Not a Wasted Word

You may have noticed in my last post that I mentioned my kids going back to school (two short days a week) at the end of April. My son will start the week of April 19th. My daughter will start the week of April 26th. Their school year ends on June 2nd.

Because of some Mondays off (for my son), they both will get 10 days in their classrooms. 10 abbreviated days. For the entire 20-21 school year.

If you had told me, last March 13th, that in the next 15 months my kids would be at school for 10 days, I don’t know what I would have done.

I know many children will never enter a classroom this year. I know so many students are struggling.

What my kids are getting is not much, but something, even a very small something, is better than nothing. So many kids are getting nothing. They are getting nothing at home and they won’t get to go back to school. How does anyone expect these kids to catch up?

My kids get 10 abbreviated days. I’ll take it.

We had a nice, low key spring break. Why was it nice? Because… vaccinated grandparents!

My in-laws, who have been fully vaccinated for a little while (a couple weeks more than the two weeks after the second shot), had communicated to us that their fear of the variants outweighed their desire to see their grandchildren. They thought they might meet us outside for a masked meal, but otherwise they didn’t plan to see us any more than they had before they were vaccinated (which was a weekly wave from our front door to them in their car). We were disappointed, but understood that everyone has different comfort levels during a pandemic. We assumed we wouldn’t be seeing them again anytime soon.

Then they called us late last week (I think after talking to their daughter) and let us know that they had changed their minds; they weren’t going to quarantine due of the variants because there would always be variants and so far it seemed the vaccines were effective enough against them. To say this was amazing news is a MAJOR understatement.

Our son spent the night with his grandparents last Saturday night. Our daughter did on Sunday. They were both SO ECSTATIC to hug their grandparents and go to their house. My daughter wanted to bring over a ton of stuffies so they could all come back home smelling like her grandparents’ house (which has a distinctively pleasant smell).

It was so nice for them to see their grandparents and so nice for each of them to have some time without their sibling. My daughter got some time with her friends (outside and masked) while her brother was spending the night, and my son and I ordered a pizza and watched Shazam! when his sister was away. It was a great break from our regular routines.

On Tuesday we went to the zoo, which my son had done with his friend and RAVED about. It has been a LONG time since I took my kids to the zoo and it was great to be back. We got icees and hot pretzels and saw all our favorite animals. We had a really good time and enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather.

That unseasonably warm weather (::cough:: heat wave ::cough::) lasted almost all week. My parents took both kids on Wednesday to spend the night and they took them to the beach where it was 80* and they could swim in the estuary which is a lot warmer than the frigid Pacific ocean. They tried to hit up a splash pad on Thursday but the water wasn’t on yet so they retreated to the house (my SF kids melt in 85* weather). I picked them up Thursday and we brought In-n-Out to my friends house where we visited with her and her kids (outside and masked).

Friday, after they got their teeth cleaned, my daughter went to my in-laws again while my son and I met his friend at the playground and Saturday my son went to my in-laws again while I hosted my daughter’s friends in our backyard. Having a place for one of them to go while the other is (safely) seeing friends has been something I’ve wished for over and over again for the past nine months.

Sunday we went to my parents’ house for Easter. The kids found a ton of eggs and got some books and a couple D&D figure sets to compliment the crazy amount of candy. My husband (who is not yet vaccinated) stayed outside, but I went inside and helped with the dishes and sat on their couch for a moment (just because I could).

It was a REALLY nice spring break, ONLY because both sets of grandparents are vaccinated and trust in the protection of the vaccinations (and live close enough to visit easily). We are very, very lucky and I have not felt this much hope for the future in a long time.

The support of grandparents is coming at an important time for us, when the kids’ schedules are being turned upside down as the district attempts to return in person and my own schedule changes as my school transitions to more in person learning. We’re not so stressed by the fact that our kids were given opposite in person schedules at the end of April (our son will go M/Tu and our daughter will go Th/F) because we know grandparents can help us with the very inconvenient drop off and pick up times. We’re not as stressed about the lack of coverage at the childcare we’re paying for because we know the grandparents can step in every once in a while to take the kids. All of the sudden we have a little bit of breathing room, and after how suffocating the last year has felt, that little bit goes a LONG way.

