Back to school during a pandemic

 

I am writing this while on fall break. This break was long awaited and feels very overdue! Teachers went from being heroes in March when parents had to step in to monitor virtual learning and saw what it was like teaching their children to being lazy, just don't want to work in August because we are afraid for our students, our families and ourselves. Many teachers, including myself, have wrote Last Wills and Testaments as a result of being put back into the classroom to teach, care give and clean during a pandemic without any supplies, training or experience to do it. 

Tempe School District board members approved special education students who cannot learn virtually to go back to school in-person on August 17 per Governor Ducey's orders. The last couple of months have felt like a whole school year. Very very long! Teaching in-person in the morning, virtually in the afternoon and 1-1 sessions with students in the evening has made for teaching 3-4 different lesson plans a day when I normally teach one lesson plan and modify it for my morning class. All trainings, meetings and classes are online which has caused quite a strain on my eyes causing headaches and back aches from sitting at the computer for hours at a time. The anxiety from worrying about my in-person students getting sick and my virtual students not getting enough services wakes me up around 3am each night. 😟When I pick up my phone in the morning I am worried I will have a message from one of my in-person students' parent that they have a fever or are sick. My assistant and I spend hours cleaning the classroom, wiping down surfaces, and cleaning buckets full of toys. Before break I had four in-person students. I had the afternoon to clean my classroom and all the toys they had played with. Small preschoolers learn by play and do not attend to a toy for very long before they are off to play with a different toy. This means trying to keep the other children from touching toys already played with and means all the toys must be cleaned and sanitized. I am excited to see my afternoon kids that I have not seen in-person since March, but I am also anxious about how all this will work when I have only 30 min to clean in between classes of children and that's my lunch break. 😓

Teachers like routine and we like to be prepared. I spend the first week of the school year planning for the whole school year. I like to fill my planner with all the district dates for progress reports and holidays. I put in all the staff development days and pay days. I add all the school events and PTO events. Then of course I add stickers to make it colorful, fun and eye catching. 💝This year I have learned to now write everything in pencil because everything I wrote down in the summer was changed TBD and I had to white it out. The new re-opening plan at school is fluid meaning it could change at anytime and will probably be changed several times. This plan is what is feels like the first time you go on a field trip and you've never done this field trip or ever been there. The What If's get you and drive you crazy. All the What If's that could happen. I feel like I am going on a brand new field trip everyday. Field trips are completely emotionally and physically exhausting. 💤I know I will be flexible and adjust just like I always do, but sometimes I think why do I constantly have to. Just because someone is good at being knocked down over and over again and getting back up doesn't mean that they like doing it or won't get tired and just not get up anymore. Education's new motto "Flying a plane while building it" does not make me feel less anxious if anything it reminds me of my airline days and answering the phone after the airline had an incident (an airplane crash). 😢

I spend this week of fall break trying to recover, rest, and reassure myself that God has a plan. 🙏 I may not know the plan or how it will work, but I have to have faith in His timing and His plan. I must let go of not knowing, uncertainty and trust the unknown. The more I can let go, the more miracles happen. I have to work on changing the What If downs to What If ups. What If the 2020-2021 school year is the best school year ever? What if we learn to be resilient? What if we learn what is really important? What if we learn to love spending time with ourselves? What if we get to know our true Self?💗