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 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 25: Why I'm Not That Stressed About Testing Season Anymore

 Those of us in the elementary school world, at least in the building where I work, are still finishing up our battery of spring testing. The older kids have finished their state assessments, and the younger ones are just getting started on their version. A lot of stress and anxiety comes with this time of year, both before the tests are given and after the results have been reported. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in the game for more than a few orbits now, but I don’t seem to worry about all of these tests as much as some other people, and definitely much less than I used to. In that spirit, here are some of the reasons why I think I’ve found a way to minimize, or at least balance out, the emotional responses that always hit teachers this time of year:

Tests represent how a student performed on one given day. 

Many tests contain cultural biases of which even the test writers themselves often are not even aware.

If I know the day before the test is taken that I’ve done everything I could to prepare my students to take it, I can sleep well the night before. 

Standardized tests scores from elementary school have never kept anyone out of the college of their choice.

The stress a lot of kids carry into the test can be a detriment to their focus.

It seems that each year the rules or conditions of the tests are slightly modified as the testing professionals continually strive to make their assessments as truly reflective of student ability as possible. Sometimes these modifications are significant enough to make it difficult to accurately measure the amount of growth achieved during an academic year.

I once had a girl impressively vomit on a pile of answer books stacked on my desk at the end of a testing session, and the world didn’t stop turning. 

During more years than not, I can predict with somewhere around 85% accuracy what level of proficiency each of the students in my class will reach. I know their work habits. I know their strengths and weaknesses. I know who will finish too fast because they didn’t work carefully and who will take too long because they’ll overthink each question. I don’t need a test to point these things out to me. 

Generations of us went through school successfully without being subjected to so many assessments that spring in the elementary school is commonly referred to as “testing season.”

Sometimes pandemics come along and throw all the validity of anything positive or negative about the results into question.

The biggest service that testing provides the schools is helping staff identify what kinds of support or challenges the students will need in the coming year. Often this information isn’t all that far off from what it was before.

There are so many intangible things that students learn during the school year that can’t be measured by a test. 

Day 24: Post-Pandemic Redefining, Part 2

My job is rough. There are times I don’t like anything about it. I’ve given much of my life to it because it’s a job that is crucial to our society, and personally important to me. Unfortunately though, it requires the people who do it to be the best versions of themselves nearly all the time, and it is more than willing to readily consume everything you let it take from you. Looking back from the perspective of at least the back nine of my career, I see I made the mistake of putting too much into it. Dedication is one thing, and it’s an important element of being a successful teacher, but there’s a tipping point when it becomes too much. I put in too much, and doing that was a mistake. Not just a little one either, but one of the defining mistakes of my life. If I were going to pass on advice to anyone in the early stages of their career, it would be to fight hard to maintain the balance you need between home and school if you’re going to have a happy life. 

Oooh wait, did I just subtly drop something in there to lead people into inferring that I’m not happy? Hmm, well, yes and no. I wouldn’t say that I’m unhappy. I’d say I’m content with my life more than anything else. Happy, though? That’s tough. I’ve always seen happiness as more aspirational than deserved; something that happens in fleeting bursts, the euphoric moments when everything about everything feels exactly as we’d want it to be, when fear and anxiety and stress and frustrations are minimized long enough to let us recognize and appreciate the moments for what they are. My life is full of problems, but it’s also full of blessings. I think acknowledging the power both of those have over how I think and feel means that being content with life is actually a pretty significant win. And I’m mostly fine with that. 

Is it enough, though? Should it be?

There are times I don’t like anything about my job, but there are also times I love everything about it. Either way, I come home at the end of the day exhausted. What about writing? Well, once again, love and hate. I love the process of it. I love the rush of seeing something I try to create from nothing but ideas become a tangible piece of art that can communicate with other people (for the record, I’m still mostly uncomfortable with referring to anything I write as “art,” but I’m slowly getting used to it). Outside of the process, there is little about the business side of writing and publishing that hasn’t frustrated me in some way or other. There’s that emotional pairing again — problems and blessings.

A lot has rolled through the media about the idea of self-care in the past year. I never paid much attention to it before, but I’ve come to see the value of it when I had to drag myself through the more challenging lows of pandemic isolation. It makes me think about what things will be or could be like once the world locks into whatever normal will prove to be. Happily it seems like we’re getting closer and closer to that time with each passing week.