As the parent who was with the kids all week so her husband could have his first week of uninterrupted work (during a very busy stretch), and as the parent who still manages most of the kids’ “away from home” activities I am so, SO thankful the presence of other adults in my kids’ lives again. So, so thankful.

I just started Hunt, Gather, Parent and the first two chapters are about how Western family structures and parenting paradigms are such outliers in the world and especially in human history. How the “traditional” nuclear family has barely existed in European society, and doesn’t really exist anywhere else and how the way we parent is not based on generations of wisdom being passed down from those that had already raised children to those that were just having them, but instead is a series of inventions that have not withstood the test of time or even rigorous scientific study. Parents are not supposed to be the only important, stable adults in children’s lives and the pressure of providing the love, care, and support that should be given by extended families and close knit communities, is crushing for parents. I REALLY appreciate reading these thing because they validate the feeling of “why the fuck is this so hard!” that I’ve been fighting against since my children were born, and that has metastasized into an undeniable fact in the past year.

The feeling of relief I’ve felt in the past week, as the grandparents have reentered our lives, only highlights how unnatural it is for families to be isolated like they are in the United States. The pandemic exacerbated that isolation, but it existed before. I wonder if there are ways to combat these ineffective societal structures as we return to our normal lives…

I’ve been thinking a lot about leaving San Francisco. I don’t really think it will happen, because inertia is a motherf*cker especially when only one half of a whole is fighting against it, but I think about it a lot. And I’m coming to realize that it’s not just about leaving a school district I have absolutely no faith in, it’s also about how tenuous my sense of community feels here.

When everything locked down, people had to choose who they were going to see because more contacts, even outside, socially distanced, with masks on, meant more possible exposure. We were incredibly lucky that our kids’ friends’ families were comfortable with outside socialization and were taking the same precautions as we were otherwise. My daughter has seen three friends regularly (always outside, socially distanced, with masks on) since last summer and my son has seen one friend (who is really his only friend at this point). Those relationships sustained us during the past nine months. I really can’t overstate how important they were to our overall well being.

{And I know many people have not been able to see anyone for the last year and the prospect of that is terrifying to me. I know those people have had a much harder time of all this than I have.}

Now, as things open up, I’m reminded that those people have broader communities they want to be a part of. Now that grandparents are vaccinated, and friends are more comfortable meeting outside, our tight knit community is loosening. Sometimes it feels like it’s unraveling.

Knowing that my daughter’s friends will likely attend a different middle school feels like someone is holding a piece of fabric of my community and waiting to pull it all apart. It’s scary.

We were seeing my son’s friend 3-4 times a week until his grandparents were fully vaccinated. Now we’ve been told they can see us once a week, otherwise things get too hectic. They have other families and friends to visit and fill their time. My son has nobody else so I’m left scrambling for ways to fill the time when his sister is out playing soccer or just spending time with her friends.

I’m not very good at creating and maintaining community. My husband is abysmal at it. I have been so, so lucky to find real friends in my daughter’s friends’ moms. Truly I am consciously grateful for it every day. I spent the early years of motherhood basically alone, with no community at all, and it was awful. Not a day goes by that I’m not thankful for what I have.

But what I have is changing. And it will continue to change. I think part of me wants to move away to get in front of that change – to have some control over it. Maybe if I move away and we create a new community, these friends will still exist on the periphery, and we’ll still see them sometimes. All my friends seem to have these eccentric circles of community, and it’s the outer rings that they have and I lack. Maybe if I move I can preserve my current community in some way, in an outer circle, before my inner circle unravels on it’s own.

It’s good to recognize why I’ve been so stressed out about seemingly minor problems. This is not just about my daughter being alone at her new middle school, it’s about my own fears that my community is coming apart. I know that change is coming for my community even if all my daughter’s friends go to the same middle school – kids commonly change social circles during adolescence – but it was easier to feign ignorance when the possible changes resided in nebulous future probabilities. Now it’s staring me down, and it’s hard to look directly at it, to acknowledge and accept it.

I wonder if I’m handling this new uncertainty surrounding my community worse than I would have otherwise because everything else in my life feels so uncertain. I don’t even know what my job will look like in two weeks (they still haven’t shared the Phase 4 schedule with elective teachers), let alone in the fall. I don’t know if my kids will be back in school this spring, let alone in September. It’s a lot of not knowing and it’s hard.

