Just like your's, over-night, my world became one of those unrealistic and baffling math word problems where Esperanza buys 42 cantaloupes and must divide them among 3 housing units of 15 families that contain several generations from 4 countries. The internet...oh...the internet. A 12-minute video lesson (that took 2 hours to create and 5 hours to edit) would take 8 hours to upload from my house. The alternative would be for Brad and me to jump in the van and search the school parking lot for the wireless "sweet-spot" so that it would reduce my upload time to 2 hours. OR...we could choose to drive 40 minutes to Belfast to use my church's internet, cutting my upload time to 2 minutes. Did I mention that all of this usually occurred at 10 o'clock at night? My math problem became when a northbound train left the depot at 8:15 am and traveled at a rate of 45 miles per hour toward a train traveling southbound which departed 25 minutes later but traveled at a rate of 60 miles per hour, where would I have to stand so that they would both simultaneously run me over at the exact same time?
Certain seemingly innocuous comments from friends and family set me off.
- Must be nice to be at home all day...set your own hours...
- I developed a nervous twitch from my Pavlovian response to the notification tings on my phone. I was living in a lawless land where everyone had my home phone number. I was fielding calls, texts, and emails from 6:30 in the morning to close to 11 pm, seven days a week. I did not know how to put up boundaries. Like me, everyone was scared and confused and if I could provide a (false) sense of reassurance, than that was what I was going to do. I was creating and pushing out lesson plans, maintaining daily communication with families via social media, correcting student work and offering feedback in real time while playing educational multi-player games with 4th graders AND middle schoolers who wandered back into my life. On three glorious occasions, I had parents call to ask if I would please yell at their kids for them. Happy to do it. Yelling at kids is a hobby of mine. Notice that I am actively avoiding the topic of video conferencing. Three grade level meetings a week. One culminating student project meeting a week. Class meetings every Friday. Small group meetings every day. It will take YEARS of therapy to recover just from the number of times I had to tell my 9-year-old boys to please put on a shirt.
- Think of all the gas you saved...
- Brad scoffs at that one. Our first tour of 16 mailboxes in our school district in March took us over an hour and a half. Countless trips over the course of three months...well, let's just say that the last one took 4 hours. And let's not factor in the desperate drives to Belfast for the elusive internet. Yeah...we saved a LOT of gas.
So where was the outlet? I was subsiding on string cheese and miniature Peppermint Patties. Wasn't sleeping. Was manically brainstorming unrealistic and ridiculous outreach ideas to keep families and colleagues connected. Began developing what I hope is a mild and temporary case of Agoraphobia and believe that the stress of this situation (and my woeful inability to deal with it) may have pushed me into pre-menopause. Yay. Where was the release?
Part of the release...oddly enough, given my COMPLETE hatred of them, came, in part during video conferencing. Our sweet, kind, quiet, and completely professional special educator (who could have won the Olympic Medal in daily video conferencing calls) often had to attend both 4th grade and 3rd grade meetings at the same time which, once I quit complaining constantly, made her the perfect target for my shenanigans. She reluctantly became my pint-sized puppet on the screen as I worked as her video ventriloquist. Typing text instructions to Tyler on the 3rd grade team to have her touch her nose and pull her ear for my personal amusement. Sadly, she DOES have boundaries because she refused to flap her arms like a chicken.
The end of the year brought teachers back into the building to assigned rooms to train for our new reading program. One full day of my virtual trainer telling me to proceed to the next page by pushing this button or that button while attempting to fill my already over-whelmed brain with a complicated curriculum outline was too much. The second day was just about survival. Our virtual trainer valiantly fought the good fight while each grade level attended along the border of her instructional screen...all attentively listening, absorbing, planning their approach for next year. Meanwhile, I was hissing at my librarian that I would pay her twenty dollars to perform a cartwheel across the front of our room to shake things up. She eyed the floor-to-ceiling ratio and then accused me of not having the money to back up my challenge.
Okay...that didn't work. Hmmmm....
Our virtual trainer offered us a 3-minute opportunity for questions or reflective comments at the end of every hour to be typed and displayed via video chat. After perusing Week One of our new program's vocabulary, I selected the word "mundane" and texted Tyler a challenge to incorporate that word into his question or reflective comment.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. The end of the hour arrived but...instead of asking us to type our question or reflective comment, our trainer invited us to simply un-mute ourselves and share. We gasped when Tyler's voice suddenly filled our room and we held our collective breath waiting for the Word-of-the-Day. No surprise to anyone...he chickened out...offering us a sudden window to rise to the challenge. A frantic 3-second brainstorming session concluded with me racing to the Smartboard to un-mute. Heart racing, gasping for air, I shakily shared my question: "As educators we often struggle with the seemingly MUNDANE aspects of figurative language. Does your program weave these features into lessons consistently through the year or teach them in isolation?" We heard a shout echo down the dark, deserted school corridor as Tyler's room erupted into cheers...accepting our victory as their own. The very picture of camaraderie.
And THAT was the outlet. The only thing that kept any of us grounded. Camaraderie. Friendship. Relationships. Empathy. Patience. Compassion. Understanding. Flexibility. And fun.
What happened to us? For awhile there...we forgot to be fun. It takes some work...but THAT is the place we have to get back to. It's time to think outside of that damn box that only spews bad news and fear...break down the walls that were built up around us (literally and metaphorically)...and learn to laugh again. Or, at the very least, laugh at Tyler.
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