room: lots of teachers. A few older couples who had come in together. I listened in on everyone's conversations, because I'm always curious. Teachers were there from so many districts. What do you teach? Oh, that's my son's grade! He's doing okay, but he misses his friends so much. It's just hard, you know?

We know.

The nurse who handed me my Vaccine Fact Sheet was beaming.

"I'm so, so happy we're getting so many teachers!" she said. "Our kids need to be back in school, but not until it's safe for everyone."

I nodded. "We know."

*

I drove home, the morning still quiet, the sky still lovely.

I felt something like jet lag before lunch. I thought I'd curl up for a nap in the quiet afternoon, but the fatigue wore off before then. I napped for an hour anyway. I felt fairly energetic for the rest of the day. By dinnertime, my arm was sore and I slept restlessly on Sunday night, but after a hot shower the next morning, I felt perfectly normal.

I took a long walk on Saturday morning, and I saw the first buds of spring on a tree along a quiet street. 

It is cherry blossom season again. 

Yesterday, I saw more of them. Soon, the cherry blossoms will flutter over the sidewalk and land in my hair. I'll reach up to touch them when I walk underneath their fluffy canopy. I've written about cherry blossoms in this space every year, I think, and who can blame me? I love the language of trees in any season, but cherry blossoms are about waking up. Last year, even as the world shut down, the cherry blossoms in the spring air were a reminder to stay awake and present in the only life I have.

I'm grateful to be here.

Balancing the scales

I've decided not to do Christmas cards this year. 

I know some folks are doing great ones: whimsical, playful, humorous, or just an attempt to maintain tradition in a year that challenges most of them. I wondered if creating a Christmas card would bring me a sense of healthy normalcy, because I do enjoy making them each year (I'm always in the "find the candids that show us as we are" camp and I think that will always be my style, because to me that's the fun part about making the cards, and it's us), but this year, it feels like a box to check, and this year, it feels especially important to reevaluate the importance of checking boxes when it might be healthier to let go of the expectation.

I've spent a lot of time talking about self-care with my students and trying to practice it myself. I've spent the fall working longer hours than I have since my first year of teaching, with not a lot of return plus the added scorn of what feels like, oh, everyone who isn't a teacher. Everyone has an opinion about teaching in a normal year, but in a pandemic year, it's pretty obvious that the "respect" folks claim to hold for teachers is pretty hollow when they're personally inconvenienced. (I know it seems I'm generalizing here. But also, I'm really not.)

In a normal year, even a hard one, I don't spend this much time feeling so defeated, angry, exhausted, and just...sad.

There are good things. Of course there are. Even in a pandemic, even in this strange context, even though I'm still struggling because what I do can never really translate to a screen, there's still no other job I want. Even now, so much is possible. Especially now, I owe my students the best I have to give. And my students still make it all worth it, so I'm still here.

But I'm tired of checking boxes. I think any teacher could tell you that we're feeling pretty micro-managed in a lot of ways right now (can we be trusted to be professional if we're teaching from home? Some folks seem skeptical about this, and it's not a coincidence that these are the same folks who seem to think that teachers are greedy takers if they dare to expect a professional salary). So I check a lot of boxes these days, boxes of no authentic value, merely to prove that I'm earning my paycheck.

Christmas cards do have authentic value to me, depending on the spirit in which they are given and received, I suppose. But this year, I can't do it. I can't check a box for the illusion of normalcy. I tell everyone I love to let things go and extend grace, and I am choosing to do that for myself as well. This is a thing I am letting go.

I'm sorry, Friends and Family. I do love your Christmas cards and will gratefully receive them if you choose to send them. If Christmas cards are transactional for you, though, and you choose not to send one our way again because this year I can't respond in kind, well, it is what it is. I don't know how to weigh my well-being against someone else's expectations right now.

Sometimes, the scales don't always balance.

*

I spent the first few Thanksgivings after college away from my immediate family. That first year, Matt and I prepared our own Thanksgiving dinner in our little one-bedroom apartment above the roaring traffic of Pacific Highway. I made my mom's scalloped corn, and he cooked a turkey. We had mashed potatoes. He made the pecan pie that he still makes every year. And every year, I would marry him all over again for that pie.

The turkey was a little dry, but the memories of the day are still pretty sweet.

We thought about trying to recreate the coziness of that day, with a little more experience and a bigger kitchen. In the end, though, we opted for ordering our dinner from McMenamins in Tacoma. A big Thanksgiving dinner is only a little bit about the food; it's really about the togetherness and cooperation and warmth. I didn't want to stress about a giant turkey dinner and the kitchen cleanup for the four of us when my daughter is just as happy to eat chicken nuggets and there was no reason to put out a spread of pita crackers and brie or fresh veggies and olives, too. Instead, we ordered food to go. I made my mom's scalloped corn anyway because it's really easy and I love it, and Matt made his pecan pie, because. See above.