The last two weeks have been crazy. I drove to work all five days last week and on Monday and Tuesday of this week and I have to admit, I REALLY don’t miss my commute.

Being on campus with students was weird. It was good, but it was also intense. I think it was stranger than it might have been because we brought back our Advisory classes for 2 hours of social emotional learning (SEL) so it ended up being a lot of sitting in a circle tying to get middle schoolers who have been interacting with school through a screen for a year to engage in a meaningful discussion with masks on. It felt like I was the only light in a room full of black holes that just sucked all my energy from me. It was exhausting.

But I’ll only have to do it for one more week (after next week’s spring break) because the board has decided that we are neglecting our students by even attempting Phase 3 and they want us to move straight into Phase 4. So in mid-April the students start coming onto campus for their academic classes. Because our classes have 32 students and we can only fit 16 into a room, we will be splitting classes in half and students will only actually be on campus two mornings a week. There seems to be expectations in the parent community that when our county public health officer changes his guidance in alignment with the CDC’s, we can bring all our students back at once, but there is no way our classrooms can fit 32 with even three feet between desks, so a lot of parents are about to get really upset. (It might work in the elementary schools though… we shall see).

Having said that, over a 130 students at our school of 600+ students are opting to stay home for the rest of the school year. That is compared to just 20 at the other, similarly sized middle school in our district. It’s so interesting how even in the same small town attitudes can be so different.

Once we move into Phase 4 I return to distance learning because I’m an elective teacher so they won’t mix cohorts for my class. I’m expecting that will be the case in the fall too and when I float that belief people either think I’m probably right or can’t imagine we won’t be back like the Before Times by then. At this point I’m mostly just curious to see how it ends up.

Meanwhile my kids’ district is still floating possible dates for returning while their actual school site is being very non-committal (I imagine this is district messaging so they can look good even though really it’s not going to happen). If my son sees the inside of a classroom for four weeks (possibly 2-4 times a week depending on how many kids in his class want to come back) I’ll be happily surprised. If my daughter goes back at all I’ll be astonished. I’m thinking of either possibility as an early academic summer camp my kids may get to be a part of.

We got their school assignments and they both got what we wanted. I wasn’t all that happy about it though because SFUSD has still not committed to any possible plans for the fall and I have no faith that my daughter, who will be starting middle school, will be back in the classroom in any kind of meaningful way in September. That was a big topic at yesterday’s board meeting – the fact that SFUSD has no plans to bring middle or high schoolers back this spring and how that means they will miss out on $15M worth of state funding that requires they bring just one secondary grade back by mid-May.

(Also my daughter’s friends, who all applied to the same SFUSD middle school, all got into the same parochial school that has been open all this year, so I’m pretty sure she will be alone at the public school, which makes me way less excited for her to go there. I honestly didn’t think there was any possibility all three of her friends would get into a school that has only one class per grade, with a rising 5th grade taking most of those spots. I guess the joke is on me! None of us got into the charters we applied to, and there are wait lists of over 200 per grade at all of them for next year.)

Also discussed at length at the board meeting was the fact a board member who authored tweets in 2016 accusing Asian Americans of “taking advantage of white supremacist thinking to assimilate and get ahead” and referring to them as “house n*****s” (she used asterisks) refuses to step down (despite a vast majority of SF politicians requesting she do so), and instead issued a statement basically apologizing that her words made Asian Americans feel bad (but not admitting they were racist or even biased). I’m so tired of our school board making national news for being awful.

Yes, I have tried to start the “but shouldn’t we just leave SF already” convo with my husband but he keeps kicking it down the road (claiming he’s too tired… but when is he not going to be too tired? We’ve been too tired for a year now!). So yeah, I don’t think that discussion will go anywhere even if we do have it. I’m starting to research possible Bay Area (and beyond) destinations so I have some places for him to consider, but it’s hard because I know exactly why he won’t want to move to any of them. Still, I’m going to keep trying.

The final thing making our days harder is the fact that our son’s friend, who we’ve been enjoying a reciprocal “park playdates” relationship with is now totally AWOL because his grandparents are fully vaccinated and want to see him all the time. My inlaws are also fully vaccinated but remain too afraid of the variants to see us. My own parents are also fully vaccinated but my mom had shoulder surgery so they can’t have our kids yet. Without being able to take his friend (and have his friend’s mom take him) to the playground, we are really struggling to get him outside and with peers.

