Back to School: What Would Ted Lasso Do?

School starts for real in just over two weeks. The Delta Variant is still making its presence in our lives widely known. Too much of society seems intent on using school as a catalyst for inventing new varieties of division to make everyone feel as angry and uncomfortable as possible. This isn’t really the environment anyone wants to see in the schools as we start another academic year. In the words of one particularly wise songwriter, “We all need some light.”

One of the most currently recognized sources of light, optimism, and comfort is the TV show “Ted Lasso.” Yes, it’s on Apple TV+ which not many people seem to have. It’s a little tragic that more people aren’t able to enjoy this show, because it takes a fairly typical fish out of water premise and turns it into something remarkable. Since the character of Ted Lasso is a coach, and with a little imagination it’s easy to see the connections between being a coach and being a teacher, I’ve collected some moments from the show that I think would be good things for teachers to keep in mind as they begin this potentially hairy, but still possibly great, school year. 

For the uninitiated: “Ted Lasso” is a show about a college football coach who was hired to coach a professional football/soccer team in England without any knowledge of the game. I won’t go into much more detail about it since I’ll be spoiling a few things along the way as it is. I’ve listed ten points because ten has always been a good round number to fall back on for lists since the days of David Letterman. As always, in no particular order….

(1) “Biscuits with the Boss.” Ted brings team owner Rebecca shortbread biscuits (cookies) every morning as an icebreaker. As he says, “We can’t be good partners unless we get to know each other.”

Everything about success in education begins with relationships. This goes for both teachers and students. Students won’t learn as much from someone they don’t know or respect, so it’s important to win them over by demonstrating they’re important to you. Find a way to connect so you can be good partners.

(2) “Be a goldfish.”

Sam, one of the players, is down on himself for making a mistake at practice. Ted points out that a goldfish is the happiest animal in the world because it has a ten second memory. He tells Sam to be a goldfish.

Don’t dwell on the failures and mistakes. They will always be a part of what you do, and overthinking your way through them won’t change what happened, whether it was a kid who did something foolish or a test that went poorly, or a time you lost your temper. Take what you need from the situation to move forward and find a way to try again. 

(3) “One of eleven.” After one of Ted’s first games, he calls his best scorer, Jamie, into the office to talk. Jamie’s expecting to be dressed down by a new coach he doesn’t respect. Instead, Ted calls him the most talented athlete he’s ever coached. Jamie’s caught slightly off guard. Ted then tells him the one thing he can do better is to remember not to think of himself as one in a million, but one of eleven, and how much of a difference it would make if he played as part of the team instead of trying to be the star.

Teachers work on several different kinds of teams. Looking ahead this year, I’ve got a grade level team, my class, language arts teachers, math teachers, building leadership, special education, English language learners, specialists, and that’s off the top of my head. Each team works toward the same goal of achievement. If minimal professional respect for the people you work with is the best you can do, fine. Not everyone will become best friends. If you’re able to become friends, even better. If you’re bossy or arrogant or aloof or refuse to listen to anyone, you won’t get as far as you otherwise could. Communication and collaboration are important parts of making any team work effectively. If the team is working, as Ted points out to Jamie, “the sky’s the limit.”

(4) “Wins and Losses.” Ted says while being interviewed by a somewhat contentious reporter that he doesn’t care about wins and losses. He later clarifies that it’s more important to him “to help these young fellas be the best versions of themselves.”

Wins and losses do matter, often more than they should. Pro sports? Yeah. Student test scores being used to measure some aspect of progress for the student, the teacher, the grade level team, or the building? Hell yes. Student progress has to be monitored so learning needs can be addressed and serviced effectively, but at the end of the year I’m usually happier to reflect on the personal growth my students made than worrying about how many percentage points above or below a dictated proficiency level they were. Outside of the overdone data jockeys that are too commonly found in 21st Century education, I’d speculate most teachers would feel the same way. 

(5) “Na na na na na na na na Dani Rojas.” Dani Rojas, a player injured for the first part of the season, makes his first appearance. He’s so consistently joyful that Ted compares him to a golden retriever. He even turns his own name into a song, and somehow there’s nothing arrogant about it. He’s respectful to the coaches, friendly with his teammates, and it turns out he’s incredibly talented.

Dani is that student who loves to learn. The one who always raises their hand, gets everything right and still works hard. The one wants to know what else they can do after they finish the test they just completed with a perfect score. Every teacher loves having a Dani Rojas in class, but if you have a class made up of other challenges, it can be too easy to set Dani aside and figure since they’re going to take care of themselves, you can devote energy to the kids who need more of your attention. That’s not really true, though. As a teacher, you can either waste that drive or find a way to encourage it. What could Ted do to make Dani the best version of himself when there’s already so much about him that’s good? What can you do as a teacher to bring more learning out of that student, at a level with appropriate challenge?

(6) “We can’t change the past. We can choose to honor it.” The training room is cursed, as everyone on the team knows. It's said to be haunted by the ghosts of four hundred WWI soldiers who took their military physicals in that room. Ted’s solution for breaking the curse is for each player on the team to sacrifice something personally important as a tribute. The team collectively and verbally rolls their eyes at this until Roy Kent, captain of the team, stands up and yells, “We’re all gonna ________ do it!” (Roy swears so much in this show he owes his eight-year-old niece about one thousand pounds each month in her swear notebook.)

Every class has an effective leader somewhere in the group, someone who has the respect of the others. If you get 25-30 kids spending ten months together, chances that leader will emerge. I had a Roy Kent in my class last year. He didn’t swear like the character Roy Kent, but he was absolutely a leader, and acknowledged by the others as such. He didn’t aspire to lead; it’s just who he naturally was. Luckily my Roy Kent was an incredibly positive influence on the rest of the class -- I suppose he was more like half Roy Kent and half Dani Rojas. Unfortunately, some leaders can also bring negativity to the group and drag the class down. It’s important to try and recognize who these kids are and to win them over for the good of the class.

(7) “Football is life.” The mantra of Dani Rojas; he says it at least five times an episode. Any of us would be lucky to find something in life we love as much as Dani loves playing.

Teaching? Oh, wow. It is far too easy for teaching to become life. Too easy to get pulled into the wins and losses and dramas that define a school year. Too easy to lose sleep over at-risk students. Too easy to bring three stacks of papers home and tell yourself you're doing it just so you can keep up. Too easy to get lost in so many different rabbit holes that you don’t completely emerge from until a week after the last day of the school year. Teaching can’t be life, and this is coming from someone who has let that happen to him far, far too many times. You have to find a balance between what you are and what you do. 

(8) “Be curious, not judgmental.” Rebecca’s ex shows up at the local pub with a date, mostly to push her buttons like the a-hole he clearly is. He and Ted decide to play a game of darts with reasonably high stakes. They think they’re each hustling the other guy. Before winning, Ted gives a little speech based around the aforementioned Walt Whitman quote, explaining why it’s more beneficial to be curious instead of judgmental.

What assumptions do you make about your students based on first impressions? As time goes on, are you looking for ways to reinforce those assumptions, or do you let your opinion evolve as you learn more about who they truly are? What about the people you work with? Our school is in the unique position of having experienced nearly unprecedented staff turnover in the past three years. That’s a lot of new colleagues trying to figure each other out at once. I’ll be the first to say there are still a number of people I don’t know well enough to have a normal conversation with that would go beyond simple “How was your summer?” small talk. This should be more of a long-term project instead of something done during a twenty-minute team building, ice breaking activity in the middle of a staff meeting.  

(9) “It’s the hope that kills you.” The last game of the season is an important one for the team. The players, and the fans, all subscribe to this philosophy, feeling that getting your hopes up only to have them dashed away on the rocks is a bad thing. Ted, unsurprisingly, disagrees. He thinks it’s the lack of hope. 

How do you approach teaching a new skill? Or reviewing one before an assessment? Are there students you habitually write off because you don’t expect them to accomplish anything? Sadly, most of us probably have. We hope they’ll do well, but things don’t always work out that way. It’s important to remember that blind hope is nothing but a joke people play on themselves. However, hope with action behind it always stands a chance.

(10) “Tear it Up.” Jamie returns to the pitch in Season 2 after events have led to him having a contentious relationship with nearly the entire Richmond team. In the scene when he returns, “Tear it Up,” a particularly rocking song found as the second track of Side 1 on Queen’s 1984 album “The Works” is used as the soundtrack to his return. It’s a perfect fit for the tension and drama that we see taking place. It’s also one of the songs that much younger Tom actually listened to while getting pumped up before soccer games in high school. 

