Not a Wasted Word

We woke up this morning at 7:30am but it was still dark outside. Now it’s 11:14am and it still looks like early dawn. We have to have all the lights on, because we can’t see. The sky is orange and ominous.

It really and truly feels like the End of Days. This is definitely what I image the Apocalypse will look like.

My son and I went outside to play laser tag (somehow our air quality is not bad right now, I guess the smoke is higher up) because we could see the lights, which are normally dimmed to nothing by the sun.

It’s very disorienting for it to be dark at almost noon. It’s very disconcerting for the sky to be this color. It really does feel like something horrible might happen at any moment.

I guess it already has.

It was a long, hot weekend. It was in the high 90s up in San Francisco, which might not sound that bad for people in parts of the country that deal with 90 degree weather all summer long, but you have to remember that almost nobody in San Francisco has air conditioning. And all the places we’d usually flock to for some respite from the heat, like movie theaters, malls, and even restaurants, are closed. Most of the nearby beaches weren’t open either so it was a really hard weekend to get through.

Saturday night was nice though. We had a social distance viewing of Mulan in my friend’s driveway (we projected the movie onto her garage wall) and the weather was beautiful. We were expecting to be bundled up in our down jackets and blankets by the time the movie ended at 9pm, but I was still wearing a tank top! It’s unusual to be able to wear a tank top in SF during the summer, and unheard of to do so after the sun sets, so that was a nice experience.

Unfortunately Sunday, the hottest day, was not so nice.

We were lucky to be invited to my mom’s friend’s pool on Sunday. It was 107* down at their house, but the water was an inviting 83* and we spent most of the day in it. But it was still so hot that the kids felt sick for much of the afternoon. It was hard to get them to eat and stay hydrated. My kids slept at my parents’ house that night, and they do have air conditioning upstairs, so they slept okay. We were struggling at our house, which felt like an oven. Luckily the downstairs, where we sleep, wasn’t as bad.

Last night the fog rolled in, but it’s still supposed to be in the high 80s up here today, and much hotter every where else. There are new fires spewing smoke into the air, and the light has a weird yellow quality to it. It looks ominous outside. We’re also dealing with rolling power outages to take pressure off the grid. Power outages make teaching and learning online really difficult…

It’s hard not to let the stress accumulate when these difficult situations drag on and on. The first fires started three weeks ago, right at the start of school, and they never properly resolved before new fires started. Three weeks of fluctuating air quality, when going outside is the only thing you can do besides being stuck at home, really starts to wear.

I really hope things get better soon. I’m just trying to accept things and take it one day at a time.

It’s been three weeks since my kids started school. Two and a half since I started.

It’s not going well. The days are long and hard. There is a lot of unhappiness, frustration, anger, upset. There are raised voices and tears and sighs and screams. I want to say we’re finding a rhythm but we’re not really. Maybe it will come.

I work constantly. I’m tired all the time. I don’t know how to turn off and stop working, because there is always more to do and never enough time. I start working the moment I wake up and the last thing I do before bed every night is on my computer. I spend every waking moment that I’m not with my kids doing work.

I know it’s not sustainable and yet… it doesn’t feel like it works otherwise. I think I can take a weekend day away from work every week but that is about it.

This past week was especially brutal. Wednesday I taught three 70 minute block periods, went to a two hour training and then talked to parents on zoom for over an hour for Back to School Night. Thursday my brain was mush, but I had two more 70 minute periods to teach.

This weekend I have to review 150 “getting to know you” slide decks and ideally make a short comment on each. I have to input five scores for each of those 150 students. I have to create more asynchronous work for next week, and plan my synchronous periods.

I’m glad Monday is a holiday. I totally forgot about Labor Day this year and was so thrilled when I was reminded it was this weekend. I need a day off, and it hasn’t even been a month of school yet.

We still wake up to unhealthy air quality most mornings. Our house smells like smoke until noon most days. It’s been almost two weeks since the fires started and we still don’t go outside much.

This is hard. And I have it better than most. The news is so depressing I can’t even read it. I honestly don’t know what else to say.

It was not my intent to come here and drop despair all over my site, but I realized that if I didn’t I might never come back.

It’s that time of year again (or time of every-three-years) when I have to cough up $$$ to keep this space running. Usually I wax philosophical for a couple of entries about what this space means to me and whether or not I should keep paying for it. But I’m way too in the weeds with the rest of my life right now to even consider letting go of this space, so it will auto renew for now. Maybe in another three years I will have the time and mental bandwidth to consider stepping away.

I’m kind of relieved I don’t have it in me to think about it too much right now. And I’m grateful that my financial situation makes paying for it a reasonable expense right now. I know that for so many people that would no longer be the case.

Everything feels untenable right now, but I can keep this space. I will consider that a small win.