Also the child care situation at my district no longer works for us because the kids are back in there but he’s not and the schedules conflict so now we don’t really have any childcare on the two afternoons a week we were clinging to. Meanwhile his behavior continues to veer into total meltdown pretty much all day when he’s home. It’s really hard.

I’m really glad next week is spring break. We aren’t going anywhere (like it seems so many people are!) but just not worrying about all this (as much) for five days will be nice. Plus getting ready for Phase 4 (the schedule for which is still not confirmed for elective teachers) will hopefully ease my work anxiety a bit.

I have been tentatively looking toward the summer, but I won’t be writing much about any plans here because I’m not interested in being excoriated for my choices in my own space. I have been following public health guidelines all year – and have been more locked down than the vast majority of the country – and I’m done putting my possible choices out there for others to judge, especially when I know my own husband can help me determine what is safe or not for our family.

I think the biggest thing weighing on me is the idea that returning to our post-pandemic life won’t actually make me happier. There is a lot about it I don’t miss, and I worry those parts will be back before the parts I need to stay sane return. My husband can’t fathom that I feel that way, which surprises me until I remember that his post-pandemic life was very protected from the chaos of our kids’ commitments. It’s understandable that he expects everything to be better once they are at school and he is at work.

It feels like 2021 has been really hard. I wonder if it’s just that I thought it would get easier but instead it stayed the same, and my perception is that it’s worse. You’d think by now I’d have lowered my expectations.

Guess who had her period this weekend? This girl! And it’s been a while so I’m guessing that it was a doozy (as far as hormone fluctuations). JJ wins the the prize for spotting that way before I did. You know me too well friend…

Things in my head are definitely better. Mostly I’m just not thinking past the next two weeks, which will be totally nuts at school. This week we have our orientations for returning students; I will be helping the six graders return to campus on Monday and Tuesday and seeing my own (Advisory) students on Thursday and Friday. It’s a bit much to wrap my head around, so I’m trying to take it one day at a time.

It’s also creating a child care crunch that will be hard on my husband. I tried to take on more last week in anticipation of being gone a lot this week (which is also part of why I was spiraling last week – I was on with my kids way more than usual). I hope he doesn’t have as hard a time of it as I did.

I may get to go for a run down on the peninsula on Wednesday. That is my biggest bright spot over the next five days. Here’s hoping Thursday’s gloomy forecast doesn’t rain on my parade.

Last Thursday I went to my first martial arts class in the dojo in over a year ago. Only three of us were in a giant room with windows open and fans blowing (and all three of us had received our first vaccination shots). It felt SO GOOD to kick and punch all the way down the floor. I actually teared up multiple times during the 90 minutes I was there. I honestly did not realize how much I missed it until I could do it again. I also picked up my FAVORITE meal afterward. Thursday evening was really, really nice.

The weekend was pretty decent as well. My kids are suddenly interested in D&D so we got a starter kit (along with some books from the library) and played our first campaign on Sunday, after spending time Saturday creating our characters. My husband led the campaign (he has played before) and our kids were really into it and two hours passed by very quickly. We’re excited to play again next weekend (or maybe this week, but I’ve tempered our kids’ expectations on that because I assume I’ll be a zombie by the time I get home from school this week, and that my husband will be playing catch up whenever I’m at home).

We had parent-teacher-conferences this past week and our son’s teacher thinks his class will be back in some capacity in May. So he may get 2-3 weeks in a classroom this year. The agreement with the union is still not official (and the schedule they are asking teachers to adhere to is NUTS – I would never agree to it) so I’m not getting my hopes up. It would be AMAZING if he returned in some capacity before the school year ends. I’m hoping for it like one hopes for an early summer camp offering – tentatively as a possible fun opportunity that we can live without. My daughter’s teacher doesn’t expect them to return this year, which I expected since she’s in 5th grade.

Spring break is in two weeks and I’m (as always) ready for it. Here’s to looking ahead only to the end of March.

I am definitely spiraling right now. Maybe if I turn into the spiral I can regain control?

In the meantime, here is a pile of pretty rocks.

Thanks for helping me through this everyone.