When it’s here, where does that leave everything? The temptation to easily slip back into contentment will absolutely be there, holding up a soft blanket and waiting to embrace me with and endless loop of The Office reruns and Marvel movie re-watches as I enjoy being able to relax through the times I don’t have to deal with extraordinary professional challenges and questions about my validity. When normal returns, what happens next? Who will I choose to be in the post-pandemic world around me? What will I need to do differently to if I actively approach a more robust happiness, instead of just accepting what seems good enough when I’m not getting buckets of stress and criticism poured over me? Do I need wholesale changes? Actual post-pandemic redefining? Or maybe just a few well-planned tweaks? What would be enough to make the difference that I seem to feel I might need?

It’s seeming like something I'll have to figure out sooner than later.

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 7: Teacher Appreciation

 I won't get into my usual rant about Teacher Appreciation Week or Day and why they don't... okay. Stopping there. 

Instead of that, I'm going to show my own appreciation for the teachers I work with, and have worked with, throughout my long and storied career. I'm not going to identify anyone by name but rather by archetype. I feel the descriptors I'm planning on using here are too widely occurring to limit myself to specific people just because I happen to know them. 

**********

The probationary teachers who work each day to figure out the best ways to do their jobs and often feel overwhelmed when they aren't sure if their efforts are making a difference.

The veteran teachers who work each day to keep up with all of the changes they've witnessed happen to their profession in the timeline of their careers.

The teachers willing to spend forty-five minutes sitting in a friend's classroom after school to let them vent and help them process an epically bad day.

The ones forcing themselves to focus on their jobs when they have tiny and small children at home they wish so hard they could be with, and will often feel guilt over not devoting as much time to their own children as they feel they should.

The ones with older children, navigating the joys and discoveries and challenges that come with seeing their babies moving through that stage of life. 

The ones who feel personally attacked, either by students, parents, colleagues, or administrators, and don't understand what they did to deserve such treatment.

The introverts who are bursting with ideas but don't feel comfortable speaking their minds. 

The teachers who spend so much time pursuing and developing those silver bullet activities they're certain will lead to the moments when the light bulbs come on for all of their students simultaneously, only to see those ideas come apart like so much shattered glass. And yet even after that, they'll go back to the well for new ideas and try again and again until they find the strategy that works. 

The ones who are so used to going home with streaks of permanent marker on their school clothes every day. 

Any teacher who has supervised an activity after school and had to wait with a student an extra half hour because their parents couldn't get their on time to pick them up. Or forgot they were staying after school that night, which of course implies that we're talking about the kind of parents who maybe didn't realize their child didn't come home from school that day.

The ones who daydream about the career paths not travelled, but still show up on time and get the job done and make students smile while they do it. 

The jokesters and wisenheimers on their staffs, who manage to bring bright and cleansing laughter when it's needed the most.

The teachers who fight to find the balance that allows them to give each student a fresh start at the beginning of each day, even if that same kid ruined everything for everyone the day before.

The ones who have to fight through fluctuating levels of anxiety each morning just to walk through their classroom door.

The teachers who spend far too much money on students who don't understand or appreciate the sacrifices being made on their behalf.

The ones who not only patiently endure the fury and hellfire some parents send their way, but can talk it all down and put it out. 

The teachers who make their decisions based on what's best for the students in front of them instead of what numbers they hope to see on summative spreadsheets in May. 

The ones who have the wisdom that comes with experience and institutional memory, and always manage to find the right thing to say when their colleagues are struggling. 

The teachers who mean to go home but only get as far as the parking lot and keep the conversation they had going in the hallway alive for another half hour. 

The ones who do the extra things they should by all rights be getting paid to do but aren't, and still do them anyway because they believe them to be necessary.

The teachers who will let their students fall asleep in class when they recognize how much some of those particular kids are struggling at home. 

Any teacher with a tongue knitted over with scars from the dozens of times they had to bite it. 

The teachers who participate actively in union work to protect their colleagues while knowing what complete pariahs teacher unions are in the culture right now. 

The teachers who can both talk to their class with the sweetness of a Disney princess crowned with butterflies and with the direct accountability of the drill instructor from "Full Metal Jacket," and have both personas accepted as equal truths.

