Many things

Many things can be true, at once.

My brown flip flops dart between the hardscrabble red dirt and dried brush as the sun beats down. Each step meticulous, geared to avoiding pokes and stickers.

Who am I

It can be true that colleagues and educators, around the planet, are giving their all, all day, managing kids traumatized, digitized, screenified, unsure of what might come

Unbowed, unbroken, they are keeping things together, working through lunch, recess, shouldering new roles, the midst of yesterday’s solutions creating today’s problems

Exhausted. Stretched.

It can be true that school leaders are trapped between demanding parents and fiscal uncertainty.

Complex systems, now reminders of what once was, stark in contrast to what now is. And decisions, always decisions, that ultimately, have human impact.

I would not want to be in their shoes

And am grateful for their work.

I transition from the dried grasses to the manicured lawns to the hot sands

I’m not good with transitions

Who am I

It can be true that decisions have consequences.

For family, for systems, for schools. And ultimately for people. For kids.

Human impact.

It can be true that managing, building, and doing the work of Distance Learning is impossibly challenging. Trapped behind a screen, the day begins and doesn’t let up. At all. Hours and hours, thousands of clicks and punches. And at the end of it all, still to ask

Did they get it

Working so hard to come up with content, in hopes that it strikes the proper chord, resonant with understanding. Much like in a typical day in a typical classroom.

But Distance Learning, by its nature, is atypical.

Distant, cold.

Limited, and limiting.

Separated by 1s and 0s, kids trapped behind screens, it is nearly impossible to know

Did they get it

As close to an existential crisis as teachers can have.

In a classroom, the kids have demands that never let up. Thousands of decisions, made instantly. But then, mercifully, the kids go home.

When you teach from home, the kids never leave.

It can be true that workload increases, a brand-new FFT, demand intensifies. To feel isolated and separate, on a literal and figurative island.

Alone, as others come together, dig in, unite.

These things can be true.

It can be true that we all struggle, that suffering is an eternal truth. That nobody wins in the face of a global pandemic. People lose connection, jobs, each other.

That a two-teacher family can struggle with quarantine, with home school, with helping their boys manage schedules, time, the endless pursuit of balance.

We flail about awkwardly, as if parenting or teaching for the first time, and blow it just the same.

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It can also be true that there is much

to be grateful for

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For a pause in the ether, echoes of solitude,

birdsong

I slip off the flops, toes digging into hot sand. Just hot enough to turn my steady gait into an awkward hop.

And as the cool water curls my toes

I remember who I am