I can imagine yesterday’s post came of as me begrudging others their pandemic realities. While yes, I am envious of those who have moved into a pandemic reality that looks a lot more like normal life, I don’t mean to begrudge anyone that. How can I begrudge someone something that I would absolutely take advantage of if I had the opportunity?

I’m just tired and it’s still so hard and I don’t really understand why it’s still so hard for us where we live, and it’s so much easier for other people where they live. I don’t believe there is only one right answer, especially not anymore, and it’s hard to see the world opening up for others in ways that it seems it never will for us. (It’s also hard to learn just how open it’s been for others since the fall – I really did not realize how much more shut down we were than most areas).

I suppose the fact that I’m not interested in any of the experiences that are now allowed in my area because of recently eased restrictions probably doesn’t help. I’m not interested in eating at a restaurant – take out is fine for me. I don’t want to go shopping in malls (those have actually been open here but I’ve yet to step foot in one). I used to love the movie theater, but not anymore. I don’t care about any of that. All I care about is having the time and space to do my job without also managing my children. I just want to be able to ask for real, substantive help when I need it. And that does not exist for me and it won’t for a while.

I feel like I made so many mistakes when it came to getting through this year. My husband and I decry the lack of imagination from local, state and federal officials, but we weren’t exactly imaginative ourselves. We just hunkered down and kept giving parts of ourselves away to our day to day lives until there was nothing left.

I keep reminding myself of how terrible everything was last year, that on top of the coronavirus and ever mounting cases and deaths, we were dealing with Trump and the Republican party officials that supported him no matter how great the attack he waged against our democracy. I forget we weren’t sure who would win the election and then we weren’t sure if the liar who’d lost would leave. Everything felt so fraught last year; we were in a constant fight or flight loop and creative thinking doesn’t happen in our amygdala. It’s hard to see the big picture, and anticipate the real effects of living a certain way for an entire year, especially when the message is that you have no safe and responsible options. I had a panic attack in a zoom class on Inauguration Day, clearly I have not been putting my best mental effort towards anything lately. Clearly we didn’t have any options.

But now it feels like the dust has settled and people are getting on with their lives and we’re stuck in the same shelter-in-place mentality. And a lot of people I read have had child care and in person school for a while, and honestly it didn’t bother me because that wasn’t happening at public schools in our area at all (the private schools have been open but I think I just realized this in the new year). But now it is – slowly but surely students are stepping foot back on campus in public districts all over the Bay Area – and yet my children’s situation remains in a holding pattern. Even when I felt we were “all in this together” and I recognized that “in this” looked different in every area (and for every person), I didn’t feel like the outlier I feel like now. I honestly think I’m hitting the wall because of what is changing in our immediate area, and how it feels like the wrong things are changing…

Because what if SFUSD does finalize their agreement with the union and then before schools can even reopen our numbers go up because restaurants and gyms and theaters have been open in the interim (their agreement to go back is predicated on numbers staying in the red.)

What then?

I’ve hit the wall. So hard. I’ve hit it as a public school teacher who has to read about how unreasonable our unions are, and as I’ve had to manage the mixed emotions those articles bring up for me. I have never worked so hard and yet I know that everything I do is ineffectual at best, harmful at worst (if a student is dealing with mental health issues and my work is causing them more distress). I’ve been teaching to an array of black boxes for a full academic year and it’s horrible. And I am in the best possible position as a middle school elective teacher in an affluent district where most kids have the technology and parental support they need.

Have I mentioned I will almost certainly be teaching this way again next year, as a middle school electives teacher? And my kids’ district will absolutely not be in person anything close to full time in the fall… The light at the end of this tunnel is only an idea for me…

This is so, so hard. And yes I’m envious of those who don’t have to juggle their children’s education with their own job and general mental health. That doesn’t mean I begrudge them what they have, because I would accept it, if offered, in a second. And the last thing I ever want to be is a hypocrite (but of course I am! and that was the point of yesterday’s post! I have almost everything and yet I bitch about the two things I don’t have!)

I guess the real point of all the words written in this post, and the last, is I DON’T KNOW HOW TO KEEP DOING THIS WHEN IT DOESN’T FEEL LIKE IT’S GOING TO GET BETTER.

