Last Friday, the governor commanded all teachers back to buildings by April 19th, ordering all schools to make 30% of learning available in-person. I am so ready.
When
I visited my sister on Saturday, she told me her daughter had become lazy and
wasn’t putting in the work or previous concentration; I told her as a teacher, I’ve seen so many students--both those with resource issues and those resource-rich and reliably prompt--fall through a motivation and spirit hole: what looks
like laziness to a parent is not laziness.
Maisie’s unexpected response to the return was distress.
Her first joy in school has always been gathering with friends and the energy
of interactions; but now she says there are people to whom she just does not
want to return, online presences and tensions she does not want to see made
live. It deflated me.
And
then I read an opinion piece written by a 12th grader in Virginia,
who described students split alphabetically and sent in shifts and divided
still smaller because many stayed home, and he described how his teacher
made all his eye-contact with a laptop rather than the live students behind the
screen, and he portrayed lunchtime as students separated on green dots and scolded
for their aerosol vectors when they tried to talk. This led to a third, more
tentative response in me.
My students,
meanwhile, are largely apprehensive about going back. They don’t trust their
peers or teachers and they don’t trust our school to keep their families safe. A
student gymnast described football players huddled together, talking loudly and
poorly masked, and one of our staff stepping into the gymnastics gym and pulling
down his mask to yell.
I
can’t blame students for their reticence. But it’s still true that something needs
to be different. Yesterday, I checked in with my classes--How are you
feeling about the return-to-school order; how are you doing; how are you
feeling about the workload in this class? One of my brilliant
and normally energetic students has been down for a while. She admitted as much
again. And when I sang “Older” in celebration of her birthday occurring later this
week, she looked away. After class, she stayed behind for a logistics
question, after which, I tried to condole with her, and said something about
Wednesday being “your birthday, damn it!” She started weeping. After school, I
wrote a birthday card all appreciations and celebrations, biked to the store
for chocolate bars, rode them six miles to her house, and
knocked on the door to her mother who disappeared very fast to get her daughter,
who then stood in front of me awkwardly, crying again, as I said, I just wanted
to wish you a happy birthday, and I needed to see your face, and she thanked me,
eyes wet, waiting for me to leave.
Something
needs to be different.
