Just Try Your Best
As a teenager, I knew I wanted to do two things when I became an adult: to be a mom and to work with kids. I started baby-sitting when I was 12, worked at church childcare and private daycares and substitute taught in college. As an educator, I’ve taught pre-k, kinder, 1st grade, PPCD, and Special Ed Resource 1st-5th grades in public schools and have even run my own in-home preschool. I have faced a (little bit) of fertility problems and now have three wonderful children — one of those births was surrounded by questions of possible chromosomal disorders. My son ended up not having any chromosomal disorders, but did have very low blood sugar at birth and was in the NICU for about 36 hours — not catastrophic, but still very stressful. All of that being said, this year has been the hardest year as an educator and as a mother for me.
As an educator, I have been working countless hours afterschool and on the weekends to prepare for online and in person classes. During school hours, I have been teaching students both in person and online and texting parents to remind their students to get on zoom or to complete their work. While teaching students both in person and online, I have to make sure students are socially distanced and remind them to keep their masks on. I also have to calm down students who have anxiety about getting Covid at school, or about leaving their parents, or who are having anxiety because they are living in the shelter because their parents lost their job due to Covid. As a special education teacher, I also have a lot of paperwork. This year has been more paperwork than ever before. My school district changed systems so we had to learn the new program while also trying to figure out how to take progress data on students over Zoom. There is no educator handbook for this — no “best practices” to follow. The educators are literally figuring it out as we go and working our hardest to make sure our students continue to learn in a safe and caring environment. The trials and errors matter a lot in our jobs. We are teaching students the basics of education.
While all this is going on at my job, my own three kids are learning from home. My kids are old enough to stay by themselves (we have one in elementary school, one in middle school, and one in high school), however I am lucky enough that my husband can work from home for the most part and my in-laws live in an apartment attached to our house. So, there is almost always an adult around. The actual learning part of remote learning was the hardest transition for my youngest child. He’s in 3rd grade and had to learn how to get on Zoom for his classes, how to turn in assignments online, and watch the time for his schedule. Socially, he was content with our social distance dates in the backyard or meet ups at the park with our family friends. We also figured out how to get him ‘facetime’ through an app on his ipad so he could face time with a couple friends. He also has figured out how to play minecraft with his friends. He is on screens way too much and I feel incredibly guilty about that. My daughters (one in middle school and one in high school) were already used to the online program of turning in assignments, etc. They now just had to add in Zoom classes to their schooling. While learning through a computer is more challenging, they both are doing okay with the classwork. However, the social aspect of missing their friends and activities took a toll on them. Cheer, dance, and piano online are not the same as cheer, dance, and piano in person. Talking to your friends through ‘facetime’ or even 6 ft apart in the backyard isn’t the same as hanging out in your room or having sleepovers with your best friend. They both have exhibited signs of anxiety and my older daughter is now being treated for depressive disorder. For several months, my husband and I slept with our door open and slept lightly in case we were needed in the night. We have taken turns trying different tactics to bring our daughters out of their rooms to engage with the rest of the family. With the help of my in-laws, we have planned drives, walks, bike rides — anything that gets them out of the house and in the real world. We have encouraged them to take their hobby and try to monetize it (mostly to give them a project to focus on). We do our best to make sure their nutritional needs are met — when you’re not feeding your body properly, your brain has a hard time functioning. We’ve tried to say yes more and explain our reasoning for saying no when we need to say no. And we worry. Worry constantly about each decision we are making. Not only do we have to worry about grades and learning, but we have to worry about mental health and then also Covid.
At the beginning of the school year the reason to stay home was clear. We don’t want Covid. We have people in our house that are in the high risk category. Then, the adults were able to get vaccinated so we allowed more social activities to happen (still safely masked, etc), but was that the right decision? How can we be sure they are distanced the whole time? Then the oldest was able to get her vaccine and we allowed her to go to school to conduct cheer business as needed, but she had anxiety about being back at school and had to leave at lunch. Now, the middle child is allowed to get vaccinated — do we send our kids back to school for the last month? All the kids say no — they want to learn from home still and we agree that the transition is too hard this late in the year — but is that the right decision? There is never any judgement from me on what my friends or family have decided to do with their own children this year for schooling. It’s a very personal decision. If you are doing your best to get your kid to show up (in Zoom or at school), then that is all you can do!
As a teacher, I know in-person learning is usually more productive than remote learning. As a mom, I’m trying to protect my family both physically and mentally. Also as a mom (with the help of my spouse and in-laws), I’m making sure my kids show up to their Zoom classes and turn in their assignments. I’m on the list to get emails if their grades drop below a certain percentage, I get an email if they were absent, I get three phone calls from three different schools and three emails from three different schools about what is going on at the school. It is truly exhausting to try to keep up with it all — but we are trying.
That’s all we can do — as educators and/or as parents. Just show up and keep trying. If we missed a meeting, we make it to the next one, if we turn in our grades late, we try better next grading period, if your lesson worked in person, but not online, we try a different tactic for the online students the next day, if our kid has anxiety that night because they feel weird and can’t stop shaking (because all they ate was cereal that day) we try harder the next day to make sure they eat correctly, if a kid ends up in our bed because they are having a hard night, then they stay in our bed and we try our best to show them they are safe and loved and this uncertain time in our life will not last forever.
This is what I tell my students at school and my kids at home. We are all doing the best we can. Just try your best. This is a crazy year. We can’t control a lot of things going on around us, but we can control our reaction to them. We can try our best in that moment to make the right decision and move forward.