Yes I know it is getting better. And vaccinations will keep improving the situation. But states are opening up in reckless ways (or so say federal public health officials), and a full FOURTH of Americans say they won’t get vaccinated and variants threaten the effectiveness of vaccines people do get and we’ll be wearing masks into 2022 and the areas that have always been quick to close and slow to reopen will continue to operate that way, and without a miracle my life will look a lot like this in the fall.

And I don’t know how to get through the next three months of the school year, let alone the summer, let alone the fall knowing that it’s not going to get much better.

And I’m sorry if I lashed out at others for putting words to my jealously. I know we’re all dealing with our own struggles and the last thing I want to do is add to anyone’s.

Do you think your life will look different in the fall?

I’m finding it hard to write here these days. I’m not loving most of the blogs that I read, mostly because it’s hard to hear about full time (or even consistent) child care and kids in school (or going back to school) or BOTH! I know when I start to chafe at what others have, it’s because I’m feeling a lot of guilt about what I have. And as far as the pandemic goes, I have so, so much. We both have jobs we can do from home, and we haven’t had to take cuts in our hours (or pay) despite our lack of child care (my husband has taken copious amounts of time off, but that was either pandemic-specific time or accrued sick leave and PTO). I have been able to create a schedule that allows me to support my kids a fair amount during the school days as well (I work most nights from 9pm to 1am).

We also have our health. No one in our immediate families has a preexisting condition that puts them at increased risk for serious illness or death due to covid-19. We haven’t had to be more afraid of this virus than anyone else who is our age, and the possibility of contracting covid-19 hasn’t caused a lot of anxiety for either of us (though I definitely leave the house more than my husband does). None of our great-grandparents are still alive so we haven’t had to worry about a loved one dying alone in a long term care facility, and our parents are young enough (late 60s) and in good health, and able to isolate so that we haven’t had to be overly worried about them.

We don’t even know anyone in our personal circles who has tested positive for covid-19, let alone been sick or died from it. Not even one of my friends who works in health care (several of them on the front lines) has contracted it.

We are lucky that we live in an area where local and state officials took the virus seriously and the general public has been willing to follow social distancing and masking guidelines. I have never dealt with an anti-masker, nor do I know of anyone who has (though I’ve seen a fair number of white dudes walking around without masks. And it’s almost ALWAYS white dudes – even if their whole family has masks, not them. Not them.)

My kids are also handling it all well enough. They are certainly suffering academically, but nothing like so many kids are. And their mental health is as good as could be expected – again they are negatively affected but not in the way so many young people are.

I live in a state that never gets very cold, allowing for outdoor social distancing throughout the winter. Meeting friends at parks and playgrounds has done so much to maintain our mental health.

Heck, we even got rid our tenant right before this all happened. Sure it cost us $20K, but no amount of money would have gotten him out of there during the pandemic. Not only are we not dealing with his recurring bed bug issues, but we have that 400 square feet to live and work in!

I’m sure there are other ways I’m supremely lucky right now, and my privilege blinds me to them. Privilege is so good at warping our perceptions of reality.

Really the only things I don’t have, that others have, are child care and in person schooling options for my kids. That is it. So I know when I read about people who have those things, and seemingly take them for granted, I only care because I know I have so much that I routinely take for granted. I’m that person for other people. So many other people.

It feels like I have two options right now. I can come here and talk about how things are not that bad, and we’re getting through it, and I can make people who have it worse than me feel shitty. Or I can come here and bitch about how it’s hard, and maybe put words to the struggles that some of us are facing, knowing I still might make other people who have it worse than me feel shitty (I remember reading a letter in Carolyn Hax about how there had been snow days and this woman had to work from home WITH HER KIDS for three whole days and I wanted to throw my phone across the room. Does she not realize that some of us have been working from home WITH OUR KIDS… FOR A STRAIGHT YEAR?!)

But that’s the thing… maybe she doesn’t. Because evidently a full 50% of students in the US have had the option to attend school full time. A little over 25% have been doing hybrid learning for the year and less than 25% have been fully remote this entire time. I did not realize that my kids were in the minority for learning from home since March. I had no idea that so many kids in this country have been going to school full time since the fall. Maybe they have no idea what a quarter of kids still have no option for any kind of in person learning at all.

So yeah. Not really sure how to show up here. I’m not doing great, but most people are doing way worse than me. The vast majority of the worlds inhabitants are suffering and struggling so much more than I am. It’s a humbling thought, and it makes it hard to show up here and bitch about how my kids will never see the inside of classroom this entire school year.

