Teaching in a Covid World

It’s been a minute since I have written a post for Pass the Honey. Actually, it’s been over two years.  I didn’t feel like I had anything worth writing about, or at least I didn’t feel that my thoughts were worthy of someone’s time.

I’m not going to go into all of the events of the last six months.  I’m sure you know all about Covid-19, the pandemic, hand washing, mask wearing and social distancing.  I don’t want to beat that dead horse. What you may want to read about is the latest controversy coming out of the pandemic – going back to school.  On that, I am an expert.

I’ve been a teacher for 40 years and have experienced so many events on global and local levels with my students – refugees from Vietnam and Hurricane Katrina, the HIV/AIDS panic, terrorist activities, space shuttles exploding, civil unrest, etc. We have shared suicides/deaths of classmates and teachers, break-ups of families, unwanted pregnancies, incarcerations, etc. In all these tragedies and changes, I felt that I was one person the students looked to for answers or comfort when life went awry. We, as a team, worked through the problems together while also trying to learn the correct uses of the comma.  My job was to listen, reflect, point toward a brighter future and move on with the lesson. This is when I’d quote Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind – “Tomorrow is another day!”

Life is different now. I don’t know if I can pull off the team concept of working together with my students to face this latest devil.  I’m overwhelmed with having to learn all new technology and curriculum for teaching in person and online – synchronous, they call it. I’ll have my students sitting in front of me wearing masks (I hope), waiting for me to connect via Zoom to the kids at home. All of them will look for me to guide them through their senior English class, but we will be cognizant of maintaining our 6-foot bubble which is impossible in my classroom. Every day, we will be waiting for the notice to “retreat to home” for remote learning.

My colleagues are facing impossible odds. We cry multiple times daily. We bitch about having to teach some automated curriculum so we will all be at the same pace when we “retreat to home.” We now must fill 105 minutes of class time instead of 50 so our pacing is totally off. We have little faith in our leaders because we don’t know who to trust with our lives. We feel like sacrificial lambs being led to the slaughter of ourselves, our students or our family members. We have a doomsday outlook because we know the technology will fail given that we teach in a school that is over 100 years old. The Wi-Fi never worked in the past, and it certainly won’t now with every student sucking up the signal. We anticipate fielding many complaints from parents because their kid isn’t getting a quality education.

Every day, I count my blessings; I have many and I’m grateful. I follow rules and laws. I do my best to be a good citizen and person. I also try to find a way to be positive through terrible events. I have faith that God knows what He is doing, and I hope that we will come out of this ok. My colleagues and I are going to do our best and hope that parents will be patient. But honestly, right now I’d love to tell Scarlett O’Hara to shut the hell up.