Last night was awful. I got another email from Lee’s teachers, listing all of the ways he failed this week. It was a list of missing assignments and poor grades and all of it felt more like an accusation than anything else.
It felt like my failure for not monitoring well enough or checking his work or reminding him enough.
Except I honestly don’t know if I can do any better. We have something new happening approximately every 15 minutes between 9 am and 2pm daily. There are four of us on different zoom meetings in different rooms. In between my own teaching, I’m trying to assist and monitor my own three kids, with their various learning disabilities, ADHD, and emotional issues. I’m trying to help my students, all of whom have significant disabilities and are struggling to stay afloat during distance learning. I’m failing. At all of it.
I listen to friends complain that “school is a joke” right now. Three hours a day, four days a week. They say it’s not nearly enough. I hear that and I want to cry.
As a teacher, I am drowning. In a physical classroom, I can look at a room of 25 students and know within 20 seconds who is off task, who is confused, who is tired, who is distracted. I can partner them in ways that ensure that every kid is learning. I can discreetly move closer to a kid who is off task instead of calling them out and embarrassing them in front of the whole group. None of these things is possible in a virtual space. All of my lessons need to be rethought and rewritten. Everything that could be accomplished in a classroom in a few minutes takes a few hours online. A 20 minute read aloud takes over an hour. 20 minutes to record it. 30 minutes to replay it and add quiz questions to ensure comprehension. 10 minutes to post it and type out directions and add it to the calendar and the agenda. 20 minutes to review student responses to see if they got it. Another 20 minutes to follow up with the kids who missed it. And then maybe a zoom meeting to clarify with the kids who are totally lost.
So the assignment that took your average kids 20 minutes to do? That took two hours for your teacher to prepare and execute.
And that’s not even the hard part. I have a student with a rough home life who isn’t showing up to classes. I don’t care if he completed his Social Studies homework. I just want to know that he’s safe and fed and sleeping and making connections with people who care about him. We have students in abusive situations. We have students who are parenting their siblings while their parents go to work. We have students who are hungry and students who are anxious and students who are bored. The hardest part is the helplessness and the worry. We love these kids, whether the general public chooses to believe it or not. And our hearts are breaking for them.
So where does that leave us? As teachers, and as parents? We feel like we’re failing on all fronts. And from my conversations with friends, this feels pretty universal.
I spent a long time on the phone with my son’s guidance counselor this morning. I think we came up with a plan to help him going forward. But it was emotional and exhausting and left me feeling depleted.
I ended the call just in time to join a meeting with my supervisor to try to solve a tough work situation. We made progress, but didn’t solve it, and I ended the call feeling disappointed.
Then I went to check on my kids. I was prepared to check the homework (again) and yell at them about cleaning their rooms. But they weren’t anywhere to be found. Instead, my two boys were out in the stream next to my house. They were catching frogs. They were laughing and joking and getting along. And I couldn’t stand the thought of breaking that up to have yet another battle about schoolwork.
I let them play.
This afternoon, we’re all going to work together on a “Nailed It” baking challenge. It’s a perfect activity because the challenge is to bake something that looks like your pet. Bea’s obsessed with baking. Lee is obsessed with pets. And Cal is obsessed with activities in general. We’re all enthusiastic about it. We have two turtles and two dogs and a guinea pig and a hedgehog. The kids have designed cupcakes to represent each one. It’s math and reading and art and social interaction. It’s a way to learn something and have fun together.
And I’m second-guessing my choice to participate. Should I be punishing them for their incomplete schoolwork? Should I be forcing them to make a dream catcher out of yarn, like the teacher instructed? Should I make sure they edit their paragraphs, instead?
I feel judged. I feel judged by their teachers and their counselors and by other parents.
I’m learning to trust my own judgment, instead, but it is a challenge. I’m weighed down by expectations. Expectations of what a good teacher or a good mother should do. Expectations of what ‘success’ looks like for kids during quarantine. Expectations about priorities and standards and achievement.
God. Those expectations are so heavy. And they keep me from doing what I know in my heart and my soul is the best thing for my family.
I’m trying to drown out the expectations with my own, strong inner voice. It’s not easy, but when I succeed, it is SO, SO worth the effort.