It all just feels so futile. I should probably go back to worrying about whether or not my kids will go back in the fall and leave those worries in my own head.

It was Friday, March 13th 2020 when my district (and my kids’ district) announced two weeks of distance learning, followed by a week of spring break, to deter the spread of the novel coronavirus.

On March 15th 2021, almost exactly one year from our first real day of shelter-in-place, our school will be welcoming half of the 6th grader class for in-person orientation. Tuesday the second half of the 6th grade class will come for in-person orientation and Thursday and Friday the 7th and 8th graders will come as well. The following three weeks we will see students in two groups (AM and PM) on Mondays. In mid-April, if our county has not re-entered the purple, we will begin true hybrid learning (mornings at school and afternoons on zoom).

After so many months of everything being exactly the same, the idea of such stark changes are more than I can wrap my head around. I’m excited to see my students again, even if it’s just my Advisory class once a week for a few weeks. I understand the desire to start slow and I think it’s a good idea at the middle school level. Our elementary schools will return to hybrid much sooner than we will, and that makes sense too (our district does not include high schools so we don’t have to figure that out, but I haven’t heard that the high school district we feed into is going back in any capacity).

We don’t really know what hybrid will look like, but I am certain I won’t be teaching my classes in person because I’m an elective teacher and they won’t mix the cohorts for elective classes. Also I teach three grades on two campuses, so I’m DEFINITELY not seeing my students in my classroom. So my actual teaching won’t change much, but I’m happy the students are coming back in some capacity.

And of course they aren’t all coming back. About on fourth to one third of them have opted to stay entirely online, and once our hybrid schedule kicks in this will be very hard to manage. Our MOU states that we will not teach students in person and online simultaneously, so I’m really not sure how they are going to pull it off. I’m really glad it’s not my job to put those puzzle pieces together.

My own kids will not be returning to the classroom this year. SFUSD might manage to bring K-2 back at the “Wave 1” schools but my kids’ school is not a Wave 1 school so my first grade son won’t be included. My daughter is in 5th grade and there are no plans to bring them back. If we’re being totally honest, there aren’t really plans to bring back students at the Wave 1 schools – they haven’t even reached an agreement with the union, so I’m really not holding my breath.

I consider myself (and my kids) very lucky that they are experiencing less learning loss than most, and no serious mental health issues. My son is struggling, but he is young and resilient and I believe he will ultimately be okay. He’s angry all the time, and it’s not pleasant to spend so much time with him, but I do think he’ll come out of this relatively unscathed. My daughter is doing as well as any parent could hope for. Yes, I want them back in classrooms, but I would also support any proposal that brings back students who need to be back more than they do. I wish SFUSD wasn’t failing all the kids that really need to be in schools, because there are A LOT of them (and the majority have indicated they would go back if given the chance).

In late March we find out if our son got the Spanish Immersion school we want to move him to. If he doesn’t get that transfer we will very seriously consider moving him to my district. We may even consider it for our daughter if she doesn’t get one of the schools on our list. It would suck for them to have to commute with me, and for all their friends to be 30-45 minutes away. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

I got my first shot this week. My second will be in late March. It’s a relief not to think about it anymore. I’m very grateful to have an opportunity to be vaccinated. I’m relieved that everyone will have a chance by late May (or so promises Biden) so my husband can be vaccinated too.

Our second trimester ends this Friday, so I’ll be up even later than usually scoring work and updating our leaning management system next week. The next week I have to be on campus every afternoon, which means my poor husband, who has already been taking off two days a week, will have to take more time off. By the week of the 22nd I think things will be settling down.

This weekend we are showing Raya and the Last Dragon in our backyard for my daughter’s friend. I’m excited to see a new movie. And it’s coming out ($30 on Disney+ while it’s also in theaters) just in time because once we spring forward it gets dark too late (and it’s too windy and cold) to watch movies in the backyard.

San Francisco is opening up in a lot of ways – they will even allow indoor dining at 25% capacity soon (maybe already?), but nothing in our personal lives will change. Obviously seeing students in my classroom (or hopefully outside when the weather permits), will be a massive change for me, but nothing will change for our family. We’re still living the quarantine life, and we probably will be for a while still.

Is anything in your life changing as case numbers go down and states open up?