This, in my view, is easily a good enough reason to include that moment on this list. Maybe it’d be a good idea to have a go-to song or two in your back pocket to start the school day, even if you listen to it during your commute. Trust me, it can make all the difference.

Now go out there and get them, team! Just be sure you have your mask. And you've been vaccinated. Because you know Ted would be vaccinated, and would probably say, "Vaccines will keep me and my team safe? Well, I'd say to that the same thing I'd say to the bartender in my favorite barbecue spot in Kansas City -- I'll take a double shot of that, please and thank you!"

May 31: Adequate

Several years back, someone set up a Secret Santa gift exchange for anyone on our school staff who wanted to participate. I signed up, because I’m fun like that. It was meant to be an enjoyable little distraction, and for the most part that’s all it really was. I don’t even remember who I had for a Secret Santa, but to be fair I don’t remember anyone I’ve ever had for Secret Santas or Bunnies or Pumpkins or any other holiday-themed derivations of $10-or-less gift exchange activities from my career. I do remember the last day of this particular year though, because on the very last day before winter break when we were scheduled to reveal our hidden identities, this was mounted on the wall in the staff lounge: 

Many people told me about it before I saw it for myself. Our staff has never exactly been wacky by any stretch, but we haven’t been immune to occasional pranks over the years, either (something our current media specialist would likely attest to following events of the past two weeks). I figured it might have to do with Secret Santa, and it did: Our lead secretary at the time had drawn my name and put it up early in the morning since she had to be at her desk when the actual exchange was happening.

I decided to play along and left it up throughout the day, feeling certain there’d be a lot of people who would walk in, see that and immediately think, “Oh, for what the hell. He is? Really? REALLY?! Arrogant little chucklehead probably put that up himself....” Or along those lines. The message did not remain intact, with one of two other people making edits to it throughout the day, which thankfully I never had to see since my schedule that year didn’t allow for a lot of lounge time.

It was nearly the end of the day when I had a chance to go down and see it. At the time I fully intended to peel the letters from the wall and take it down since I thought we’d all been subjected to the message long enough, but at the last moment I was hit with inspiration to make my own edit. I didn’t want to change it to something so cutting that it would be seen as an insult, so people would be shocked to read it and think I had some dark and disturbed nemesis hiding on the staff (I actually do have one of those, but that’s a different story), but just a tweak that would downplay the original intent. So I changed it to this: 

I took a picture of it and quickly exited the room. It got some good laughs before I took it all down after school, and the whole thing probably would have died there if I hadn’t used that picture as a Facebook cover photo. Several times. Any time I would dig it out again it would get a few likes for as long as I would leave it up, which was never more than a few weeks at a time. This spring though, it seemed to catch on for some reason, to the point that it’s fair to say that “adequate” turned out to be my word of the month. It came up in a lot of my birthday wishes. It was part of an inscription of sorts that I received in being recognized for either 29 or 30 (29 really) years of an adequate teaching career. It was the word that kind of floated around me in some kind of ethereal on-deck circle, just waiting to jump into the minds of anyone talking to me when the opportunity came up to once again throw back to the ongoing “adequate” gag. 

Really, I don’t think adequate is such a bad thing. I looked it up in the bare-bones, but adequate, thesaurus app built in to my laptop to see what synonyms were listed: Sufficient. Acceptable. Reasonable. Decent. Quite good. Ordinary. Capable. Suitable. None of these are all that bad. Of course, we also get words like unremarkable and unexceptional, but I don’t know if those are necessarily bad things. How could you truly recognize something as being exceptional if it was like that all the time? The standard would change.

Like just about every other teacher in the world, especially the ones who have invested far too many years of their life into the profession, I’ve had my exceptional moments. I have my strengths, but I also have my weaknesses and failings. We all do. I think for most of us, we should feel lucky if the sum of our parts allows us to reach the end of the school year feeling capable after what we did, with reasonable accomplishments to show for our efforts.

I think adequacy can also apply the same way to life in general. After all, would you want every meal you ever eat in your life to be exceptional? Could you call every book you read exceptional or remarkable if there weren’t a few you came across that just weren’t very good? If the weather of each day was beautiful like it is today, you’d learn to expect things to be that way, and would only notice the differences when it didn’t measure up. 

Freddie and I were just out for a walk because it’s such a nice day. A lot of the time I don’t think to notice the weather unless I'm avoiding how unpleasant it is, but today really is an exceptional spring day. While we were out walking, we stepped off the path for a bit to talk with one of my neighbors, who was sitting on his patio under a huge patio-sized umbrella, enjoying the day and working through a book of crossword puzzles. That could have been everything he needed to have an exceptional afternoon, even if it sounds fairly boring, or adequate, to a lot of other people. There he was though, comfortably relaxing, doing something he enjoyed, taking in a nice day without any immediate cares in the world. That seems like the kind of day most of us would aspire to have. 

I absolutely believe it’s fair to describe my life as adequate. I think it’d be difficult to come up with anything about it I’d go as far as describing as exceptional. Sure, there are times when a little more exceptional would be appreciated, but a lack of that shouldn’t necessarily detract from what my life is. Speaking as someone with an adequate and unremarkable life, I think of fair descriptor of how I feel about it would be, for the most part, content. 

I’ll admit though, sometimes a few more aspects, or even moments, of the exceptional wouldn’t be unwelcome. I have to say, the closer we get to that last day of school and that first day of summer break, especially coming off of The Dreaded Covid Year When Everything Sucked So Much, it feels like any direction I’m even casually thinking about pursuing this year will somehow work toward encountering some of those exceptional moments. Maybe a few moments would be enough. Or maybe I’ll end up redefining what I think of as content, and adequate won’t seem to be enough anymore. 

Or maybe adequate will be the highest level I’m able to reach. And if that proves to be the case, well, things could be much worse.

May 30: The Tree

It was my birthday not long ago. Among the birthday wishes shared with me over social media was one that came in from a former student from long, long ago. She was a member of the very first class I ever called my own, one of my original first graders from 1992. 

That was nearly thirty years ago now. I have a lot of memories from that year, both because it was the beginning of my career and because any teacher is going to hang on to memories from any class they teach. Despite how many moments from that year still stand out for me, I know there are hundreds of others that haven't stuck as solidly, but may have been important to other people. We all have our own ways of perceiving how events unfold in the world around us and define the important parts of our lives. 

One thing I didn't remember was how my team of first grade teachers had passed out tiny baby pine trees to our students to celebrate Arbor Day. Maybe it was just our first grade team, maybe it was the entire school; even after being reminded of this, I still only have a vague memory of it happening. I know enough about myself as a teacher to construct a narrative around that, even if most of it would be false: We'd get the word we were passing out the trees; my first-year teacher self would have been taken with the feel of school community that would have surrounded such an endeavor, since that had been something I'd been richly anticipating since I started looking for a job; the actual day would have arrived and there would definitely been something mildly annoying about making sure my 26 first graders at least got the new trees they already loved so dearly safely into their school buses. After that accomplishment, a feeling of relief would have followed. I'd know everything had been taken care of, potential crises had been averted, and it was time to direct my attention at whatever the next job on my never-ending To Do list would have been, and any thoughts I had left devoted to baby trees would have quickly evaporated. 

That wasn't the case for at least one little girl, though. She took her tree home to her incredibly supportive and loving family (that's not part of my constructed narrative; I remember this family and that was absolutely true) and they made space to plant that baby tree in the yard. Maybe they were simply being indulgent for their enthusiastic little girl, thinking that all eight inches of that thing would be done in by the elements after a season or two. It didn't turn out that way, though. 

Arbor Day falls on the last Friday of April; I looked it up. That means the baby trees would have been sent home in the spring of 1993. This is what that tree looks like now. 

This little girl is now a mother of two boys. From everything I can tell through social media, she is just as involved in the happiness and well being of her children as her parents were in hers. She sent me this photo as part of a birthday greeting, reminding me of how its backstory was traced to Arbor Day in first grade. It left me astonished and humbled.

I've thought about this picture and the story behind it several times in the week since it was shared with me, looking for some kind of metaphor to take from it that wouldn't be simplistic or trite. I could relate the growth of the tree in a parallel to this girl herself, and say something about how planting the seedling was just the beginning, and how the care it received made so much difference in its growth and development. I could reflect on how elementary teachers eventually send their students out into the larger, greater world when they either go off to middle school or move away and we rarely, if ever, see them again and usually never get to know how they turned out later in life or whatever difference we might have been able to make for them. I could think about the soil where it was planted, and what nourishment the tree received from that as it grew into this enormous not-at-all-a-baby-pine we see in the picture.

