Remember this post? 

The one where I lamented the unforeseen tragedies of 2020? 

I’m Shook.

It is surreal that I penned that post less than a month into the new year, and here we are arriving on the doorstep of month number 8, and the chaos continues to unfold in ways we could never imagine. 

I feel naive looking back. Imploring kindness and patience before I knew how much we would all dearly need it, and somehow wishing rather than imploring it then, asking you all to bottle up your reserves for bigger and more catastrophic things to come. 

Writing on the blog has become harder than ever before. Scott and I feel the weight of our words, and I speak for both of us when I say we don’t want to utter something out of turn, not thought out as well as it should be. We don’t want to alienate, politicize, or create division. And these days, it seems everything is highly controversial and divisive. 

I will say this: I am struggling. I don’t think we allow ourselves to say those things aloud the way we should. As a teacher, I am experiencing an anxiety that I have never known before; the kind that has me reaching for my chest throughout the day, willing my lungs to breathe a little slower and my heart to stop racing. The kind that has my stomach in knots so much so that I double over in pain at the sight of another opinion post, another politician telling us all to get over it and get back to the classroom.  I can’t fall asleep because I am worried about how to prepare lessons to students sitting 6 ft apart, half in the classroom half online. I wake up before the sun rises, contemplating how to address the issues in the news for students who have been emotionally jarred for months and months, only now returning to something quite the opposite of “normal”. 

I am not prepared. No one is. 

I wasn’t prepared when I testified to the character of my student who came out in an orange jumpsuit after 42 days in isolation for a crime he did not commit. I wasn’t prepared when my 18 year old senior openly sobbed on the couch in the back of my classroom, having worked all night at Taco Bell just to keep the lights on in his house. I wasn’t prepared when one of my students who suffered mental illness threatened to kill me and I was locked in my my classroom for my own safety. I wasn’t prepared when my 16 year old student came to me for help having just discovered she was pregnant, nor when my other 16 year old student came to me for advice on how to handle his girlfriend’s pregnancy and what to do to prepare to be a dad.  I wasn’t prepared when I opened the Dear Ms. G note and found, in scrawled and emotional writing, admittance of my student’s attempted suicide. 

I wasn’t prepared for any of those things, but they were just part of the job and so I did my best to serve my students, hoping that the lack of training I had in social work would be made up by my experience over the course of my life trying to be a decent person.  And after all of those things, 14 years in a classroom dealing every day with the social/emotional/mental needs of teenagers, I realize that no one has considered the social/emotional/mental needs of teachers in this role. Add Covid now to the list of mental needs and hardships and I’ll be honest -it just broke this camel’s back. 

The best and strongest of us in this world are struggling with how to deal with a pandemic, how to safely navigate new measures in whatever life’s role we play. I thought at the beginning of this that I somehow had found the silver lining – I was working from home, Pinteresting recipes I could make in the kitchen I hadn’t had time to cook in for years, and Scott and I had many nights on the couch with old classic movies, popcorn, and wine. Pandemic rain on my parade? Ha. And then as we slowly crawled out of the worst of it here in NY, the uncertainties of the approaching school year stripped me of that false sense of security that somehow I had managed to handle Covid with poise and aplomb. After years of patting myself on the back for surviving and thriving after abandonment, divorce, and financial ruin, the stress of walking into a building in a mask to “teach” my students in whatever model  is chosen for us has gotten the best of me. 

I don’t say this for any other reason but to ask you to be truly kind right now on your social media and public posts. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be a parent with young children needing instruction on formative reading and writing, math.  I don’t pretend to understand your position – but I DO KNOW I am given 100 children or more every year, and I know from experience in this role that students and teachers are best in the classroom together -in person. But that doesn’t mean I, or other teachers, are prepared to handle this. Please be patient, and kind, and know that we are all in this together, doing the best we can. 

xo.