I started packing my classroom yesterday. I got six boxes finished. I would have packed more but I had to spend a couple hours taking apart the binders of my students… from two years ago.
My students each have a 1-inch binder that stays in my class. This has been the case for many years – more than I can remember. They keep a notebook, worksheets, and other papers in it. They also keep a pair of ear buds and their current free reading novel in a pencil pouch affixed to the three rings. Usually they take their own binders apart at the end of the year – recycling (or taking home) the paperwork and throwing away (or keeping) the binder. Of course when they went home in mid-March of 2020, they assumed they’d be back in three weeks, and so they left their binders. Those binders that they never came back to get have been sitting on my shelves all these many months; I never dealt with them because I wasn’t teaching in my room and didn’t need to. Honestly, I didn’t want to.
Now, of course, I need to, and it doesn’t matter whether I want to or not. So yesterday I sat down with a stack of the binders and started taking them apart. Each one was a tiny time capsule, with all the papers we had been working on tucked between the doodles and notes of its owner. The little prizes they had one were in the pencil pouches of many students, pressed up against the novel they were reading (they were going to make trailers in groups and share them with the class). It’s been a long time since I’ve come up against such a strikingly complete vestige of the before times, and I kept catching my breath as I noticed little details that felt so familiar and yet so foreign.
Yesterday afternoon, as both kids played their video games after camp, I got on a bus headed in the direction of the dojo. It was the first time I’d been on public transportation since shelter-in-place began so many months ago. At the dojo, I practiced martial arts for the first time sans mask with other community members who are also vaccinated.
I know the pandemic is not over, even here with our high rates of vaccination, but it definitely feels like we can see the light at the end of this tunnel. Today I was struck by the juxtaposition of the remnants of when this all began, and the first tentative steps into a future where this is behind us.
I suppose it’s easy to focus on the two ends of the tunnel, when really we should be doing the hard work of muddling through what happened in the middle. The middle part is harder to remember, because it was dark and confusing and sometimes terrifying in there – none of which make for reliable recollection. But it’s important that we do our best to revisit that murky middle, to not just focus on the two ends of the tunnel – as mesmerizing as both may be. The disorienting dark of the first weeks and the blinding light as we come out of this – it’s easy to focus on those moments – they captivate us. But what’s really important is what we learned as we stumbled through the tunnel, unsure of where we were going, terrified of what our lives would look like on the other side.
I don’t want to forget the middle, which means I need to take the time to remember. Perhaps that is a good project for this summer.
Funny – I still feel very much in the middle, and believe I will until vaccines are available for my kiddos (I have hope for my will-be 6 year old this fall but sounds like the 4 year old might not be elibigble until early 2022). Our governor has forbidden schools from requiring masks so if I want to send my kids to school this fall they will be around unmasked kiddos while variants are likely raging through the winter. Short of keeping them home again – which we’ve decided we can’t do due to the effects on their social, mental, and academic health – it feels very much like we will be throwing caution to the wind after having been so careful these last 15 months.
I will be teaching full time in my classroom (after teaching only two days there in the spring) and my kids will be full time in person (after just 10 days last year total), so it definitely feels like we are coming out of this. We’ll all be wearing masks at school (I just bought a whole bunch from Athleta – I really like their masks), so the pandemic certainly won’t be over, but it feels like we are very much on the other side. We even feel comfortable letting our kids see friends outside (in our backyard) without masks (the group we have been “podding” with already) because it’s so incredibly windy here all the time. It feels to me like we have turned a corner, I think mostly because of schools opening fully in the fall (even my middle school where the kids change classes 6-7x a day!) I do worry sometimes that things could change, but in SF 80% of the eligible population has received one dose at 75% has received both. Our numbers are very low, so I’m trying to hold out hope that we will be fully in person in he fall, despite the delta variant.
California “opens fully” today actually, so yeah, it feels like we’re coming out of this.
Amazing that your percentages are that high; I imagine that does give good comfort. We’re only at 41%/33% here. 🙁