Maybe because I have the end of another school year at the forefront of my mind, with only two more calendar weeks left in the school year and only seven more instructional days with my current students, but I've come to see this tree as something that could represent teaching, instead of just a result of it. After all, it was planted as I was finishing the first year of my career. Even though I made more than my share of mistakes in that first year, I still got through it successfully enough to establish the beginning of what has turned out to be a rather long career. Depending on the conditions of the surrounding environment, that tree, like any other, likely had periods when its growth seemed stunted or threatened, as well as times when it thrived and grew tremendously, just as I, and every teacher in history, has had good years and bad years. 

Then there are years like this one has been. I can't think of a single person who is ready to close off The Covid Year and call it a success. We've experienced challenges none of us could have anticipated, hopefully doing the best we could with the situations we've been given but too frequently knowing that it wasn't going to be enough. We all would like to think that the decisions made this year about what could lead school to be successful were at least well-intended, but such decisions are only made by people trying to do the best they can, which means at least parts of them are inherently flawed. Inconsistent learning models continually adjusted to avoid a deadly virus, the exacerbation of mental health issues in both children and adults coming from the uncertainty of the world, and a growing awareness in society of the social turmoil that too many people have already been dealing with for so long -- it's been a year with more than its share of the kind of obstacles that are unavoidable detriments to what should be anticipated growth. As anyone who has ever seen the cross section of a tree knows, there are going to be years when the rings are much closer together. 

Right now though, the future seems to have so much promise. Even the most consistently dire pandemic experts have been more optimistic in their recent reporting, which makes it much easier to feel hopeful that better days are on their way, and relatively soon. Will this bring us back to a school year in the fall that could reflect more of what we're used to? There are still going to be children in crisis, who take out the feelings they don't know how to process on the world around them. There is still social injustice and poverty and hunger and neglect to be dealt with. There will still be many people making the job of teaching far more difficult for their colleagues than it needs to be, even if they think they're doing the opposite. There will still be many, many nights next year when I know I'll fall asleep on the couch within an hour of getting home, because the job is so mentally and physically exhausting. 

But there are also many students who will be excited to try new things, and many co-workers each teacher will have to help and support the others around them, and many parents who will be just as excited to support their children through all of the challenges and successes they'll face, pandemic or not. 

Some of those teachers could even end up sending home baby trees with their students next year. Some of those parents will even be willing to set aside a small part of their yard to plant a tiny tree and nurture it. 

In the end, all that even the best of us can do is help to make our situations better in the moment, then watch and wait to see how things will eventually work out.

Day 28: Credo

 This post will be kind of a test for me. Instead of working it up on the word processor or collecting notes throughout the day to give me some starting ideas, I'm just diving right in. That's the test, though. I really want to see how this turns out with just a purely spontaneous attempt. 

I have seven days left in the school year, which is to say I actually have nine days I'll be required to show up at my school and work, but I count myself in the group of teachers that only keeps track of instructional days. Once the teaching part of the year is done, we start shedding stress minutes after that final bell that sends the kids home for the summer. I don't mind coming in to work another two days after I'm done teaching. In fact, a part of me is kind of looking forward to it. (It's worth clarifying that I have one less instructional day and one more non-instructional day because distance learning staff is on a slightly different schedule. 

The reason I'm bringing this up is because as soon as my summer break is officially underway, I plan on starting to write my next manuscript for real. I've played at it a little during the past several months, and I've collected a great number of invaluable notes, but I knew I wasn't going to be at my best while trying to wander through Pandemic Fog, so I pushed the start date back to the beginning of summer. Now that this date is so very close, I feel much more ready to begin than I did six or three or even two months ago. Because of that, I think it's time to write out my credo. 

I got this idea from one of my writing professors. I was declared as an English major with a creative writing minor once upon a time, before I switched over to elementary education. I already had enough English credits to just reconfigure them into a minor, and that included two of the three creative writing classes I was slated to take. One was playwriting, which I only took because fiction was full that quarter. Ironically, a play is the only thing I've actually been paid to write...so far. If you were a fan of Elk River Community Theater productions back in 1995, hey, thanks for coming!

Surprise! I digress. I told you this wasn't prewritten -- now you see the rambling evidence. Anyway. The idea of composing a credo as you are about to begin a big writing project is supposed to put you in a mindset of what it is you want the new project to be. It gives you a document you can refer to later that will let you reflect on what you wanted to story to be like in the beginning, what it's becoming, and how much of the original idea do you still want to preserve. With that in mind, here are ten big things I've learned during these past months about what I want out of the manuscript I'm about to write: 

1. It's horror. When I started getting serious about writing back in college, I wrote horror almost exclusively, probably because most of my fiction of choice was Stephen King. This one is a ghost story. I don't want readers to react to it with jump scares from shocking moments or stomach turns from scenes of attention-grabbing gross-outs, but I want them to get chills. I want goosebumps rippling through their skin. I want them turning more lights on if they dare to read it at night. During those last intangible moments before falling asleep, I want them speculating about what in the supernatural realm could possibly be real, and hoping it isn't.

2. I want my cast of characters to be so thoroughly and intricately developed that they could be taken out of the ghost story and dropped into nearly any other story and remain intact. 

3. I want the story I tell around the scary parts to be compelling enough on its own that it could stand as a novel without having to rely on the haunty parts.

4. At least once, I want the readers to hurt. The kind of hurt where they have to put the book down and walk away from it for a time, if not holler and curse me out for what I've made happen.

5. I want readers to have characters they either love or pity or fear, or maybe all of those things at once.

6. I want to establish a sense of place so tangible that someone reading the book and getting really into it would feel surprised to find themselves at home when they look up from the pages.

7. I want moments, either of the story or the characterization, to border on literary. It's hard to explain precisely what I mean by that. I tend to think of literary fiction as the kind of book where the structure and style of the pure writing is just as important, if not more important, than the story itself. (It's possible and super likely there are hundreds of people in publishing who would say my description of literary is completely wrong, by the way, but I'm kind of in the "who cares" camp on this. It's my credo after all, not theirs.)  I'm not looking to write literary fiction; this is legitimately the first full manuscript I'll be attempting with an adult audience in mind, and I honestly don't know if I even have "literary" in my skill set. But moments of it? I can accidentally back into writing the occasional good line, so I think I can pull it off. 

8. I want things to happen that people will not predict. I don't want to color so far outside the ghost story lines that I'll find myself working in a completely different coloring book, but I do want to steer around the more obvious tropes of the genre.

9. In my mind, I'm aiming for somewhere around 400 pages. Of course, there would be at least nine different hoops to jump through before attaining that number, even if it turns out to be reasonable for the story. But I like the idea of writing something with just a little bit of heft to it.

10. I want to write something that will make readers remember my name. Not because remembering my name is all that important to me (other than hopefully getting them interested in a follow-up someday), but because I want it to be that level of good. A story strong enough to make people pause and look at the cover and think, "Damn. Who is this guy?" 

And there we have it! Credo established, notes taken, mind organized. The real work begins in just over two weeks. It'll probably be ready for my usual circle of aggressively-recruited volunteers to read in...well, let's be honest: God alone knows how long. But someday.

Day 27: The Questions for My Future Self

 I feel like I’ve written about this topic before, but since I can’t find that other hypothetical post I think I’m clear to use it tonight.

My 5th graders, distance learners or not, are now in the single digits as far as days remaining in their elementary school careers. An activity our social worker has done with 5th graders toward the end of many past school years has been to get each of them to write a letter to their future self, in a time capsule sort of way. It gets them thinking about the person they are right now, and who they might become by the end of middle school, or high school, or later in life -- whenever they choose to read the letter they wrote. He gives them a list of ten questions to write about, then has them choose four. This year I wrote down the ten questions. I’ll be answering them tonight, thinking ahead to the day that will come in ten years or so, when all of this school business will finally reach an end for me. So here we go. Just remember these were originally questions for children, so I may go outside the lines on a few of them.

#1: List three words to describe yourself. 

The best description I’ve ever heard about myself actually came from a former principal. I don’t remember the context, but she said, “I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone so willing to take too much credit for things and not enough credit at the same time.” I heard that and thought: Wow. That is entirely fair, and I like how complex it makes me seem.

#2: What are your hobbies?

