I’m really struggling right now. My focus has been decimated by all this. I can’t get anything done. I’ve lost hundreds of dollars worth of things – important things – over the past few weeks (my Rx glasses, my nice sun glasses, my earpods). I wander around getting nothing done. I burn food on the stove because I forget I’m cooking it. I wander around with something I’m supposed to put away, but just set it down in another random spot. Not only am I not accomplishing anything, but I’m making a lot of things worse. I am a mess.
My marriage feels like it’s falling apart. I know it’s not, but that is what it feels like.
My kids are having a hard time. The excess Switch time (for Spring Break) is coming back to bite us in the ass. It’s harder to get them outside for a long enough stretch that it resets them now that most of the spaces are closed (though a city just south of us is leaving their beach open and that day was amazing). Yesterday I couldn’t convince them to leave the house at all, when all I had to offer was a walk around the block. (Yes, they lost privileges for making that decision, but they preferred to lose those privileges than to go outside.)
Our spring break is ending and it’s back to the distance learning grind on Monday. For all of us. My principal was so desperate for us to take an actual break that she wouldn’t even entertain the idea of us collaborating on the new schedule until our “work days” this coming Monday and Tuesday. So I’m not sure what will be expected of me once we start distance learning again and I can’t really plan what I’m going to do, which is driving me crazy.
{Before we were pushing work to kids on a daily basis, but that workload felt unsustainable for most of us. We also want to start zooming with our kids on a more regular basis (our students could not access zoom with their school accounts until the end of last week so we weren’t all teaching that way regularly yet), which presents scheduling challenges at the middle school level where each students has six or seven classes/teachers. So we are considering block schedule-like alternatives where students only zoom with, and get work from, certain teachers on certain days. But we haven’t talked about what that might look like at all, and as an elective teacher who teachers four different grade levels, there is a lot of uncertainty for me.}
We get almost no communication from our kids’ school, which has such a large population of free-and-reduced-lunch families that they don’t even have a way to email parents in situations like these. I keep hoping for something in the mail but it doesn’t come. So I have no idea what they will be expected to do starting Monday, and I doubt I’ll receive any clarification, which means their distance learning will be up to me, at least for a little while, probably for the duration.
{There have been multiple articles about how varied the distance learning situations are across districts in the Bay Area. I’m definitely teaching in a district that is providing more than most and my kids are at a district – and especially at a school – where they are doing less than most. It’s… interesting to see the differences first hand.}
My house is a perpetual mess. I’m trying to declutter but, well see the first paragraph.
I’m trying meditation. I’m trying to “stay connected.” I’m trying to get good sleep (my son wakes up with bad dreams every night so that makes it hard). I’m trying all the things I’m supposed to be trying to make things better. It’s not really working. (Or maybe it is, but not enough to make me feel better?) I’m hoping that with my husband available this weekend (he’s been working his normal hours this week – he doesn’t get a spring break), I’ll be able to get caught up on a couple of projects and things will start to feel more manageable. Because right now, nothing feels manageable. At all.
I just want to commiserate with you – I have it far better than most and still think this is really hard. I’m working full days from home but getting so little done because I just can’t focus. Thankfully we have five acres (with a swingset), so lots of room outside for my littles to run and play; if we didn’t have that, I don’t know what we’d do.
I’m at an elementary school but my student have 6 different teachers too (due to the structure of our dual language program)… and we also started by giving daily assignments in each class and then scaled back. Last week we switched to assigning work in each subject twice a week and it was MUCH better. Highly recommend! Today we were trying to figure out Zoom schedules and it was hard because we don’t want to have two Zooms for the same group of kids going at the same time. UGH.
The school I teach in sounds very similar to your kids’ school in terms of demographics, parent involvement, etc. We have a school communication app that all classes use and have primarily been communicating with that — BUT within most classes there are 1-3 families that aren’t connected via the app and additional families that are on the app but haven’t been checking it since the school closed. It’s been devastating to see how the kids who were already academically ahead are continuing on and those were drastically behind are the ones who are falling through the cracks and getting further and further behind.
I’m glad you were able to take a break from teaching this week, though I can also see how the interruption from your pre-break routine has made things harder. I hope you get some more direction from your kids’ school and can figure out a way to make your teaching manageable moving forward.
I’m sorry you are struggling. This is a tough time for everyone, no two ways about it.
Are you a fan of Brene Brown? I listened to this podcast this morning, and it hit so many of the feelings I’ve had over the past couple of weeks: https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-on-comparative-suffering-the-50-50-myth-and-settling-the-ball/
I LOVE BRENE BROWN! Thank you so much for sharing!
You are in terrible grief. This is not you being wrong at all. This is chaos and grief and loss and out-of-control and anxiety and fear and complete loss of control. You go full-tilt all the way and all at once EVERYTHING blewup and dumped you (and the rest of us) into a foreign setting with very little resemblence to anything you ever knew before. I mean, after all even your bed at night is different!!! And, everytime we are told one thing it changes and changes and changes. We are all running through hidden quicksand. Everything that anchors us is in uproar.
And, your children and husband are who they are and this dislocation is absolutely harder on them than on many other people. I know someone who says he is in the wrong job because the job is constant adrenaline rush … like being an ER doc at Cook County Hospital and he is more suited to dermatology. Your family is not high wire trapeze artists with no net over the Grand Canyon types. (Mine isn’t either.) SO this is really hard. You are actually doing magnificently. You are trying to get your children up and out. You are wanting to organize ahead of need and being prevented from doing this. You are wanting to have some organization and stability and realize that is what you need.
This is very very hard. And honestly that you post gives me a feeling of NORMALACY in how I am feeling and the issues I am having; and even more important right now, it holds my hand so to speak in isolation and reduces the chaos. RIGHT NOW: you are keeping your children alive and safe. THAT IS A LOT! And, it isn’t easy. And there are parts of this country where people are not doing that because it is hard and they do not want to believe what is at stake.
I am so proud of each person who is keeping their children safe and trying to carry on and shopping for groceries and maintaining. That is huge. SO deep breaths, keep telling the truth, keep the children alive and as safe as possible….. and be super kind and gentle to you. You may not feel like it at all but you are doing wonderfully well in a world we never imagined and do not recognize.
The school chaos is incredible and the teachers are being heroic!
(Has your dojo gone to zoom online classes for kids? Some have. And Bay Area wide the YMCA is doing zoom classes too.)
I am so very proud of your generation.
So you read TheShuBox.com? She mentions some podcasts that she is finding helpful in today’s post. I am not a podcast user but think you may be. And, YES, she is finding this difficult too!
Sorry you are having a particularly hard time right now. Be kind to yourself and lower your expectations (and then lower them some more). If you come out of this time with your and your family’s lives and health intact, call it a win.
Thinking of all of you. Sending best wishes for health and some routines that soothe. Had tough time as heard EMTs now in my CA county from Portland, working out of field hospitals. Thank you Oregon! That we need the help is anxiety provoking but that it is showing up is a reminder of the finest parts of American traditions.
And than you to Noemikjames for this blog. Hope the rain in Sf cleared your air of pollen, it improved mine, and that you are finding your best outlets and family support plans.
What did you learn traveling with children that is helping today?
What is your favorite, non-local, place & time to go to in your imagination?
What is budding in your garden or the gardens near you? Is anything in bloom already? (My roses show buds but too early for blooms.)
Holding on, focusing on the support you offer, picturing you on the bike with your children. (Have seen more women on similar bikes with children in Jan, Feb and first half of Feb all over in SF …. and always think of you and the fact I thought, incorrectly, that it would not be physically possible. You ALWAYS outdo what I think is possible!)
Support!!!!!