It was a good decision. Matt and I took turns heading out for long runs and walks in the cool sunshine. (Matt probably ran twelve miles, but I don't want to know. I dug out my Turkey Trot shirt and ran my own personal 5k, then walked another hour listening to a podcast.) We hung out together. We allowed time for us to enjoy ourselves apart: iPad games, quiet reading. Late in the afternoon, Matt drove down to pick up our dinner and dropped off a couple of slices of pie for my brother and sister-in-law; after all, I think we've enjoyed every Thanksgiving since Isaac was born at their house, just minutes from our own.

In a non-Pandemic year, my high school students make hand turkeys in English class the day before Thanksgiving. Since I couldn't do that with them this year, I brought the tradition home to my own family. I realized, too late, that I'd left the good supplies -- the feathers and googly eyes -- in my classroom. But we had plenty of construction paper and card stock. We had glue. We had markers. We had random bags of dried beans and lentils from the art bin I put together when Isaac was born and I spent nine months on maternity leave with a three-year-old, determined to try "home preschool." 

A crafty Pinterest Mom I am not. But we had fun. Even my husband, who seemed resistant at first, got into the project.

"This is actually really calming," he said, as we cut feather from construction paper. He even held up dinner a bit because he wasn't "satisfied with the plumage." I told him he'd have to finish later.

*

Dinner was off-the-charts delicious. Not as good as our traditional family dinner where multiple households work together, but it was never going to be that. However, it exceeded my expectations for takeout turkey and all the sides, I didn't emotionally invest in the preparation while battling the grief over what was missing, and cleanup was a breeze. We had a Zoom call with my parents afterwards, and while it couldn't compare to our usual post-feast game of Clue, I'm still grateful we could see their faces.

*

As I made the choice not to do cards this year, as I said it out loud to my husband and cried just a little -- a strange but increasingly familiar mix of relief and grief -- I wondered if maybe we should just give ourselves permission to be a little quiet this year. Not to overcompensate with more lights, more spending, more stuff, more attempts to recreate the normalcy we cannot have right now. And maybe we should rethink what we consider normal anyway.

No: I didn't wonder. I wished it.

*

Every December, right around New Year's Eve, I write a huge Year-in-Review entry in my journal (my actual journal, not this public blog; it's really just for me). I've done this since before Suzannah was born, and it's interesting to see my answers to the same questions year after year. It goes without saying that I've been imagining my 2020 Year-in-Review entry for about seven months now.

One of the questions is Who did you miss?

Everyone. Just everyone.

It's a strange holiday season, for sure. We've spent every single Thanksgiving since our kids were born with my parents, brother, and sister-in-law. Over the years, we've added a few kids to the mix. It's always a cozy, lovely weekend -- one of my favorites. We've never spent Christmas on our own. But I think about the thousands upon thousands of place settings that will sit empty next year, and about the folks who have never been able to take holiday gatherings for granted in the first place. Togetherness looks different this year, but it means we can still hope for next year. And maybe it's not a bad thing, to focus on what matters, let go of what doesn't, and grapple with the sometimes heartbreaking in-between. To let ourselves celebrate and grieve, both, and let it shape us as it may.

Gratitude in the anything-but-normal

Every now and then a mood strikes me and I spend an afternoon reading old journals. I've been filling journals my whole life, ever since my first diary with a teddy bear on the cover, given to me shortly before Christmas when I was six. At the tender age of fifteen, I burned them all, weeping. I swore I'd never do that again, and while I did shred all the pages of one old volume several years ago (and I have no regrets about that one), I still have a lot of them, even after burning nearly a decade's worth.

Today I thought about my own teenager, and about how one of the unexpectedly beautiful things about this year -- a year in which everything is absurdly horrible -- is this time with her. I never would have wished her high school years to begin this way, attending class through a screen, hunkered down alone in her room. I especially never would have wished this when we chose to choice her into my school when all of her friends headed off to a different one.

Then again, as terrifying as it still is to send my baby girl into a new school (I was beside myself with anxiety the entire summer before she started kindergarten, and I didn't sleep at all the night before she started middle school), this time I knew in advance that I was trusting her with the best of the best, that she would be in good hands. If anyone can make connections during a global pandemic, through a screen, it's the folks I work with. I know exactly how hard they're working, and I've always been proud to work alongside them, but now I see the results of their efforts in a brand-new and deeply personal way. My girl is doing well, feeling supported, even making her own connections in this strange new environment. And that's everything to me.

I was always sort of excited about having her at my school. I didn't harbor ideas that she'd want to spend her lunches eating with me in my classroom, but I loved the idea of having her close. And that's what I love now. I love that we sign off of our last period of the day and eat lunch together at our dining room table. I love that she'll walk by me sitting at the table, getting ready for my afternoon office hours just as she's getting ready to practice her trumpet or finish her homework, and lean in for a quick hug, for no reason. 

In many ways, I wish she could just have a normal ninth grade year. Of course I do. But I also know exactly what I'd be missing in a normal year as my teenager grows up and grows into her own independence.

So this is the journal entry that stayed with me today, written when Suzannah was about three months old:

I used to be a terrible insomniac. College was the worst, but I've always been a light sleeper, and when I go to bed I have a hard time turning off my mind, which is not always a good place to hang out in the middle of the night. If something is bothering me, even something relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, I toss and turn and ruminate and obsess to a ridiculous degree.

