Pic from last year
I’m a special education teacher and a mom of two kids under the age of 5. If I can be completely honest, I’ve been feeling very anxious lately, like stressed the F out kind of anxious.
Around this time, I would be shopping for school supplies, not for my own kids, but for my students (who I end up calling “my kids” anyway).
Around this time, I would be choosing my first day of school outfit.
Around this time, I would be anxious, but in a good way. I would be anxious to finally be back in the classroom, anxious to meet my new students, and anxious to learn each of their unique personalities.
Now, I’ve got the bad anxious. I’m feeling small and helpless. I have no idea what is happening behind closed doors when it comes to my job. I literally have no clue. And as I talk to my colleagues, it’s evident that we are all in the same boat. We don’t know when we’re going back to our students and we don’t know where or how.
We’re trying to blindly navigate through waves of uncertainty and be prepared for whatever lies ahead. When the schools closed, we had a couple of weeks to learn a completely different teaching skillset. We were, or at least I was, overwhelmed, worried, and everything in between on how I could do this and how it would work. But I figured it out--we figured it out.
And during that time, my heart was aching to be back with my students. See, as a special education teacher, I work with a very small, tight-knit group of students. During this past school year, I’ve not only learned each of my student’s unique personalities, but also their dreams, aspirations, and fears. I was there to cheer them on when they succeeded and there to encourage them when they felt frustrated. My students knew they could come to me if they were hungry, if they needed something like clothes or school supplies, or if they just needed someone to listen to them. Honestly, I even had a lot of guilt when I felt I was spending more time and energy with my work kids than with my actual kids.
So when the school closures happened, I worried about them endlessly. I tried my best to ease their new fears and worries, as well as their parents. I tried to reassure the parents that they’re doing a great job and not to worry too much about the student workload. I felt that in the midst of a pandemic, the very least we could do as teachers was to show compassion for our parents because they were also struggling to figure out how they were going to do their jobs while watching their children.
So, why am I so anxious?
Because 3 weeks away from schools reopening, I don’t know the plan. Because I don’t know how I’m going to work from home with my kids at home again. But also in the same vein, I’m worried about physically going into work and getting sick, or my kids getting sick. Or anyone getting sick.
And then to add to that, the articles and the comments. As the start date of schools draw near, there’s more anger towards teachers. From an opinion piece titled “Teachers are underworked and overpaid” (written in 2018, but has gained more traction recently) to the random Facebook comments I would scroll through, I saw that people were resenting us. People were saying that we are lazy, we are looking for an easy way out, or that we are part-time workers with a full-time salary. Some of these comments came from my own community. I talked to a friend who teaches 500 miles away and she said it’s the same in her community. But, she’s grown numb to them now.
This is wrong. We need the support of our community.
I assure you that I want nothing more than to see my students. But when it’s safe to do so. I assure you that we want nothing more than things to go back to normal and for businesses to open and run as usual. I assure you that we’re not just trying to find an easy way out. We are all stuck between a rock and a hard place. I just wish that people could be a little bit more compassionate and show a little more grace. We, teachers, are trying to figure this out with the little information that we have.
<3 B