Thank you for your perspectives on my vaccination conundrum. I’m so confused as to why teachers from other counties around us can be vaccinated at the new FEMA site, but we teachers residing in SF cannot. Some have said it’s because SF has not started vaccinating people in the 1b tier, but I know for a fact that San Mateo County hasn’t started yet either. They start vaccinating the 1b tier on February 22nd (or 24th depending on where you look) and SF is also starting on the 24th so why are they allowed to get vaccinated there and we are not?

I’m so f*cking tired of living in San Francisco. I have never disliked my city as much as I do after this past year. I wish I were smart enough to move away (like the 100,000 people who already have) and cut my loses. I wish.

This morning was spent with me trying to leave a text chain in which all my colleagues successfully made vaccination appointments and then let us all know how easy it was. Our principal had texted us all about the site, and to let us know that she had an appointment. She shared the information and then everyone started texting back with their vaccination appointment success stories. One person mentioned that those of us in SF couldn’t get vaccinated but no one cared. I couldn’t just “leave the conversation” because not everyone had an iPhone (so that feature just disappeared?). Finally I figured out how to “hide” it, thank god.

It’s so frustrating to know that my colleagues can get vaccinated this week, but I can’t just because of where I live. How is that fair?

I really did not want to lose two days of productivity to this but it’s already happened. I’m trying to leave it behind me and get on with it, but it’s hard when I keep emails from my district about how I should definitely take advantage of the FEMA site because I’ll definitely get vaccinated there a lot quicker than through the county.

I didn’t even care that much about when I would be getting vaccinated before any of this happened! Now it’s like it hijacked my mind!

Anyway, moving on… I stayed up until 1am last night getting my last class’s assessments scored. That feels good because they are long and there were 95 of them. I’ve spent a lot of time prepping for the next two weeks and beyond. I haven’t gotten much done at home, which is disappointing because my house is a shit show and the state of is causes me a ton of stress. We really need to do a massive purge but I don’t know if I have that in me. I should probably try to find a house cleaner, but that also feels like an incredibly daunting task during a pandemic. Maybe I’ll attempt both over the spring break.

It’s crazy to think the spring break is our last break of the school year. It’s crazy to think my kids will spend 13 months in distance learning and 18 total months away from their schools. It’s crazy to think my daughter will leave her school as a rising 6th grader and never set foot on the campus again as a student. I can only imagine how hard that must be for seniors in high school… what a loss for them.

As we come to the end of February, I’m only just registering what a traumatic month January was for my mental health. The panic attack in the zoom class was definitely the culmination of three really bad weeks. And shit did not really get better until last week, after I finally submitted my daughter’s middle school application (we had a really hard, anxiety-inducing time deciding on the best of a multitude of very bad options – San Francisco’s middle schools are notoriously awful and it was hard to get an idea of what they will be like next year since the buildings have been closed for a year). A week ago I weighed myself and realized I had lost 10 pounds. I was only 7 pounds away from my lowest weight since adolescence, which was the result of a year of VERY disordered eating in Spain, where I dabbled in anorexia and bulimia. I looked gaunt, in my opinion, and have been trying to gain back some of the weight. I know that is not a popular problem to have, especially as a woman during the pandemic, but as someone who has happily lived eating-disorder-free for 15 years it was really upsetting to have to think about my weight again. Really upsetting (if you ever suffered from an eating disorder you know what I mean.) I’ve gained back half of the weight I lost, so I’m not as worried about it anymore, but I’m keeping an eye on it (which in and of itself is stressful).

I should probably be seeking out mental health services, but Kaiser doesn’t have many to offer and the idea of finding a good therapist during a pandemic is so daunting as to feel impossible. (I’ve heard they are super overwhelmed with new clients too because… pandemic! This article contends that’s true.) Finding a therapist just feels like another REALLY hard thing to try to accomplish, when everything else feels hard. And when would I have time to meet with anyone? And where could I do it privately? Ugh, it’s just not worth it.

I will, ultimately, be fine. Everyone is suffering, most more than me, and I can work through my issues well enough. If I drop weight again I will more seriously look into it.

Well this post ended up being longer than I expected so I will sign off. I hope you’re all managing okay as we collectively hit this wall together. One head palm to the wall at a time I suppose.

Here is a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, to thank you for reading this whole post.