The ones who will do the things they shouldn't have to do when they have to work with serial buck-passers on their staff.

The ones who don't feel safe openly sharing their personal views at school, but quietly endure it when other people do.

The teachers game enough to sit on the dunk tank stool and smile through the discomfort and embarrassment, 'cause I ain't ever doing that.

The teachers who find themselves in the hard situations when they have to present their colleagues with the most difficult of honesties because they love them too much to do anything else.

The ones who wait for the school supply sales in late July so they can stock their room with the supplies they know some kids will run out of during the year and some won't have in the first place.

The teachers who know all too well how undervalued they truly are in society, but keep up the hard work when they can pinpoint that one kid who needs them more than could ever be expressed.

The ones who organize the happy hours; they give the others a chance to remember that there is more to life and the relationships they share than what is determined by erratic student needs, convoluted curriculum packages, and abruptly-written staff memos.

The teachers that a student seen as a legitimate suicide risk would be able to name as maybe the one person they know cares about them. 

The ones who are already planning new things they'd like to try in the fall before the spring is even over.

The teachers who will take phone calls on from parents on their personal cell phones at any time of the evening and on weekends because they know how much those parents need their counsel, except NO TEACHER EVER SHOULD GIVE A PARENT THEIR CELL PHONE NUMBER AND PEOPLE I AM NOT KIDDING SAVE YOURSELVES AND DON'T DO THIS EVER. Seriously. The phone calls and emails can always wait until morning. Live your lives, and give your personal life a bubble of comfort. (For the record, I've never done this but I know people who have and wow, does it not ever go well.)

The teachers who actively strive to maintain friendships when people change jobs, whether it be a different grade level, a different building, or a different state.

The teachers with a stash of chewy granola bars in their closet for the kid that didn't get any breakfast and can't keep their head off their desk.

Any teacher who has attended a funeral for a student.

Any teacher who has ever sat through a four-hour dance recital to see the student that invited them perform two dances that total seven minutes of performance time. 

To all of these teachers and all of the others as well -- thank you for everything you do. I appreciate you.

Day 4: What I Miss (and Don't Miss) About Being in the Classroom

Someone asked the question, “What do you miss the most about being in the classroom?” and conversely, “What are some of the perks of distance learning?” I marinated over this one for a time today, because there are both things about being in the classroom that I miss, and now that I’m back in school, I’m seeing there are things about being in the classroom that I did not at all miss, and frankly don’t really look forward to dealing with again. Distance Learning is a really difficult approach to the job in some ways, but a blessedly easy one in others. 

Here’s a mix of those thoughts from today -- the things I miss and don’t miss.

MISS: THE INCIDENTAL MOMENTS

When you spend so much time with the same group of people day after day after day, and have a relationship where both sides become important parts of each others’ lives, small moments build up into the things that become memories. 

MISS: THE ACCOUNTABILITY

It’s too easy for distance learning kids to not do their work and think they’ve found the perfect lie for when they get called on it. Not all of them, but some. The live version of my teacher stare is much more forceful than the Google version.

DON’T MISS: THE FRUSTRATION OF CONSTANT CORRECTIONS

This isn’t absent from distance learning, but it’s lessened. I don’t have to tell the same kid to take a hat off 47 days in a row. I don’t have to ask them why they don’t have the time to put their name on their papers. 

DON’T MISS: THE POTTY PARADE

This is such a real thing. One person asks to use the bathroom, and within five minutes seven others need to go as well. Especially prevalent during state tests.

DON’T MISS: SWEARING, LYING, FIGHTING, VANDALIZING, STEALING

I don’t think I need to say much more.

WOULDN’T MISS, BUT I CAME BACK IN TIME FOR: STATE TESTS

Especially the moments when you look at the clock and realize that if you were at home you could start playing a movie right at that moment and it would be over before you were done with your testing session.

MISS/DON’T MISS: KIDS WHO WORK HARD/KIDS WHO DON’T TRY

Also present in distance learning, but more acutely noticeable live.

MISS: ADRENALIZED SONGS IN MY HEAD WHEN THINGS GO WELL

I have songs in my head nearly the entire time I’m awake. When I’m teaching and get caught in a moment when a lesson is going exactly as I planned or the kids are proving their success, it pumps me up and some powerful, workout-type song appears in my thoughts.