I used to, anyway. Now, when I snuggle into bed with Suzannah in my arms, all of that evaporates. I hold my baby and watch her sleep and smell her head and everything else is just gone. I may sleep lightly, but it's a peaceful sleep.

Sometimes she's not completely asleep when we lie down. Sometimes if she's not completely asleep, I get up and walk with her, or nurse her a little, and she conks right out. But sometimes we'll just lie there together, and our eyes will lock, and she stares at me for what seems like a long time. And then she smiles sleepily. It just doesn't get better than that.

People ask when we're going to move her into her crib. People say she needs to learn how to sleep alone. People say she'll grow up clingy. But one thing I am learning to do is trust my own instincts instead of a book, or someone else's experience, and nothing feels right about trying to get her to sleep away from me. These moments are too fleeting already.

After I birthed my babies, I decided that no matter what, I would try to write something every single day, even it it was only a sentence, even if that sentence was just "sometimes motherhood is really fucking hard and lonely" scrawled across the page. Because something in me knew that if I didn't capture those moments, they would pass too quickly and fade into a blur. I wanted to keep and hold the moments I could, even the mundane ones, even the hard ones. Now, looking back, I'm so desperately glad I did. I love all the pictures we took; of course I do. But the words tell a more complete story, and a more honest and tender one. Many of them I'll just hold close; they're not for social media, or even this blog. They remind me to extend myself a little grace when we're all out of sorts. To apologize readily. To hold my arms open, always. To stop and breathe when I need it. To love our children as the absolutely unique people they are, rather than some idealized version of ourselves. To experience all of our moments, feel it all, and resist the temptation to rewrite the narrative for public consumption. I've written this before -- that sometimes it's hard to see the big picture when we're stuck in the small one. Looking back over our stories, though, and when I look at our lives right now, it occurs to me that this is exactly what I've always wanted. This, right here. These people. This partner, this girl, this boy, this family.

I've written this before, too -- that we don't ever turn dreamily to our partners and say, "Let's get pregnant and have teenagers." But it occurs to me now that this is exactly what we wanted: to raise these babies into people we love to spend time with. Those early journal entries show so clearly that our children have always been so very much themselves, and it is not lost on me how lucky I am to have have so much time with them now. In a normal year I'd be greedy for it. In this anything-but-normal year, I'm grateful for it.

This fall, I stole an idea from one of my favorite colleagues and had all my students sign up for five-minute one-on-one check-ins during office hours. It's probably the best thing I did all quarter. We didn't talk about school at all, unless the kids wanted to; rather, they chose a question from a list and we talked about that. Who's one person you really admire? What's one thing that makes you really happy? What's something that annoys you? What's the best book you've ever had?

And this: What is your biggest dream in life?

One of my kiddos chose that question, but she struggled to answer it. "I guess my dream is just to make a lot of money somehow," she said. "I want to make my parents proud. They've worked so hard, so I feel like it's my responsibility to really make something of myself." She paused, and then said, "What's your dream, Ms. Winslow?"

"Hm. Wow. Honestly? What I've got," I said. "I knew in high school that I wanted to be an English teacher, although honestly, I couldn't even have dreamed then that I'd love it like I do now. Like, I couldn't have imagined what it would actually look like. And I always knew I wanted kids, and mine have brought me, just, so much joy. Anything else, I guess, is a bonus."

"That's really cool. Wow. I love that a lot," she said. 

What I didn't have time to say, but what I wanted her to know, is this: there are things I want, sure. There are things I wish for, hope for. But something I've realized as I've gotten older is that I don't need to get everything I want to be truly, deeply joyful. To be happy. To realize that if I never have more than what I have now, it will be more than I knew to dream for when I was seventeen. It will be more than I could have asked for. It's more than enough.

I never want to be a closed door

Teaching challenges every assumption I make about teenagers. Every single year.

I still make them. I don't mean to, but I do. These days, with a bit of age and experience, I can usually remind myself to extend grace to these kids, but there are moments. 

I've been reminded so many times this month that this isn't school like normal. I can't expect what I normally expect because I can't support kids like I know how to do. Sometimes kids access my class from their phones in a parking lot. Sometimes they drive to a friend's house in a different town to borrow their laptop so they can log in. Sometimes they're caring for younger siblings or neighbors' kids, and their houses are chaotic and they literally have people climbing on them while they're trying to annotate a passage from a novel (two of my students allowed me to see that this week when they turned on their cameras, bless them). 

But all the same, I'm human, and dammit, I want them to do well. I mean, I also a little bit want them all to fall deeply in love with what I'm teaching because I love it so! much! And I hate not being able to communicate that to a room. Sometimes teaching is performance. It's hard to be my best teacher self when I'm mostly staring at my own face reflected on a screen. I get tired of looking at my own face. I can't blame kids for keeping their cameras off.

Still, I am working hard, and sometimes I let frustration get the better of me. Why hasn't that child even dropped a comment into the chat box? Why haven't they signed up for an incredibly non-threatening five-minute time slot to chat with their friendly and frankly sort of desperate English teacher, just so she can hear their voice? Especially when she begs, insisting again and again it won't be scary?