Hobbies are interests you pursue during your idle time, so it doesn’t seem like they can have anything to do with professional pursuits. Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave too much for me once teaching and writing are taken off the table. I like playing games and solving puzzles. Relaxing in front of the TV with some shows or movies to watch is pretty cool. I have a few favorite podcasts I listen to, often in the middle of the night if I wake up and want to try and lull myself back to sleep.

Other than that…walking the dog? Self-doubt? Anxiety? Do any of those count?

#3: Who are your friends?

This is kind of complicated, so I’ll explain a few things about my perspective. First off, as far as honest to goodness friends go, I only have a small circle of them — it’s an introvert thing. Beyond that, I think of friendship in three wider circles. The next closest would be those you have the most proximity with, like, in my case, people I work with and see every day and have connected with on some level. Outside of that would be the people that I still have some degree of relationship with, even if our paths have gone in different directions and I don’t see them very often (the Covid Year being an exception in the time length here). If we stay in touch at all in some real way instead of some pretend crap like social media "friendships," I would still think of you as a friend, and very likely I miss not having you as directly in my life as you once were. If you’re someone I know but haven’t even really spoken to in, say, the last three years? Well…Circle 3, aka Acquaintance Town. It should also go without saying that everyone, with a few exceptions in that tightest, smallest circle, will have to line up behind Freddie in terms of importance.

#4. What do you want to be when you grow up? 

I’m unconditionally grown up. But keeping in mind I wouldn’t open this time capsule letter until after I retire, the only ambition I’d have at that point would be to have achieved the level of working author.

#5. What technology do you think will exist?

Human augmentation, which will include direct mental connections to some new organic form of the internet once the Singularity is reached and surpassed.

#6. Who do you look up to? 

Outside of the obvious answers that practically everyone would list (parents, sister, John Petrucci), I’d rethink this one as people I admire: The musicians and writers who can bring magic moments into being and make it seem effortless when the truth is far from that; the colleagues I work with who have so much more patience than I do and display boundless compassion so easily because it’s a part of who they are, and/or keep showing up in their classroom even when it feels like the world around them has been temporarily engineered to kick their ass. People who get vaccinated.

#7. What are your hopes and dreams?

For the people in my family to have long, happy, and healthy lives. To be able to retire as a working writer, and have a happy and healthy life that stretches out long enough for me to enjoy that. To not be alone.

#8. What positive skill could you develop or behavior you could change that would help you reach those dreams?

Once the pandemic has faded into relative obscurity and my brain is no longer caving in, I really want to get back into a regular writing routine. I know I can do it. I have before, for long stretches of time. This past year though, and all the baggage that came with it between Covid and distance learning? It was too much. I allowed it to be enough that I was developing an idea instead of actively writing a story. 

#9. What are places you hope to visit? 

Top, top of the list is to get back out to the PNW. Other than that? Iceland would be interesting. So would New Zealand, I think. Really though, I’ve always felt that travel is less about the destination and more about who is with you on the journey.

#10. What advice would you give your future self?

If you haven’t yet learned to live with the idea that people don’t necessarily define you by your flaws and failings and might see worth in you that you don't always recognize yourself, you should probably start wrapping your head around that idea. You’re an old man, dude. It's seriously time to get over yourself.

Day 18: Post-Pandemic Redefining, Part 1

 I've been back at school for about a month now, give or take a day or two. Before that first day back, I believe it's entirely possible I went an entire year of my life wearing t-shirts, sweatshirts, sweatpants, and shorts. 

The thing is, if you threw a few pairs of jeans into that mix, you'd basically be describing at least 85% of my wardrobe. Fine, let's not kid ourselves - the number is higher than 85%, but 85% seems like the highest number I can list without openly humiliating myself for dressing like a 15-year-old. (Yes, I've used that line before in describing my wardrobe, and yes, people have commented that making that comparison is insulting to 15-year-olds.)

Since I've been back to school, I've been sticking close to the jeans-and-sweatshirt aesthetic, mostly because I'm housed in a classroom that isn't known for its warm temperatures. This has mostly worked out because it hasn't been a terribly warm spring so far, at least not until this week, but since the room I'm in nearly all day is still cold, the sweatshirts are totally justifiable. And comfortable. Kind of like walking around in a nice cozy blanket, which I did more than once during The Winter of Isolation.

However, things definitely seem to be on the upturn now, at least as far as the pandemic goes. I mean, even TARGET, for crying out loud, has lifted their mask restrictions. I don't know if that means I'll stop wearing mine in public, but maybe if Target isn't super busy? Anyway. The day is coming when things will return to some semblance or normalcy again. Probably a new version, but definitely a recognizable version. 

One of the things I pondered most heavily during The Winter of Isolation was what I wanted life to be like once that somewhat normal returned. It was a deep list of thoughts I'll be exploring later in the month in a different post, but one thing I felt pretty set on was how there were so many different aspects of my life that I had grown to accept as good enough. I have an old car. My bath and hand towels still do the job of drying, but they aren't super comfortable. There's nothing about it that's fancy, but the mileage is low since my commute is short, so that's good enough. My kitchenware is starting to show its age, but it still keeps my food off the table. Although I don't know if I still need to keep using the same Coca-Cola glasses I won playing Whiffle Ball Tic Tac Toe at some low-rent Wisconsin county fair in 1988....

Hopefully you get the idea. Things were good enough. Does life need to be just good enough? Good enough seems like a compromise, and one thing I learned during the pandemic is that maybe there are aspects of my life and my world where if I don't really need to compromise, maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I could push for things to be at least little better. 

This take us up to today, and one serious truth I know about myself after living through the Covid Months: I am so tired of sweatpants. One of the best things about going back to school was how I really had to wear actual pants again. So, I've been thinking a lot (I learned yesterday that's a phrase that scares my principal a little when I say it, incidentally): My wardrobe needs an overhaul. The follow-up question to that, though? What direction to go? I mean, I ain't James Bond, or a professional football player walking in front of the media on the morning of game day, or some YouTube Clownshoes dying for attention. I feel that somewhere there is a true core Tom aesthetic, but maybe one that can be even gradually upgraded out of the 15-year-old realm. I mean, one of my teaching partners literally laughed out loud last year when she tried to visualize me wearing a button down shirt, and I totally understood where she was coming from. 

So, my question tonight: I'm solidly an adult be any working definition. What items do people feel should be found in the closet of any self-respecting adult male? If I'm going to make a wardrobe upgrade this summer, what suggestions are out there about where I should begin?

Just so you know, giving up my concert t-shirts is totally a deal breaker....

Day 17: Sammich Week, Part 1

 I had a doctor tell me once that sandwiches (referred to as sammiches from now on) are just about the perfect meal: A well balanced amount of protein, carbohydrates, vitamins (if you get enough vegetables) and fats. Most of the time, sammiches are also delicious.

I have a very short commute back and forth between home and school. Right in the middle of this commute is an enormous shopping district, known to locals as Riverdale. This is not the prototypical all-American town where Archie and his gang lived in the comic books, nor is it where the Elves from Lord of the Rings lived, for any nerds trying to make a joke. There are so many places to eat or buy food at Riverdale that it makes it almost impractical for me to ever bother keeping groceries in my house; in fact, a former colleague of mine once gave me a lot of grief over the fact that for years on end, my refrigerator seemed to only contain condiments, diet soda, and Vitamin Water Zero. She wasn't wrong. 

Since the statewide mask mandate has been lifted and one of these days I have to get used to the idea of going inside stores and businesses that are not Target at 7:00 AM, I am declaring this week to be Sammich Week. This means that each weeknight on the way home from school, I will be stopping at a different Riverdale sammich establishment to pick up my dinner.  To make it interesting, I'm setting a few rules for Sammich Week: 

Rule #1: I can't go to the same place more than once. Variety and all. 

Rule #2: I have to order a sammich I've never ordered before. This won't be that hard, I don't think, since I usually stick to my favorites. 

Rule #3: None of my sammiches can come from a restaurant considered fast food. For our purposes today, I'm defining fast food as any place that sells some kind of fries.

I'll report back on my experience this coming Saturday.

Day 16: Covid Changes That Should Stay (and Some That Should Go Away Forever)

When I went to my local grocery store this morning, I noticed some things were different. First off, it was light out when I got there. This is because we're at a point in the spring when we're seeing days with more sunlight, which is kind of great. This was also different because I had been locked into a pattern for months when I would only dare shop for groceries if it was between 3:00 - 6:00 in the morning. As I walked through the automatic sliding glass doors, I noticed the signs telling shoppers they needed to wear masks inside had been taken down. Many shoppers still wore them, including me, but none of the employees did. 