DON’T MISS IN THE LEAST: THE YARDS-LONG BLACK STREAKS LEFT ON TILE FLOORS WHEN SOMEONE STEPS ON A TINY BROKEN SHARD OF A MECHANICAL PENCIL LEAD

I know they (probably) don’t try to do it on purpose, but when a kid gets one of those hellish graphite chunks stuck in the sole of their shoe, a piece of my will to live falls off and withers away. 

MISS: CREATIVITY

Distance learning is online assignments, web sites, and occasional nods in other directions. Of course there are opportunities to be creative anytime you create something, even a lesson, but it’s not the same as the live version. The bulletin boards, the paper, the colors, the signs, the organizational schemes, the proactive thinking…when you find a lesson you connect with and really want to make your own, it can be invigorating.

DON'T MISS: GLITTER

No further explanation necessary, I'd say.

MISS: FLY ON THE WALL OBSERVATIONS

Some of the funniest moments of the day come from the absence of self-awareness that so many kids carry with them. It’s fun to witness the moments when they are all by themselves in their heads and let their true selves be displayed. 

DON’T MISS: MEAN GIRLS

They’re the worst. I really believe that the ways girls go after each other when they’re going into battle is so much worse than it is with boys.

MISS SO MUCH: GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX

I miss having the unusual moments surrounding me that really define the atmosphere of a school. The way some clocks don’t necessarily line up with others in the building, and everyone has to get used to the idea of how one is two minutes faster. That phantom noise that randomly occurs during the day that sounds like machinery collapsing in the ceiling that you learn to ignore, because nothing ever falls through. The way some kid will leave a banana sitting on the hallway floor right outside of the bathroom and then forget about it when they leave. All of this is to say nothing of how you don’t just learn to accommodate the dozens of quirks the students bring into your days, but often enjoy them.

MISS TERRIBLY: THE APPROACHING CLOSURE

The last month of the year is one of my favorites because the school year has a definitive expiration date, and you know that after that the relationships and group dynamic you’ve worked so hard and so long to establish with the class will abruptly end. That can lead to some powerful goodbyes. Or, there could be (are) years when you welcome the ringing of that final bell on the last day with open arms; not gonna lie, I’ve been on that side of the equation more than once. 

This year though, I have a great class. Even if I’ve spent precious little time with them in the real world, they are still a cohesive group full of distinct personalities that I know I’m going to miss. For so, so, so, so long, they were the only people I would talk to in the past year, in some cases for what felt like weeks at a time. I hope things don't end like this, but I’m afraid our year is going to close with all of us waving to each other as we shut down our last Google Meet of the day, like we do every day. 

I might have to pull out some creativity to make sure we get something closer to the ending we deserve. 

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 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.

Pandemic Narrative Part 14: Back to School, Kind Of

First, the numbers. Cases in the United States: 5.97 million. That’s a number greater than the population of thirty different states. Deaths: Just over 183,000. In Minnesota, that’s more than the population of any city other than Minneapolis or St. Paul.

School for the staff in our district begins tomorrow. The meetings and training sessions will be held virtually this year, with an extra week of planning and organizing built into the calendar. Students will be welcomed back after that one-week delay, with hybrid learning in the elementary schools and distance learning for secondary, with the intention that the secondary schools will transition to a hybrid model two weeks later. However, any families who were hesitant about sending their children back were given the option to have them continue with distance learning, at least for the first trimester. Enough people chose this at our school that one teacher from each grade has been designated a distance learning teacher.

These teachers will still collaborate with both their grade level teammates and each other, and most of them will be working in the building with the rest of the staff. Most, but not all. One was granted an accommodation by the school district because they’re carrying around Covid-19 underlying health conditions, so working in a public building puts them at a greater risk. That walking risk factor? That would be me. 

Maybe this is a surprise to you. It has been to a lot of people so far. If that’s the case, it’s  probably because I decided it isn’t your concern and I’ve chosen not to share it with you. Don’t take it personally, since that describes most people. We all have aspects of our lives we choose to keep to ourselves, and since this is one for me, I’d rather we all just accept it as a truth and move forward without making an issue of it. In other words, mind your business, and have a nice day. 

