Pivot! PIVOT!!!

 You know that episode of Friends where they are moving the couch and it gets stuck on the stairway and Ross just keeps yelling “Pivot!  PIVOT!” in increasingly desperate tones?  If that is not the mood for teaching in this 2020-2021 school year, well, I just don’t know what is.  

Maybe it goes beyond teaching too, maybe it is how we have all been asked to live life, but y’all I have changed directions so many times, I am nauseous.  Or maybe just heartsick; they present the same way.

I am weary of Zoom classes where no one turns on their camera and I am talking to a screenful of black boxes.  And not black boxes like on airplanes where they are full of information. Black boxes with names of kids who might be there or may have logged on and left; we won’t know until I end class and see who’s still there when they have been told they can leave.  I am told to be engaging, to use new technology, to make lessons fun!  I could stand on my head and juggle fire and that would not be engaging.  Students are tired of being online too.

Work remotely, no you can’t work remotely, that doesn’t count.  Wait, though. Remote learning counts when it could be a snow day.  Work from school and teach to in-person and online kids at the same time and here, step behind this plastic shower curtain that will keep you safe from contagion.  Sports are cancelled, but, wait!  They are not cancelled. Some teams are cancelled.  Wait, that’s not happening either.  Wear a mask on the field, mostly wear a mask on the field.  Always wear a mask on the field.

Aren’t we next in line for vaccines?  Where are all the vaccines?  Yes, old people and 1B.  Of course.  Are we 1C?  Was that just a rumor to get us back behind the shower curtains?  And not a real shower curtain.  I am sitting at my desk with yesterday’s clothes on and a beanie on my three-day-unwashed hair.  And I am only sitting at my desk because some applications require you use school wifi even when school is not open.

All the acronyms that make teaching painful are still on for this year. All the tests, all the professional development, all the observations, and boxes to be checked still need to be checked.  How about new ones for this year?  Only cried on camera once today? Check.  Stays up to date on grades and attendance? Check.  Modulated tone to represent hope and passion while feeling beleaguered and defeated?  Check!

This week was especially hard.  I feel like teachers and students alike have settled into that this is it.  I doubt we will be back to school for real this year and I am trying to find the reserves to power through five more months like this and the kids are too.  No, this is not ideal, but forcing open schools and all of us sharing this air and being superspreaders isn’t ideal either.  I miss actual students in my classroom.  I miss their ridiculous ideas and the way they could make me laugh that just does not translate over zoom.  I miss watching kids work together in groups, even when they hate group work. Breakout rooms are no match for some desks pushed together or the excuse to sit on the floor in the hallway and work.  I miss the smell of coffee permeating the air on the third floor and lunch with my colleagues at our crowded lunch table.  I miss the live sharing of stories, the sense of togetherness, and the knowledge that we were making a daily difference somewhere that day.

I’ll continue to do what we are all doing: pivoting, changing, adapting, powering through.  I just wanted to say that I am so tired and I know that you are too.  I also know it won’t always be like this and sometimes I remember to tell this to other people when they are having a bad day.  I think I just forget to tell myself.  So, for all of us who need to hear it, IT WON’T ALWAYS BE LIKE THIS!!!  And maybe, just maybe, all that pivoting and twisting and turning will give us rock-hard obliques!