Of course our state mask mandate was lifted last week, which makes all of this at least legal. All of these changes signal that it seems as if the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020-21 is gradually starting to resolve itself, and maybe the more normal times we've all been pining for are that much closer to becoming a reality. I think everyone will welcome that time when it happens, even if we don't all agree right now that we've reached that point just yet.

It does make one wonder, however: How different will society be once we return back to normal? I don't think anyone believes we'll all go back to doing things exactly as we did before, at least not right away. So what things about daily life has Covid changed? I think that even if there will be many new habits we'll be happy to be rid of, some changes could be argued as improvements, and maybe they're worth holding on to. 

KEEP - MASKS: You know, people all over the world have been wearing masks at least some of the time for years, if not decades. It could be from the way viruses spread so easily through overpopulated countries, or how some locations have unsafe air quality. Why not dig out masks again, even voluntarily, if there's a particularly bad year of the flu? I don't think anyone would actively want to do that, but I don't think many people were super anxious about the 2nd vaccine, either. Sometimes you do things because they keep you safe and healthy, even if you don't want to do them. 

KEEP - CURBSIDE PICK-UP OPTIONS: Many businesses have been doing this for some time already. It's super convenient!

KEEP - MOSTLY EMPTY MOVIE THEATERS: My absolute favorite time to see movies has always been during the summer in the early afternoon. Why? Because there are so few people seeing movies then, there's a good chance you could have the entire auditorium to yourself. No one on their phone, no kids throwing popcorn, no screaming babies, no one having a conversation right behind you....

LOSE - DOOR DASH-TYPE DELIVERY SERVICES. If anything, it's just too convenient. And expensive. I don't want to even speculate how much of my money they claimed from me in the past year.

KEEP - VOTING BY MAIL. Yes, I'm fully aware there is a collection of True Believers of The Big Lie examining each ballot in some huge Arizona county right now to see if they have any telltale bamboo fibers that would give away how they were imported from Southeast Asia and shouldn't be considered valid...no, I'm not making that up. I say, fine. Pass whatever crazy legislation is needed to allow people to mail in their votes. There's no better way to ensure a greater part of the population will engage in the process.

LOSE - ELBOW BUMPS: They're just silly. I'm totally okay if we don't replace handshakes. And elbow bumps are no substitution for a hug, so let's not even pretend that's a point to be made.

KEEP - LOW RIDERSHIP ON THE COMMUTER TRAIN. I don't go into Minneapolis that often, but I'd like having the option of riding the train if I needed to. And if the North Star line is down 96%, that sounds empty enough for me to enjoy the trip.

KEEP - LESS POLLUTION. When I saw the initial news reports of how people working from home led to fewer people commuting in large cities and consequently cleaner air, I always thought of Black Widow and Captain America talking about whales in the cleaner water of the Hudson River after Thanos snapped away half the population. Not quite the same thing, but a clean world would be a nice thing to have. And it didn't seem like it took long before the first steps of improvement had manifested.

LOSE - CULTURAL TRIBALISM. It's been around for a long time on a low boil. The last president made people feel it was okay to bring out in the open. The pandemic amplified all of it. I'm confident our country will be moving further and further away from rational political discourse throughout the duration of my lifetime.

LOSE - NOT WAITING AROUND EVERY DAY TO FIND OUT IF BREATHING AIR WILL SEND YOU TO THE HOSPITAL. That one should seem pretty straightforward.

Day 11: Freddie’s Pandemic

The following routine settled into semi-permanence around mid-October last year….

5:44 AM: He’s moving. He’s groaning and stretching! Those are the signals I’ve been waiting for! It’s time to jump off this recliner I’ve claimed as my own and jump on the bed to stretch out over his chest and demand pets and scratches while my tail creates a light breeze near his head that goes unappreciated during the colder seasons of the year! 

6:02 AM: I’ve received an appropriate amount of pets and scratches, so I will go lie down beside him and start playing with his fingers as if they are Snausages.

6:13 AM: The TV weatherperson who reminds me so much of a golden retriever is talking now, so he’s getting up!

6:14 AM: WHERE IS MY YELLOW DINOSAUR I MUST RUN SEVERAL LAPS AROUND THE LIVING ROOM WITH HIM IN MY MOUTH

6:15 AM: Okay, his shoes are on now so we can go outside! I love outside so dearly! So many smells for me to smell!

6:30 AM: I am incapable of describing the perfection that is breakfast. Why would anyone ever want to eat anything other than breakfast food?

6:30:24: I wonder if there’s any peanut butter to be found in the kitchen this morning. I should probably stand here and stare up at him as he works the Sudoku just in case.

6:45 AM: Okay. TV is fine. But I will stretch out on his lap instead of watch.

7:00 AM: He’s getting ready for the day! I must follow him to the bedroom while he cleans up and gets dressed in case there is guarding to be done.

7:04 AM: Guarding is not exciting, and he seems okay. Perhaps there is a patch of sunlight waiting for me somewhere.

8:00 AM: Goodness, that was warm. Perhaps I’ll go back to bed.

10:30 AM: It’s outside time again! Outside! All the smells!

10:35 AM: My time in bed feels incomplete somehow. I need more time to achieve closure.

12:00 Noon: AHHH IT’S TIME TO WALK WE’RE GOING TO THE PARK AND MOLLY MIGHT BE THERE AND WAGS MIGHT BE THERE AND AHHHH THE PARK

1:00 PM: Hmm, it seems that tricky sunshine is trying to outwit me for some reason and has conveniently migrated to my blanket fort. Perhaps I will go lie there for hours.

4:00 PM: WALK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4:30 PM: I need a drink and a very short nap, because….

5:00 PM: SUPPER!!!! MY OTHER FAVORITE WORD OF ALL THE WORDS!!!!!

6:00 PM: Hmm. He hasn’t eaten his supper yet. I believe this situation requires vigilance. I will quietly growl at the door just in case someone carrying a bag of food tries to break into MY house. If they do, I can usually scare them away so completely they set the food down to make a more efficient escape.

6:30 PM: Oh, sweet. These pillows on the living room couch are still here in the same spot where I’ve kept them for these nearly three years.

9:00 PM: Hmm…? Was that… I swore I heard my… yep, he’s got my leash. *Yawn/Stretch/Yawn* Okay, yeah, yeah, sure. Outside. Woo-hoo. Let’s get this done.

9:30 PM: I know it’s dark, and his demeanor gives away precisely how tired he is right now, but I feel strongly that I’m owed a bedtime snack before I will even consider settling in for the evening. 

9:38 PM: Okay. Blanket 1, check. Blanket 2, check. Bear, bird, and taco — all present. Now I can sleep.

5:44 AM: He’s moving. He’s groaning and stretching! Those are the signals I’ve been waiting for....

Day 3: Building a Mini-Bucket List

During an early morning Target run this past weekend, I bought a new package of Post-It Notes to use on my fridge this summer. If you’re new to the idea, I’ve spent most of the past few summers turning the front of my refrigerator into a massive To-Do list of summertime activities, with each note listing something else to do, which I peel off and throw out as I complete them. Hopefully by the time school starts again in the fall I’ve finished off at least most of the things I had listed. It’s a good cure for the days when you can’t think of anything to do.

I didn’t do it last year, because the options of what to do seemed so severely pandemic-limited and the only thing really on my list was stay home and not die. However, the world seems to be regaining some of its equilibrium. Even though Covid is hardly resolved (and seriously, if you think it’s gone or will end anytime soon you have some real self-searching to do), life does feel slightly less dangerous than it did a year ago. I’ve gotten pretty good at managing a safe lifestyle, and I’ve had both of my shots. Maybe the occasional measured or controlled risk wouldn’t be completely inappropriate? After all, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph — I did actually go inside a Target store, and buy things. Clearly I’m ready to live on the edge.

In all seriousness I have no plans on going crazy with the “open world” idea. But I love my vaccines and the increased security I’ve learned to feel with their 95% efficacy. I think getting out and doing a few things might not be so bad under the right conditions. After a year of isolation, there are a lot of things I’ve always enjoyed, particularly in the summer, that I missed after holding back from doing them.

There are things I’d like to do that I’m not ready to yet, and even some bigger, more adventurous things that I’d like to try someday. But in the short term? There are the things I’ve missed being able to do. There’s stuff I’d like to try, projects I’d like to attempt, things about my life I’d like to work on trying to change, for real. People to see. Skills to develop. The kind of unremarkable but still unusual and potentially memorable experiences to be collected that would be worth the investments of time and effort. 