So why bring it up in the first place, you might be wondering? It would be pretty impossible to write this post without giving you at least that much context. So, context established — let’s move on.

I stopped at school this past Friday, for an hour or so, just to pick up whatever personal or curricular items I would need before my classroom is turned into a day care center for the next x number of weeks or months. There had already been at least one email sent out from our principal by then that would make it clear to anyone paying attention I won’t be roaming the hallways for this year, or at least for some of it. It was good to see some of my grade level team and a few other friends and colleagues in the short time I was there, because I know the separation from all of them will absolutely be the hardest thing about teaching remotely for me. 

Don’t get me wrong: I know how lucky I am to have gotten this accommodation. With the number of morons in the general public either ignoring, disregarding, or not taking mitigation guidelines as seriously as they should, it seems likely that eventually some student or staff member is going to let a little Covid nugget piggyback into the school. Not ideal, but we’re talking about a virus that spreads aggressively, which means that old brick schoolhouse that’s welcomed me back for the past twenty-eight school years is not the place for me to be right now.

So, where does that leave me? As far as the job goes, eh, it’s not really a big deal for my part. I’ve done distance learning before. I’m not getting the whole thing dropped on me out of nowhere like the big ugly surprise it was in March. I had a trimester to find out what works and what doesn’t. I’ve learned a lot about the tech. Not everything will go right, but most of it will. The families I’ll be working with chose that model, which makes me hopeful they’re at least on board with the idea. There will be things about it that are difficult, but there are going to be difficult things about the hybrid model I won’t be doing, so it should mostly be a wash in the end.

I’m not expecting the job to be too much of a problem. In fact, I’m actually looking forward to taking on some of the challenges. So I’m ready for the job. I’m anxious to teach again, even like this. I’m more worried about all the other things. 

I won’t see my team. Online? Sure. Group messaging? Constant. But will I be there to laugh at the knock-off Pringles? The Asimov quiz at lunch? The hallway decompression after another day in the psychedelic monkey house? No. But they will. And they’ll have each other. And they will build bonds based around the shared experiences unique to this school year that I will only ever know about as second hand, at best. 

I won’t see my friends. I don't suspect I’ll be missing out on many happy hours or game nights or team building events on the weekends, but: Our staff shifted hard last year. There were seismic changes in the district with new schools opening, and a lot of my long-time friends left, as a whole bunch of strangers came in to take their places. In many ways, I started last year feeling barely tethered to what my school had always been to me. As time went on, I slowly got to know a lot of these brand-new people, and developed stronger relationships with some of the others I’d work with for years but had never known well. This kind of relationship building happens gradually, collecting the momentary experiences that occur and letting them grow. Sometimes relationships organically occur, and sometimes you have to decide to put in the work needed to foster them. This year there are going to be more brand new people walking our halls. Most of them I haven’t even met. They’ll be nothing to me but names on a Google Meet tile, and I won’t be much more to them than a ghost or a rumor. They’ll build relationships with my friends and colleagues, and I could be a year behind everyone else by the time I get my chance to know them half as well.

I’ll still have my role in the greater purpose, but I won’t have anyone to share it with in the crucial moments. Everyone in a school knows which kids are the challenges in which homerooms and which grades. We all have our people we can safely vent to when it’s necessary. We have the running jokes that keep us sane. Being a part of a school staff is very much a “We’re all in this together” feel, in a way people who haven’t experienced it themselves could not appreciate. This year, I suspect that feeling is going to be even stronger and more connecting for the people there. And then there will be me, the virtual one, the afterthought, the asterisk. We’re all in this together, and, ooh, that’s right. Someone needs to remember to tell him, too.

I selfishly hope distance learning does start for everyone, which is counterintuitive since the only thing that would make that happen would be an even wider and more aggressive spread of the virus through the community. But if things do get bad, I want my friends and colleagues and my students and their families off the front lines. I want to know they’re all safe, and I want to know that when I rejoin the world, someday, it will still be somewhat familiar.

It’s daunting to consider how it’s inevitable the world is going to move on, and that the school, and the school community I return to, is going to be very different than the one I’m sidestepping away from so I can stay alive. It’s also daunting to think about how the experience at my end of it will change me as well. 

There’s nothing any of us can do but survive and wait to see what’s next.