So it's easy to assume, this close to the end of the quarter, that a student is lazy, or doesn't care, or isn't cut out for my class. Especially if I don't know them. The only face I have is the face on last year's student ID badge, the face that shows up in my online gradebook. If I've done everything I'm supposed to -- I've contacted home, I've e-mailed, I've texted, I've sent private messages in the chat during class -- what else can I reasonably be expected to do?

Then this tiny message appeared in the chat, right as class ended: Miss, can I stay after?

I almost missed it. I had to pee. I wanted my five-minute break. Students from my next class had started to pop into the waiting room.

I waited, staring at the name, the same white letters stark against a black square. Would this be like the other times, when this student just didn't log off at the end of class? When, after long, silent minutes I assumed he'd ghosted my class, logged on and left, taken a nap?

"Miss?"

"Hi! Yes! I'm here!" 

I laugh at this a bit, hours later. Of course I was there, trying to calm my face, ecstatic at hearing a tentative voice through that black screen, trying not to scare him away. It reminds me a bit of taming feral kittens on the farm. Sometimes I was successful. Not always.

"Um. I'm sorry I haven't ever talked to you before."

My heart broke in that moment. It just broke. But I kept smiling.

"It's okay! I'm glad you're here. How can I help you?"

"I don't know if this is okay to ask, because one of my teachers told me it's too late to do a bunch of stuff. So I don't know. If it's -- I mean, it's okay, but my situation -- it's been hard, so I haven't been able to -- but some things are better now, so I'm trying to catch up enough to hopefully pass your class?"

"I'm so glad you're here, and it's not too late for anything."

"Can you help me?"

And my heart quietly broke again. 

Please never let me forget how much courage that question takes.

In a non-pandemic year, I'll be honest: sometimes it is too late to reasonably do All The Things, or even Enough Things, at this late hour. But when there is no reasonable way for me to support these kids in my actual presence, where I can carve out a routine and semblance of normalcy for awhile (as much as they fight me there sometimes, too), then I will hold the door open as long as someone wants to walk through it. Or as long as I can see someone hovering nearby even thinking about it.

I sent him a list. Do these three things first. Let me make sure you understand this, and then we can tackle this next chunk.

I waited an hour before I sent him a message, hoping against all hope that he would reply when he has never replied to me before.

Did you get it? Let me know!

Ninety minutes passed, but the reply came.

I got it. Thank you. I'm here.

What matters most

Trump is a loathsome monster of a human being, but he is still a human being, and I don't want COVID to kill him.

Some of my friends have some outspoken Trumpers on their friends lists, and those I haven't blocked I sometimes watch with real curiosity. Some claim they're unfriending reams of folks, apparently, for rejoicing over Trump's diagnosis and wishing his dead and this is what's wrong with the hateful left.

None of my more conservative friends are posting this, thank goodness (or if they are, they're filtering me out of it, which I appreciate. Please keep doing that if it applies to you). I also call BS on the ones who are. It's not that I don't believe these posts exist somewhere; I just don't believe the folks who are all, "Time for some FRIENDS LIST CLEANUP because I don't need that kind of hate in my life!" First of all, I could show you just as many random internet posts "rejoicing" at the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg if I spent three seconds hunting for them, and second of all, four days ago your leader attempted to bully his opponent over his dead son, mocked his last living son, refused to denounce white supremacy and told the Proud Boys to stand by, and then he exposed how many people to this virus while he went on to attend events after knowing he'd been exposed (and likely after he tested positive)? The virus he called the "China Plague" on Tuesday night? Tell me more about loving people and being a good human. I'll wait.

For the record, I haven't seen a single person on my own friends list who has "celebrated" Trump's diagnosis. Not one.

It doesn't mean we're wringing our hands, though. It doesn't mean we're wearing our "Oh no, I'm shocked!" faces.

I don't wish him ill. But Trump has access to the best care in the world, and my concern still lies with the folks who have fallen ill and don't have access to those resources and state-of-the-art care, who have lost their lives, who have battled with long-lasting effects of this disease. Who fell victim to his negligence and his lies and his utterly disgusting lack of empathy. Some of these folks are my students and their families. 

I wish the president could feel the effects of this virus enough to empathize with the folks who've suffered far more than he likely will, but I simply don't believe that's possible. He mocked Biden for wearing a mask; four days later he's making a video about "fighting for" all the millions of people who have been infected. I couldn't finish watching after that. Trump has only ever been about one person on this planet.

(Edited to add: See also the bizarre joyride he took today, forcing folks to share a hermetically sealed Covidmobile in what looks like a Weekend at Bernie's moment.)

I don't want him dead. I want him out of the White House.

***

And now for something completely different.

It's October, and we're nearly halfway through our first quarter. I spent nearly the entirety of the last two weekends and all of my weeknights until bedtime planning and uploading and planning and uploading every moment I wasn't actively teaching. This week I felt something shift; it is possible to breathe. Literally breathe.