I think a lot of people might see life this way now, divided between Before Covid and After. Speaking for myself, living through an existential threat (shut up, science deniers) gives you a watered-down version of the perspective that I imagine people who’ve experienced near misses with illnesses or injuries probably feel. They survived, and come out the other side with an appreciation of the opportunities, the potential, and the promise life still holds.

I’ve never really had an official Bucket List so much as some things I hoped I’d get to do or see someday. I’m not thinking in terms like that here, at least not exactly. Instead of putting together a checklist of things like exotic places to visit, I’m thinking of smaller things, sort of like the things that really I could have done at almost any point but never took advantage of the opportunities to do. The smaller things. It seems to me as I start thinking about another summer with my fridge hidden beneath a layer of Post-It Notes, this might be a summer to try and accomplish some of those things.

For example: I’ve never been big on spending a lot of time in the city. Really, it’s just not my thing. I was brought up in small towns, and I’m relatively comfortable here in the blandness of the suburbs. But I’ll admit I can enjoy the energy of the city when I’m there, at least if I'm not trying to steer a grade level through a field trip. Maybe taking the commuter train downtown to meet up with a friend for lunch sometime could be a nice little fun-sized adventure. Of course I’d have to feel comfortable about riding the train, which is far from a lock right now, but we’re really just throwing around hypothetical spitballs here, so why not consider it for the list.

I’d like to give my dog a chance to see more of the world around him than he has; he likes exploring the neighborhood, so he might like getting out a little further. I have friends with dogs he could meet. It could make for a fun evening to go visit with some of them some summer evening, and maybe sit outside for dinner. I’ve been a writer for so long, and my best friend is a professional musician. We’ve talked for decades now, literally, about trying to collaborate on writing at least one song. I know he’s game for it and is just waiting for me to have an idea. Maybe this could be the summer to really try. A few years ago a friend of mine and I joked about making a day trip up North to visit a mutual friend with an alpaca farm and shop. That could be fun. I'm almost certain it would be.

The way I see it right now, I have a little over a month to really zero in on what would be the things that could both enhance my summer and help me fill in some of the overall life gaps I’d like to close while I still have the chance. Even if I only managed to address some of them in the end, I think it'd be worth the attempt.

Day 2: Reflections on a Year of Distance Learning

This time last year teachers were still trying to find their footing with distance learning. We’d been at it for a little over a month, and were just coming to terms with the idea that Covid-19 had abbreviated our in-person school year. When school started in the fall of 2020, some of us would still be needed to continue distance learning as the rest of the staff and the students would ping-pong between different learning models, depending on how the decision makers would determine which was appropriate for the pandemic conditions we were facing. I was one of those distance learning teachers. 

When we started in the fall, it was with some of the same excited optimism that comes with the beginning of any new school year, when it’s all fresh and the new ideas you want to try are bountiful, and you feel ready to take on the world and make a difference for someone. (Of course some of that excitement was tempered by a virus that had already killed hundreds of thousands in our country that was still circulating through the population.) I started with thirty-three students in the first trimester. That number gradually dropped by ten as the year went on. The pandemic evolved, vaccines emerged, and opinions about learning models changed, but my distance learning class ended up sticking it out to the end.

Fall forced a new approach. The district expected more time spent online with face to face instruction and more fidelity to the curriculum than back when we had limped through the spring, when even the almighty state tests were sidelined for a year. Our distance learning team had a lot of talks about the best way to approach all of this. We put together schedules we hoped would comply with all that was expected of us, and began the experience, not knowing if it was going to last a month, or a trimester, or the whole school year. 

The district created a lot of videos for us to use with our online classes. I used a few, but never got comfortable with the idea of posting a link for the kids to click and having that be how they learned. It took the organic moments of spontaneous learning out of the lesson, and frankly, I’ve always seen moments like those to be among my strengths. Besides, how was I supposed to build relationships with students if I was little more than Video Assigning Guy?

For the record, it is absolutely possible to have relationships with students you only interact with through a computer screen, and strong ones at that. The time spent online allowed me to get to know most of my students as well as I would have in the classroom. Unfortunately I can’t say that’s the case for everyone, though. Sadly, there were several who would keep their cameras and microphones off and mostly existed in our class as online avatars. Some of my students I’ll be pressed to remember three years from now, but almost everyone else, especially those who felt comfortable enough in our virtual classroom to display their personalities, I know I’ll remember.

One of my most frequent refrains this year was some version of a speech that went a little like this: “I can’t MAKE you do anything. I can’t make you come to these meetings, or keep your cameras on, or participate in discussions, or complete your assignments, or keep you in from recess if you don’t. I can give you directions that will help you learn. I can answer the questions you have. I can provide you with opportunities to practice the skills you’re developing. I can try to make your work interesting. But I can’t make you do any of it. That’s on you. If you choose to the jobs you have with school, you’ll learn. If you choose not to, you won’t. If you don’t, you won’t be as prepared when you go to middle school next year.”

That speech worked pretty well, too. By the time we reached the third trimester, my assignments had a consistent completion rate of 87%. Not perfect, but pretty darn good for teaching a class separated by dozens of square miles. I had a lot of hard workers who took their learning seriously from the first day, but I also had a lot I had lead to that point over a long six months. Somehow most of us reached a point that helped lead to personal levels of success.

I really believe the emphasis I put on creating and taking advantage of the small moments that presented themselves as opportunities for relationship building made a difference. The ones who took the meaning of my “I can’t make you do anything” speech to heart will walk away in June having experienced a positive year. The ones who lied to their families about the number of meetings they had each day, or how many assignments they needed to do? The ones who avoided the minimal steps toward self-accountability they needed to get through the year successfully? The ones who wouldn’t interact with their classmates or actively participate in their learning, or refused to complete any work until the promise of a family contact was held over their heads? Well, not every student learns the same way. Distance learning might not have been for them. I won’t be able to finish the year without feeling some deficiencies in what I did (usually the case anyway) or without wondering what else I could have tried to get them more engaged than they were and give them a better year. A sad thing about teachers is that when all is said and done, we tend to focus on the ones who didn’t reach their goals instead of the ones who did.

One unusual dynamic about distance learning has been teaching with home in the background. Sure, we get the occasional diapered two-year-old wandering into frame looking for a dance party to join, or the puppy stopping by to pull their best friend away from class because there are toys to be squeaked and balls to be thrown, or homes with phantom fire alarms beeping out low-battery warnings all winter. But when I think of the home dynamic, I’m thinking more about the adults. And I have to refer to them adults: I can’t limit myself to calling them parents, since I’ve witnessed other family members stepping in to support some of my students in the aftermath of Covid, when parents were no longer available.

There are adults who are nothing but supportive and appreciative, which is such a wonderful, invigorating relief because it’s honestly the exception to the rule. Most of the adults have been content to have a talking head on the Chromebook keeping their fifth grader busy with learning, and that’s fine since that’s mostly what school would normally be like. Meanwhile, some adults were in a version of Covid isolation that saw them just offscreen during our meets and auditing everything we were doing, then offering the benefit of real-time criticism through email when they felt it was necessary. On the flip side of that, I also noticed a few students snuggle up together on the couch with their adults when it was time for me to do read-aloud, which I absolutely loved.

You develop a lot of close relationships with people as a teacher. Many of these are with your students and some even with their families. Of course you never really become part of the family, but I think it’s fair to say that you often find yourself becoming family adjacent. Distance learning often enhanced that. I think in most cases, that’s been a positive thing. 

So in conclusion, after spending over a year in a distance learning model: If the teachers are given the resources they need to meet the unusual challenges of the job, as well as the opportunity to plan and collaborate and reasonable time to do so, and the students and families involved are aware of the expectations from the beginning and have agreed to work their best toward maintaining them…then yes, distance learning can be successful. For some students, it probably gives them a better chance for success.

If the conditions were right, I think I’d be okay doing it again. 

After

 February was a horrible month this year. It was long, dark, depressing, and deathly polar, to say nothing about how school hadn’t exactly been a ride around the lake. Another February with the kind of stress this one brought and I think it could steal the title of My Least Favorite Month right out from under January.

