Letter to Teachers...We Know You Care!

Dear Teacher Who Cares, 

Recently I wrote myself a message on a post-it note.  It sits on my desk and says:

 "It only bothers the teachers who care.  We all care."  

The first sentence was a snarky snide comment someone made regarding their perceived failures of  those attempting remote teaching. The second sentence was my mental rebuttal. Anyone who thinks that simple realization is enough to quell the teacher-heart is ridiculously mistaken!

You are a teacher. You went into this profession in order to be around children, relay your curriculum and by doing so, change the course of the future for the better. But now you are being asked to make that commitment to the future without the means with which you were initially equipped or promised. What you are accomplishing is nothing short of miraculous and yet, even that realization is not enough to quell the teacher-heart.

Let's face it, you signed up to work your magic face-to-face with your students. Here we are, nine months into this craziness and we are doing our job in ways we never signed up for, and in ways that we know are not conducive to what we need to accomplish. But we still show up each day. I find that interesting.

My dear friend, as you continue along this path, keep your head up! You are doing incredible things and touching students without being physically near them. That is incredible! You are encouraging families and helping them to embrace this situation in ways that are new and exciting. You are amazing! You are a strength and support for your colleagues even from your distance. That is empowering!  You are getting up each day, maybe feeling lethargic and apathetic, but you are not letting your students know that. That is compassionate!  You are relaying your curriculum, keeping kids' minds nimble, making sure they are getting all that they would get if you had the optimum circumstances, even though you don't. That is impossible! So impossible that anyone else would have given up by now, said it was time to throw in the towel and cut your losses, wait until this thing passes, but you are still moving forward, one step at a time...that is commendable!

And so I say, "Thank you!"  Thank you for being amazing in a job that requires books, contact, pencils and paper, interaction, clear communication, glances, touches, all kinds of tools that we are not afforded at this time, yet we still are here, we still are teaching, we still are serving. That is awe-inspiring!

Please, please, please, stay away from negative comments!  Keep this in mind especially now...When someone says something negative, determine if there is any truth to it's condemnation.  If there is, fix it.  If there isn't, let it go. If you have the strength, tack on a positive rebuttal. For that, my dear teaching friend, is what we need to do. Are there times when you might be slacking or taking the easy road instead of diving in full force? If yes, determine to do better. If not, know that you are doing all you can in a world that is anything but conducive to teaching children! I know you care. You are amazing, performing the impossible and inspiring others to grow forward, one more step, one more day.  We can do this!  Thank you!  Thank you!

Fun With Homework: Sasquatch or Someone I Once Dated?

I'm sitting here staring at a pile of mail that needs my attention as well as lesson plans that need tweaking before tomorrow's classes, but I just can't help myself! I need to try to get this smile to you before tonight's vice presidential debate...or maybe I'll show some restraint and write it tonight but reread it in the morning before posting. Sometimes my nighttime-after-a-whole-day-of-online-teaching humor and thoughts are not completely appropriate to share. We shall see. Either way, please know that you were on my mind tonight as Bernadette and I muddled through her Language Arts homework.

You see, her homework asked her to take notes, something she swears she was never really taught to do, on two articles regarding mythological creatures. When I came upon Bernadette after getting dinner started, she was already in tears and giving up on the assignment, feeling that she was not prepared to tackle it, and wondering what the point was anyway. 

Let me stop for a moment to say that I DO NOT fault her teacher. This is the fifth pre-teen with whom I have shared a house. I know the script, and I do not allow my children to coerce me into thinking anything negative about their teachers. 

And so as I approached her, tissue in hand, she was gripping the soon-to-be broken pencil, proclaiming that the directions made no sense and the articles she was being asked to read were, and I quote, "stupid". That was it. Challenge accepted! You know I just had to read them now. Not to myself, but aloud and in every possible voice impersonation and accent I could muster. 

And so we began: Our main character (I forget his name) was in his sister's backyard when he saw a huge creature and ran into the house to get his brother-in-law, Bud Jenkins (that name stuck). That's when I knew that it was a Bigfoot story. With that newfound knowledge, I dutifully started in my best news-caster-serious tone. But after reading about Bud Jenkins, we switched to my best accusatory tone...you see, the article was trying to say these men were just hanging out when they saw the creature, but something about the backyard altercation in Fort Bragg, California was screaming to me, "a little too much to drink". And that's when it hit me...what if parents took it upon themselves to have a little fun with the homework?  What if we put our own little twist on the assignment? 

For example, when the article exclaimed that what's his name and Bud "saw it. In the shadows lurked a giant figure-over six feet tall and covered in hair." , the next bullet point could be: *"I dated a guy like that once." (This, by the way, was the breaking point for Bernadette, when tears turned to laughter.)

Please don't misinterpret my comments.  I get it. This was a lesson in notetaking, and a good one at that! But really, it lent itself so beautifully to a parent having a little fun to put a smile on the child's (and teacher's) face. Mermaids... sailors... dragons... Bluff creek...and, wait for it,  a nineteen foot long tentacle of a Giant Squid! Oh wow! the possibilities were endless! We went through the British accent, the bored tone, the speed reader and the coffee-clutch-ritzy woman before getting to the end of the assignment, and boy did we have fun!

Look, I'm all for taking school seriously. I think education is one of the most important yet overlooked basic rights of the American citizen. I don't take lightly what our teachers are trying to accomplish right now in the midst of impossible situations. In fact, I am happy to recall this quote that I used in one of my sociology papers in Grad School about teachers, "We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, that we are now qualified to do anything with nothing." These words have become even more meaningful over the last six months of educational acrobatics. So how can we, parents of the students, let teachers know we are right there with them? Do the assignments, that's how! Not for the child, but alongside the child. Come on, a parent doing some Algebra II or Physics to the best of his/her ability could be just the boost the student and teacher need. It's all about showing appreciation and gratitude for the sharing of gifts that we as parent do not possess. 

I shall stop there. It is a challenge for you. I will look forward to hearing about the assignments you decide to take on sitting next to your child. Let them see you struggle. Let them see you have fun with it. Let their teachers see you are invested. And let the laughter flow. By the way, Bernadette is now dancing to James Arthur singing "Say You Won't Let Go". When asked about her fancy, carefree moves, her response, "Because...I feel good...I had fun...and my homework is done."  Nice!