Every day after school, the kids and I go outside. Often I convince Isaac to head over to the school playground, where he rides his bike and I jog around the track for awhile. Sometimes Suzannah joins us. Often Matt takes a quick work break to walk over as well. Sometimes the kids play basketball or ride the scooter around our house and I walk several miles alone through our neighborhood streets, because I appreciate the burn in my legs and love the sweeping views of Puget Sound. The afternoons have been sunny and warm. The leaves are turning gold against a brilliant sky. Every single day I go outside, just to notice it. To see everything I can, to breathe it in. This, I believe, is what living fully means. It's not about whether or not I can do whatever I want. It's about staying fully present in the moment I'm in.

***

I can complain all day long about how I miss teaching in my classroom. Well, I can teach in my classroom, but I can't be with kids in my classroom. That's unlikely to change any time soon, and as much as I want to be back I also understand that in a Pandemic, what we want is less important than lives, and that is actually what is at stake here. So I choose this instead: to become a better teacher. Even now, especially now.

Remote learning isn't "best" for most of us, but it is what we have, and it is necessary. And it doesn't mean that we give up and grow complacent, because our purpose isn't tied to a place; it is all about the folks we serve, in any context. It is critically important to be intentional in what I teach, and how. It is critically important to think about what matters.

Connecting with kids matters the most, full stop. In a remote setting, this takes intention and work but it is is not impossible.

Helping kids connect their learning with the bigger picture -- the "why" -- matters too. This is why I'm grateful to teach in an IB school, because this is the heart of good IB teaching (well, really good teaching anywhere, period; IB didn't invent that, but the IB mission statement acknowledges that our work is to create a better world, not just to get into a better college, and it's made my teaching more intentional in that way). Concepts over content. Inquiry. Curiosity. Empathy. This week one of my students sent me an e-mail in which she explained that she was worried her responses to an assignment weren't as concise or as clear as she'd hoped, but that she felt incredibly passionate about the topics we've been studying and discussing and she hoped that would come through in her writing.

Yes, I need to teach them how to write well. But first -- first -- I need to tap into their passion, if I can. I need to consider what they care about beyond the walls of our "classroom." I tell them I didn't become an English teacher because my passion is perfect thesis statements or grading essays. I'm an English teacher for the same reason I'm a writer and a reader: to connect. To feel that incredibly solidarity of "Me, too." To share a human experience with someone whose context is different from my own. To feel something enough to act on it. And to share, simply, what I love. This is the essence of what I do, and why.

And doing this over a screen is significantly harder for me. I don't really know how to work a faceless audience, when I'm mostly looking at my own face staring back at me. At least that's how I feel in my low moments, when I'm exhausted and overwhelmed. But I can't drop anchor at exhausted and overwhelmed, because the needs of my kids don't change based on my daily mood or energy level. So I try to remember this: I have an opportunity to try to be better, and I'd best take it. So what I care about this quarter isn't so much whether my students can practice enough for an IB assessment they don't even understand yet; what I care about is making connections with them and guiding their thinking, so they can make their own connections between what we read and the world in which they live. If they can do that now, the rest will follow. And it means they send me these little notes attached to their assignments. Sorry if this isn't clear, I just really get worked up and I'm trying to express that in sentences that make sense.

And that resonates with this teacher. 

***

During the winter of 2019, I met with my friend and colleague Shonda at Starbucks. We were armed with colored index cards and sharpies, the new IB subject guide, and plenty of energy. We decided to keep The Handmaid's Tale because we love that novel (and we had our picture taken with Margaret Atwood herself back in 2013 when she appeared at Seattle Town Hall after the publication of Maddaddam, and you are jealous). We also decided to add James Baldwin. We've gone back and forth over other others to include in other parts of the course, but Baldwin was at the top of the list, and we never considered cutting him. And so when I was faced with the daunting task of choosing what mattered most in a two-year curriculum I love deeply, it was a difficult choice--but then again, not so much. I taught The Handmaid's Tale in the fall of 2016, and it couldn't have been more relevant In the fall of 2020, it feels even essential. I'm teaching a quarter of Revolution and Resistance: James Baldwin and Margaret Atwood. There's no way I'm teaching it well enough, but I'm teaching it with everything I have, all the same. And maybe, maybe, the fact that I can't afford to be careless--I don't have a single moment to spare, really--means I can see this as an opportunity to do better and be better, in any year. 

To Really Live

Friday nights are so full when you're a teacher. When the day ends, my lungs expand to accommodate the biggest breath I've taken all week. Inhale. I can breathe. Exhale. Relief. Inhale. Hope. Exhale. Gratitude.

Relief. Breathing space.

Hope. Things are starting to click with these kids. They might be starting to trust me.

Gratitude. In any setting, remote or otherwise, I haven't lost sight of my purpose, because on most days I remember it isn't tied to a place, to a building. It's embodied in the kids I serve every day, exactly where they are, where we all are.

Friday nights are everything right now. And sure. I ended my work day in my own house today. I walked into the bedroom, changed my shirt, and went out into the breezy, damp afternoon -- just an hour after the rain stopped -- to go for a walk. I needed, desperately, to clear my head.