The nightmarish weeks of deep freeze eventually came to an end though, and soon after it felt like the world began to open. The days warmed quickly. The remaining winter snow gradually faded. Each day brought a few more minutes of blessed sunshine into our lives. Spring and the mental cleanse it promised sat on the horizon, patiently waiting for us to catch up. All of these things together made it seem like maybe it wasn’t completely foolish to entertain the occasional feeling of optimism. 

As the world began to feel more open, society took steps toward opening again for real. President Biden announced that regardless of how many people thought his goal of 100 million doses of Covid vaccine administered during his first 100 days in office was over-reaching, it was achieved some forty days ahead of schedule. Even though the pandemic is far from over and people are still fighting the disease, the media has taken to keeping tallies of how many people have been vaccinated along with the number infected.

Of course all of this optimism comes with knowing there are still contagious new variants circulating through an American population with large pockets of ignorance and entitlement that was never as reasonably cautious as it should have been. The traveling for Spring Break throughout March, amplified by astonishingly irresponsible governors making poor decisions in those destination states, could turn up the heat on all of us again very quickly. 

But what if it doesn’t all go that way? What if, somehow, we’re actually on a Covid decline instead of a weighted pause between surges? What if all of the mitigation and the vaccinations makes not just a difference, but the difference? Could we actually find ourselves back in a world where a new normal will at least approximate the better aspects of the previous normal? 

We will someday, and what comes next when that happens? Will we slip back into the familiar roles and routines we had chosen or been assigned before the pandemic? Will returning to all of that after pausing life for over a year feel like nostalgia? A return to our familiar routines would certainly be a comfort, since the human brain is always seeking out recognizable patterns. But what if there were routines that weren’t working? 

I don’t think society will experience any immediate overall change, at least not anything positive, and I really don’t want to focus on that here anyway. When I think about what comes next, I mostly think about what it will be like to rejoin the world, personally. I have been extremely cautious this past year, and have isolated myself to a degree that I’m certain that many people, particularly the anti-mask crusaders struggling to navigate their personal realities, would ridicule. Right now the idea of taking even tentative steps back into the world leaves me feeling anxious.

One year of my life has gone into developing a proactive and defensive mindset of avoiding other people to minimize the potential they could pass the virus to me. However, the day will eventually come when I’m going to be all vaccinated up. When that happens, I’ll be protected as I can reasonably expect to be. You’d think I’d be pretty pumped up about re-entering society, and picking up where I left off.

I don’t know, though. Do I really want to pick up where I left off? Has there ever been a truer opportunity for people to re-evaluate the direction life is doing than after a time we’ve more or less forced to spend an entire year on the couch? That’s a perspective I keep struggling with. This has been time used up that I won’t get back. One year of my life is gone, out of how many years do I even have left? Ten? Thirty-seven? Five? No one knows.

So what is there to do about it? What parts of my life had evolved into routine, just to fill the empty spaces left by the absence of the things I wish I had, or had pursued, or had the courage to pursue, but instead I accepted the default ease of routine? Once this pause is over, I feel certain there will be a lot of things about life before that won’t be enough anymore.

I think about returning to school, and honestly, I feel like it’s going to be weird. I believe in some respects I’ve been seen as a leader in my building for some time, mostly because I’ve been teaching there since the middle of the Jurassic Period. I don’t know if that will be the same anymore. I don’t mind that so much, but it makes me speculate what will change in how my professional roles will be defined. The people who have worked together through this Covid year will have formed a unique bond because of that; this is an undeniable truth. As strong as that bond will be for all of them, I wasn’t there to be a part of it. There are literally people on our school staff that I’ve never met before. Whenever any of them refer to everything experienced during the Covid year, I’m always going to carry an asterisk related to that because I worked remotely. What will my role be now, for however many years there are left in my career?

So how do I take advantage of this perspective? It’s almost like Ebenezer Scrooge waking on Christmas morning and realizing he’s been gifted a second chance. One thing I know for sure is that once I feel safe enough to enter the world, I sure as hell don’t want to continue molding the couch and recliner cushions to form with my body, and as comfortable and warm as they are, I’m pretty much over sweatpants. What do I want different in my life if I still have the chance and the time and maybe even the motivation to change it? 

I’ve actually started a list on my phone’s Notes app of things I’ll want to do when I can. Some involve the normal, mundane things I’ve been deprived of doing to stay safe. I don’t think a return to the comfort of the familiar is necessarily a bad thing, as long as it isn’t defining. I’ve also listed some things I’d like to do that I think I’d enjoy, or would maybe bring new kinds of happiness to my life. I’ve even added a few things to do that might be considered “bucket list” items. I’ve always said I don’t really have a bucket list so much, but even a tangential proximity to facing mortality makes one realize there are aspects of life that could lead to regret without even trying to experience them. 

It feels like now, in this season just before we can all hopefully exit our bubbles again without worrying about existential threats, is the time to start putting together a conscious idea of what life can be in the after. Then it’s only a matter of waiting until nature determines it’s time to begin.

Pandemic Narrative Part 16: The Beginning of the End

I started writing these narratives back on March 14th, intending to give myself a way to trace how the pandemic changed the world around us throughout its duration. I wrote up a list of ten thoughts on that first post. It seems appropriate on this one, the last post of the year, that I should do the same.

1. Since I’ve included statistics in each pandemic narrative, I feel I should keep that going. Worldwide: 81.5 million cases; 1.78 million deaths. America: 19.4 million cases; 347,000 deaths. This means approximately one out of every one thousand Americans has died from this. If that count been the result of a war, I’m pretty sure that both politically and socially we would be much more united around the idea of working against it than we currently are. However, I’m now able to add a new statistic to the tally: So far, there have been 2.1 million vaccines given. A start.

2. I don’t like this about myself, but I’ll own it: I rarely start a new year with optimism. I think it’s fair to attribute this to losing my sister: When the new year rolls around I always carry at least a small suspicion that there’s going to be a day when I’ll be expecting everything to be normal, and life will put up a serve that resets it in a darker light, and everything will be about trying to survive and process the experiences that follow. Vaccine production aside, there’s still a pandemic going on, and there are still reasons for all of us to begin 2021 with active caution. On the plus side though, at least the most incompetent, self-centered, ignorant, and corrupt president in all of American history, whose foolishness is largely responsible for the predicament we’re in, will be out of office in a few weeks.

3. I honestly feel like I’m one of the few people left on Earth who still bothers to live with any precautions. Cars pass my house all day long like they always have. On the rare days I go to Target for a curbside pickup, all of the parking lots are full. I have filled my car's gas tank twice since March. Granted, I have no metric for what the outside world is like, other than the way the selfish, headstrong few will broadly paint social media with proclamations of their bold stands against anything they’ve been asked to do in the name of public health. Feeling like I’m one of the 0.0004% of the population still striving to adhere to anything but the bare minimum of staying safe is disheartening. It only compounds the isolation. Even if it’s mostly imagined, it feels just as real when you don’t have any evidence in front of you to prove it’s wrong.

4. What will it be like when the world begins to once again take the shape of something recognized as normal, whenever that might happen? How long until the world is safe again? How difficult will that transition be, to rejoin the world? Being an introvert has helped tremendously as far as the isolation goes, but introverts are not, by nature, antisocial. I don’t mind wearing masks, but my God, I can think of maybe five times in the past nine months I’ve even touched another person. 

5. There’s no way this isn’t taking a mental toll on me beyond what I immediately recognize. Many people who’ve known me have heard me say how I feel like I drop off the face of the Earth for someone else unless I’m directly in their line of sight. That’s never been more real now, feeling tucked away like stored human surplus that society has found a way to manage without.

6. I also feel a sense of wasted time, which is probably a reflexive response since I’m always so ready to be self-critical. I haven’t baked any bread or learned any new languages online. I haven’t read a fraction of the books I could have, or caught up on classic movies or developed a yoga routine or painted any rooms or learned the ukulele. But then I remember the time I put into revising a new book, and how difficult that was, and I’m quite proud of the accomplishment. I feel this one could be my best shot at publication, at least as far as middle grade goes. I still think it’s a weird story, but it’s thought-provoking, it’s original, it’s fairly well-written (if I’m allowed to think that about my own story), and I’m anxious for more people in the world to know about it, even if in the immediate that only amounts to a handful.

7. If I were to go back to school and earn another degree, just to pursue an interest, I think I’d study sociology. Because of that, I’ve often wondered exactly what the tipping point was for America, when we went from agreeing to shelter in place and behave in ways meant to preserve the greater good, then shifted over to so much more of a “Well, I’m not sick/This is a free country, don’t take away my rights” ethos. The idea of “we’re all in this together” that was so prevalent back in the spring has worn away to nothing but a faded platitude. I fear that perspective, as well as the reactions to it, will make it much harder for our society to recover and reunite. I’m afraid things will continue to get worse before we see any significant social healing.