Clear my head of the comments on literally every single news article about schools and whether they're reopening or not. The comments demanding I get back to work.

Do my job.

Earn my paycheck.

Clear my head of the comments from some of my own friends and family on social media. (Friends, maybe you don't know that when you comment on news articles, it shows up on my feed. If you wonder whether I'm talking about you, rest assured, I absolutely am.)

I'm so tired. I do not know how to explain to people in my life who are not teachers how much harder this is than it has ever been before. I have enough experience in this career -- in this calling -- to make this claim, and to be believed.

This week I drove to a close friend's house to drink wine and snack on appetizers from Trader Joe's in her backyard, on her covered porch. Four of us met there, four of us who have been friends for nearly two decades now. We sat outside wrapped in blankets and hoodies and shared stories and solidarity in the evening breeze. 

We're all teachers, in four different schools, in four different districts. And still, they're my safe space to land. I don't trust many other spaces anymore.

Despite the fact that the four of us are probably as careful as anyone we know, we're still not really doing indoor gatherings. According to some of you, that means we're not really living. But the four of us also believe that 200,000 dead matters, that it's unacceptable, that it shouldn't have to be anywhere near 200,000 dead before we declare it unacceptable, and so we're okay with "sacrificing" a bit of what we're used to. Sharing appetizers on an outdoor porch, even after a storm, is a blessing and a joy, not a hardship. I love eating out on Saturday nights with my family! Love! And we've enjoyed outdoor patio seating many times over the summer. But eating takeout from our favorite places around our own table, while not "the same," is not a hardship. Losing someone you love to a virus that could be controlled so much better if people could prioritize human life over going to the gym or to the bar? That's a hardship. (I feel like pro-lifers should agree with me, but I also think most of us should understand that the pro-life platform is not about valuing human life, and I wish we'd start calling it something else.)

To my non-teacher friends who have extended your kindness and empathy, please believe me, it has not gone unnoticed. Please extend that to the teachers of your own children--they need it, no matter what their current context looks like. Face-to-face seems impossible. (If schools reopening is so crucial, where's our bailout? Do you think I've ever had sanitizing wipes provided for me? Let alone enough pencils, highlighters, paper, notebooks, markers? Nope, I buy those myself. And I would love to know if you can buy enough for your own family right now, let alone a full class load of students, and for a full-time high school teacher in my district that's 180 kids. Can we hire enough teachers to safely teach so many kids?) Hybrid seems so much worse. Prepare for face-to-face and remote learning? Where your in-person kids can't interact safely in student-centered ways that truly support best practices in education? When you still have to do all the work for remote learning, because you can't see all your kids at once? Because your classes have 35 kids or more, and your classroom space allows for sixteen at the absolute most, if you're maintaining anything resembling a safe distance? My kids are going to be able to do a lot more collaborative work, have more productive discussions, and form better connections with each other in breakout rooms online than they are in a classroom right now and that is the heartbreaking truth. This is a pandemic. There is no going safely back to normal, and normal is what we're asking teachers to provide. I'm so sorry. I truly am. I want that, too. But that's not possible in our current context.

To my non-teacher friends who are quick to point out that this is hard for everyone, believe me, we know. Many of us are parents ourselves. I am extraordinarily lucky in that my kids are old enough to manage quite well without needing me to be very hands-on during our school hours, but many of my colleagues have very young children at home, and teaching a class while you have a baby or a preschooler or a restless third-grader or a child with special needs who attends school in a different district that is also currently remote feels, quite simply, impossible. We get it. This is a Pandemic. It's not something that is happening unfairly to you because teachers are sitting around collecting an easy paycheck at your expense.

And to my non-teacher friends who are quick to point out the challenges they face in their own jobs while they're complaining about teachers (we're all allowed to freak out; I just think we should avoid doing the whole "Well, I have to______ so why shouldn't you______" when we don't have anything approaching an understanding for the person we're pointing our finger at), I would like to point out that I cannot open a single news article online -- from any source -- about education or the return to schools that does not include absolute vitriol directed at teachers in its comments. And make no mistake, public school teachers are pretty used to this, but usually I just ignore FOX news, where teachers are used to being screamed at. Now, though, it is incredibly demoralizing and personal in a way I've never experienced, largely because folks who have claimed to support us in the past are chiming in with their disgust now, now, as we're working harder than we ever have. Maybe we're an easy target, a faceless entity to absorb people's real need to vent (I understand so much of folks' frustration, I do). But we're not a faceless entity. Stop pretending you support the teachers in your life while ranting about us online. We see you.

On that note, if anyone wants to challenge me on this and send me an article about this very charged topic of schools reopening that doesn't include reams of comments explaining to me what a piece of shit I am, I'd love to see it. I don't think it exists. I'd love to be proven wrong.

***

I started writing this on Friday night; it's Sunday evening now.

This weekend, I finished reading one novel and started another. I played so many games of UNO and Blokus with my family. I walked thirteen miles around my neighborhood, winding through my favorite streets with the stunning views of Puget Sound and the Olympic mountains. I waved at my neighbors, the ones who have waved to me all summer while I walked in the morning hours. I haven't seen much of them this month because of the smoke and because I'm adjusting to a new schedule, and yesterday when a friendly grandpa who hikes around the same streets I do waved jauntily from a distance and said, "Haven't see you in a little while!" I grinned and grinned, because walking daily through this streets in the morning hours, meeting neighbors I've never known, has been an unexpected and beautiful blessing in quarantine.

Walking this same route every day over the past six months means I've noticed the seasons in an entirely new and intimate way. Spring. Summer. Fall. The way things bloom. The scents of different trees in different seasons. I've learned to name some of them. I've walked through the seasons of baby rabbits scurrying over the streets at dawn, and I've shared that with my kids. Now the squirrels are out in full force, as well as the neighborhood cats, hunting them. Yesterday I watched a black-and-white cat stalk a squirrel across a driveway, through a yard, and into the woods. I stopped and watched, just because I could. Just because I've become accustomed to noticing these small, ordinary moments that used to pass me by.

Maybe this is what it means to "really live" even while "sheltering in place." (I'm still curious about those folks who think they can't do that, to be honest, now that pretty much everything is open in some capacity. I asked that question last week and was answered with having the question deleted.)

Matt drove down to McMenamins and picked up takeout. We've enjoyed eating outdoors there, but the weather has been too tempestuous for the past two weeks (wildfires, rain) to open up patio seating this weekend. My burger was still delicious.

We had family movie night (The Art of Racing in the Rain, which checks all of the boxes for Dog Movies and it meant I cried a lot). Matt and I watched a few more episodes of Cobra Kai.

I had some face-to-face time with one of my best friends who teaches on the other side of the country, and we laughed and shared stories and flailed onscreen because everything is ridiculous and absurd. Becca and I haven't taught together in way too many years but every time we talk it's like we transport ourselves back to the same space, the space where we're planning a unit on The Great Gatsby or Purple Hibiscus together during a roundtable session for MYP and the world can be what it is but how amazing is it that we get to do this work?

I believe it's possible--and critically necessary--to stay present in the moment we're in, to notice the seasons, to care about each other, to practice self-care, and that's what "really living" means.

I miss people, desperately. Even people who disagree with me.

I miss the things I loved about our "normal" life. Desperately.

I miss teaching in the way I know how. I miss what I'm losing when I can't see my kids face-to-face.

But I also understand that we can't have normal. I believe that maybe, if we stop and listen, if we can try to be present, we can live deeply and fully and tap into our empathy for each other, that maybe we can be grateful for what we've learned and what we've gained, and maybe--maybe--that can make us better.

Anyway, it's the work of my life to try.

On Reopening Schools

NO ONE had better be lecturing teachers on how school closures affect students.

We know our kids need to be in school with us, and with each other. We know the burden it puts on families (including our own, but most of us also recognize that we were senselessly privileged to be able to keep our jobs, and do not for one second doubt that we deserve every dollar we earned during the school closure. Most of us worked harder in the last three months of the school year than we'd imagined could be possible when we didn't even see our kids). And we know it wasn't enough. Or it was too much. We know it didn't work, we know it was messy. My coworkers and I cried ourselves sick most nights in the beginning. We know nothing about it was "just right."

We understand the impact not just on their academic growth, but their mental and physical well-being, their emotional health, their very safety. And we understand this because we've been tasked with attending to these needs for a very long time, without a lot of support. Teachers pool their money to buy food and clothes for their students when they need to. We spend hundreds of our own dollars every year on supplies our district won't cover. We worry all summer long, and during breaks, because we know that school is so much more than academics to many of our students; it's a safe place to land, with predictability and routines and people who genuinely love them even when they're shitheads. (For that matter, that's why I love my school, too. I can be a perfect shithead sometimes, and my people there still love me. It's one of the reasons I've stayed for so long.)

Many of us tried to limp through a sudden free fall into "remote learning" while we tried to support our own families at home at the same time. Many of us are women, and I could write for days about the ways in which this pandemic has brought all sorts of gender inequalities into the glaring, unflattering light. Many of us have our own children at home. I have two absolutely wonderful, independent, resilient kids I love spending time with and I was absolutely not equipped to be their teacher. I have never once wanted to homeschool. I can hardly think of their teachers without literally weeping tears of sheer love and gratitude; they worked so hard to keep them engaged and connected, and we all still know it's not enough. We do all this while FOX news screams at us and every third comment on any story about teachers comes back to how it must be nice to get paid for nothing. And I think most of the time we can ignore that, because it's nothing new, but when you're experiencing trauma, you spend less time constructively taking on household projects and learning a side hustle or whatever and more time weeping into your wine and watching Outbreak too many times for it to be considered remotely healthy. (Or maybe that was just me?)

I'm not saying this because I want you to thank a teacher (although that's always nice) but because I want you to know WE GET IT. And we know everyone wants schools to open. We want schools to open. (If you doubt that I do, please read what I wrote only six weeks ago here.) But we want them to open safely, and what we DO NOT KNOW is how to do that safely, because no one has been able to provide answers beyond "We will follow these vague guidelines, created by people woefully out of touch with the reality of working in public schools."