8. How much longer is this going to go on? The vaccine is here. When will I be able to get it? When will the rest of my family be eligible? Which one will it be? What will be the circumstances of its availability? Everything about this is still new; there’s no way to see past the next turn in the road when no one has ever traveled the road before. 

9. Do I really want life to go back to what it was before once the world comes back together? Honestly, not in every way. I’m not sure if this is a reaction to the beginning of a new year, but I feel like the pandemic is still going to be around long enough to use this as a transformational time. How could I take steps, even tentative ones, that would develop over time to replace the things in my life I’m dissatisfied about? How much of that thinking is my own motivation, or coming from subtle pressures of what society has to say about what I should be, or what other people in my life expect of me? God knows how many years I have left. Ten? Twenty? Twenty-five? Six? There’s no telling. What do I want that time to be like? What would make it the best, the happiest, version of a life I could build around myself? Has there ever been a more appropriate time for that kind of self-examination? I keep falling back to the idea of where my priorities should be, and why (or if) the things I've held as important are necessarily things that should even be considered priorities. 

10. Like I said, I rarely start the year with optimism. However, there’s always that flicker of hope that refuses to die. We all have dreams and aspirations. We all have anxieties we’d like to banish from our lives. Could 2021 be the year when things drift to the positive, and things will go our way? Will we be gifted with small pieces of individual balance to reward us for what we’ve endured? 

I suppose we’ll start to discover that in a few more days. 

Pandemic Narrative Part 15/Big Block of Cheese Day

If you don’t know the Big Block of Cheese Day reference, then you haven’t watched enough episodes of “The West Wing.” Quick description: There are some posts here on the blog when I have different things on my mind at once, so instead of deciding on one as a topic, I put together some shorter posts inside one longer one. I’m also tagging this as part of the overall pandemic narrative as well, since each topic is somehow related to Covid-19 and its aftermath. Because what isn’t these days?

THE ACTUAL PANDEMIC NARRATIVE PART

There are more than 9 million Covid-19 cases in the United States. By the time you read this, there will probably be 230,000 deaths. Our President is a liar, and anyone who believes him when he says we’re turning the corner and the military will be able to delivery 70 bajillion doses of the vaccine in time for Thanksgiving leftovers is too naive for words.

Since the last time I updated the narrative, Covid caught up with my family and knocked back one of my blood relatives pretty damned hard. He’s doing a lot better now, thank God, and hopefully will be done with all of it much sooner than later. It was maddening when he was in the thick of struggling with it, and all my family could do was wait and see what happened. The last I heard was he was hoping to return to work in a couple days. Fingers crossed he does, and that’s the end of it for him.

Minnesota is on fire. We’re currently experiencing thousands of new cases daily, which of course means more hospital beds are occupied, and tragically more people are dying. None of this seems to have any impact on the people who have succumbed to their Pandemic Fatigue or their Covid Anger, or the cultists who still feel this is a hoax and “refuse to live in fear.” Anyone out there walking around feeling emboldened by the armor of their ignorance who wants to blather on about how Covid is a hoax? Acting with caution and living in fear are very different. I hope things aren’t going to catch up with you and show you how seriously you should have taken this. Sadly, I think that will inevitably be the case with some. I just hope getting to watch your kid take a few hikes during his senior year of high school football will have been worth it.

SHIFTING LEARNING MODELS DURING THE PANDEMIC AGE

The state and the school districts have said since back in the summer that it was likely the learning models being implemented would change throughout the school year, depending on the spread or containment of the virus. Four weeks ago, our district was considering returning the hybrid students to a full-time model. Two weeks ago, they saw that couldn’t happen. Two weeks after that, or now, they’re arranging for the secondary students to begin a full distance learning model while the elementary students remain in a hybrid. Elementary could potentially change to distance learning as well, provided the Covid data being monitored locally ever necessitates such a change. 

Predictably, there are many people and families who agree with more careful learning models, as well as many who feel the amount of implemented caution is too extreme. Somehow (45) this has been bastardized into being a political issue. This is leading to a lot of raging comment threads on social media, many of which assign teachers as the most identifiable face of the school system and freely bash away at them (us) as if they’re (we’re) the ones making these decisions, instead of the elected officials and district administrators following the science. It’s really unfortunate that our community is struggling so much to come together at a time like this to and support each other through the unprecedented challenges we’re all experiencing. I would like to suggest to anyone who may someday invent a time machine that your best move would be to travel back to Harvard around the turn of the century, and convince Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend not to dump him. Then maybe social media will never have a pathway of coming into being, and everyone in the world will be happier and get along better for it. 

NANOWRIMO 2020, OR RAGING AGAINST THE EMPTY

I’m just going to say it: I’m coming off a bad week. Why was it bad? I wish I knew. There was no starting point when things went from their standard neutral to bad, but it sure happened. There wasn’t a lot of smiling or laughing going on, at least outside of the time I was with my students. Sleep was more of an interruption in the darkness than an escape, when it even came. Emotions ebb and flow, however. Yesterday was net positive, and today feels nice and normal. Bad days come, sometimes stretches of them, but they also balance out. Plus there are things people can do to fight back the negative. Those things are probably different for each of us, and I feel like I have a basic understanding of what a few of my things are. One of them is definitely reading a good book. Here’s the one I picked: 

It took one book for Justin Cronin to become one of my favorite authors. I met him at a book signing in 2012 for his novel THE TWELVE, which is the second novel in the trilogy that started with THE PASSAGE, a horror novel that, coincidentally, began as a story about a pandemic that started with a bat and decimated the population. As he signed my book, I mentioned I was a teacher hoping to be an author someday. He said he’d started out the same way, which of course I already knew.

Four years later when CITY OF MIRRORS came out, I was back for another book signing, but this time with a different story to share. Instead of buying my copy of the book at the signing, I brought my own, which my agent had given me as a birthday present a few weeks earlier after she somehow managed to score a copy of it before it had even been released. You might think that shouldn’t be any great trick for someone in the publishing industry, but for a high profile book like this was at the time, it was no small feat. I was absolutely blown away. When it was my turn in the book signing line, I told Cronin how things had changed for me since his last signing. He shook my hand, congratulated me, and asked what I was working on. Then he wrote this with his signature.

I know that reading a good book does something to my brain, like flipping a switch that primes it to narrate. I recently decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month again this year, so it seemed like a good opportunity to start reading a good long book and tap into that priming action. I picked CITY OF MIRRORS because he’s a really good writer, I’ve only read it one time, it contains a section that I would argue is one of the best love stories ever committed to paper, and above all it’s a horror story, which is what I’m going to be trying to write next month. I’m putting aside the middle grade work for a shot at adult fiction, and specifically horror. I’ve been looking for a good horror story to tell for a while now. When I started writing for real in college I wrote horror almost exclusively, but I still haven’t done it as a full-length novel, at least in adult fiction. I’ve had a number of conversations with my agent over the past year about taking on a project like this, and decided I had to go forward with it after she gave the concept her blessing.

I can’t say I’m really excited about it, though. I’m very excited about the story, but not so much diving into another round of writing a whole damn book in a month. First of all, it won’t be a whole book: Nanowrimo only requires 50,000 words in 30 days, and my draft should be aiming for something closer to 80,000-90,000 before editing, which would be really taxing to do in 30 days. I still win if I hit the 50k mark, and I will win at this because I won’t allow myself not to, but I’m okay with finishing the rest of the story in December.

See, I realized earlier this month that I feel better when I’m creating something. I finished revising a middle grade novel a few weeks ago, and noticed that the darkest part of October started soon after I was done with that, and continued to get more pronounced the longer I sat on the sidelines. Writing lesson plans helped, believe it or not, because there’s a certain amount of creativity that goes into that. Everyone has their own ways of proactively fighting whatever depression or anxiety they might be experiencing during these crazy pandemic days. I think my fight has to do with reading and writing, between keeping my head occupied, filling me with whatever collection of hormones are dumped into my system when the reading ignites that narrative response, and the feeling that follows the achievement that comes from writing something that brings me a sense of accomplishment. I don’t know if it’s necessarily a good thing that I seem to need that so much, but it’s probably good that I recognize it. 

Okay. That’s enough for now. Since I can’t start working on the new book until tomorrow, I’m going to go do some reading instead.