Today, right now, these are a few of the questions I think NEED to be answered before anyone can expect teachers and students to return to work in a grotesque public health experiment. There are more, but let's start with the basics. And as of today, no one has been able to provide those answers. We shouldn't even consider returning to our schools until we have them. (Disclaimer: I know there are folks working so hard on precisely this, and I want to honor that. It is hard work. But we still need to know what it means for us and for our safety.)

What PPE will schools provide for staff and students? If masks are required (spoiler: in Washington, they are, and they are mandated at schools as well as everywhere else), who provides them for students who don't have them? Will teachers be expected to purchase our own face shields?

If a student takes off their mask or refuses to wear one, what will administrative support look like? What immediate steps will be taken? Don't tell me this won't be an issue. I teach teenagers who are terrible at social distancing. Younger kids are brand-new to wearing them and they're not great at social distancing. (I don't blame them! But also, seriously, what support will teachers receive?) Not only that, but there are folks on my Facebook friends list who are still posting about their refusal to comply with these government mandates, and in one case, they're also the ones insisting we figure it out and get their kids back to school because they need it. You know who you are, by the way, and I'm telling you right now, absolutely do not bother coming to comment here or on my Facebook page where I'm likely going to share this. I'm in no damn mood for that nonsense.

It's important to note that our concern about administrative support is real. I don't have a lot of "discipline" issues in my class, but I rely on proximity and close one-on-one conversations to handle a lot of issues. If my school district, not to mention state leadership, insists that we'll follow strict social-distancing protocol, please tell me what that looks like.

How will social/physical distancing be possible when the most my classroom can hold is about fifteen while still maintaining MINIMAL social distancing? (Seriously, that's if we're considering literally every inch of classroom space.) I am a program coordinator, so have about 130 students on my part-time teaching schedule; a full-time high school teacher in my district sees 180 kids, not including advisory. And what about classrooms that don't use individual desks but have tables instead? We have a lot of those. Who will provide different classroom furnishings?

Who will be responsible for cleaning and disinfecting rooms? How often will that happen?

Desks?
Light switches?
Door handles?
Shared supplies?
Pencil sharpeners?
Phones?
Laptops/chromebooks?

Will we be provided with adequate hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, access to soap and water? In my 19 years of teaching, I can count on one hand the number of bottles of hand sanitizer I've been provided. One or two of them were distributed during particularly nasty flu seasons; otherwise I had to ask in the office. I've always bought my own disinfecting wipes and cleaning supplies, but can anyone even find those anywhere these days? And as the mother of children who go to public school, I don't think it should depend on individual teachers to sanitize entire classrooms after each use and hope they all have the same standards of cleanliness.

My room is not remotely well ventilated, and my windows don't work well. Custodians have requested I not try to open them as they're "sort of broken." What is the district's response to teaching in such rooms?

How will students maintain physical distance on buses? (Spoiler: While some districts claim they will maintain physical distancing at school, I have yet to see them make this claim about buses, and some are quite open about saying they won't be doing this. Where would we get the extra buses and drivers anyway? We were already barely scraping by.)

Two weeks of quarantine can wipe out an entire year of wellness/sick leave. If a staff member is exposed and needs to quarantine, because that is the morally responsible and socially necessary response, are they expected to use their sick leave?

If a staff member falls ill with COVID, recovery can take significantly longer than two weeks. What support will be available?

We have a severe shortage of substitute teachers. Can we reasonably expect them to cover for our classes during a COVID outbreak if the school doesn't close altogether after an exposure? If a teacher is infected with COVID, we all know it's not just a matter of staying home for a day or two. We'll need long-term substitutes who can deliver our curriculum.

If a student is exposed to COVID or tests positive, what are the next steps for the school? Does that student's teacher and class quarantine? In high school, students have multiple classes; do they all quarantine? Do they close? How will we alert families? If my own child is exposed at a different school, I would obviously need to self-isolate. What about my students? What if a student's sibling is exposed? We're a large district, and many of our families have children in different schools. Can you see how quickly this would escalate?

What specific circumstances would necessitate a school-wide closure?

If schools wouldn't close because a student or staff member was infected (and let's just say infected and not merely exposed, for the sake of argument), what steps would be taken to ensure everyone's safety?

If we're teaching in a hybrid model (that has been proposed by so many districts) and a teacher gets sick, with COVID or otherwise, would that teacher be allowed to teach remotely, or would a substitute be required?

If we are expected to teach remotely FROM our classrooms in an entirely online model, what happens if we get sick (COVID or otherwise)? Would we have the option to teach from home? If not, will we have subs equipped to step in and teach remotely for us? What will that look like?

Don't lecture teachers -- and for that matter, don't thank them either -- if you're not willing to advocate for them. The only folks who have been advocating for teachers are teachers, and make no mistake: when the "leaders" of our country call for a return to school, it's not because they care about our students. WE care about our students. And what we need is to be safe to do our jobs as well as we can. We shouldn't be your public health experiment.