My kids got up way too early today and I have a lot of work to do this weekend to be ready for next week. I guess I should get at it.

It’s been a helluva week. The kids started distance learning, and it’s going okay. They aren’t getting nearly the amount of instructional time the state has mandated, but we’re giving it a couple more weeks before we ask the teachers when we can expect more.

My husband has been off of work and doing an amazing job with the kids. He has created a schedule that really works for them. They seem happy and fulfilled when I come up. Everything is running incredibly smoothly without me.

I’ve been super busy this week. Monday and Tuesday were packed full of meetings and work. Wednesday was my first day teaching. I only had some orientation groups to lead because the elective class lists aren’t ready yet, so the teaching piece wasn’t that hard. I’ve also been tasked with creating the curriculum for our orientation and advisory time, which has been very time consuming. My colleagues are very appreciative of the work I’m doing, and I have to teach these “classes” myself so it’s nice to be doing work that benefits myself and others. But it’s a lot of time and I’m not getting much done for next week when I really start teaching.

I have to admit, it’s been a bit of a shit show at my district. We lost administrators and tech staff and it shows. Families were supposed to get schedules on Friday morning – they were finally emailed Tuesday afternoon. The elective classes didn’t even get populated. I spent four hours putting together my own class lists last week (overlaying two different survey results to separate the students who really wants to take Spanish and the students who are taking it this year because most of the other electives aren’t being offered). No one else did that for the other classes and they just aren’t done. We may not even start on Monday.

So many kids want to take Spanish that I’ll probably be teaching an extra class and working 120% of full time this year.

My district is small and understaffed, but we’re usually on top of our shit. To see how difficult it’s been for them to put this schedule together, and to make everything happen, has been sobering. Our schedule had to be workable in distance learning and if we go back to some kind of hybrid model, and that was really hard to put together. We have a lot of staffing gaps due to budget shortages. The whole thing is a mess and we are struggling to start successfully.

I will say, my colleagues are good people and they are doing good work, but man, this stuff is hard. This year is going to be a big challenge.

Having my husband cover this week has been great, but it’s also been eye opening for him. He’s realizing just how difficult this year is going to be, and he’s panicked. I’ve been panicked about how hard this year will be all summer, and it’s hard to engage him on his newfound realization of the shit show we’re heading into. We did have a good talk about it last night, and I think we’ll eventually find a system that works. But it’s going to be really, really hard.

Oh, and fires are raging everywhere and our air quality is so bad we can’t go outside or open our windows. It’s truly Armageddon.

So that is where I’ve been this week.

Has anyone else started distance learning? How is it going?

Thank you all for your comments on my last post. I found them to be very enlightening. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who feels that it’s important to finish what we start, but also struggles to know when continuing is more harmful than good. Teaching kids body awareness and autonomy is also so important. Lots of good points that I will be pondering on as I move forward.

Today is my kids’ first day of school. I have had almost no feelings about them starting via distance learning. Truly I felt numb, which I guess is a feeling in and of itself. Mostly I just didn’t think about it much. I wasn’t especially nervous or upset or grateful… I wasn’t anything.

But then this morning we helped them get onto their zoom calls and seeing them there, sitting in front of a screen with their teacher’s face, just made me so sad. This wave of grief washed over me and I could hardly breathe.

Mel wrote not long ago about a seemingly small covid-related loss that hit her especially hard, and I responded in the comments that I think we are learning to manage so many tiny losses every day without grieving them, that every once in a while something hits us just so and punctures the bubble of grief, and we feel inordinately sad about what might seem like just another small thing. And maybe it is a small sadness, but enough small griefs eventually become a big hurt.

Today I cried hot tears all over my husband’s shoulder. I talked about how sad I was and he talked about how mad he is, and we both sat there, upset.

Then I wiped my nose and got to work, thankful to have released another bubble of grief. There will be a lot more small losses and lost more grief bubbles punctured, but for right now I’m okay.

Today is my daughter’s last day of camp. This camp was only supposed to be two weeks but it had to be three weeks because of a mandate from the city. When we learned that, we paid for the extra week and kept her in.

It is a sailing camp and it requires a lot, both physically and psychologically. We are not a family that sails, or does much of anything on the water, so she is learning everything there. She went to this camp for one week last summer, but that is the extent of her sailing experience.

It’s been a long three weeks. She is tired and ready to be done. This week especially has been hard. She doesn’t want to go most mornings, those she’s always happy, if not exhausted, when she gets back.

Yesterday was one of the first really warm days of the summer (at least for us up in San Francisco). Today is supposed to be even warmer. I was excited for them that they got warm days on the final two days of camp.

This morning one of the other girl’s mom texted to say she wasn’t going. She was tired from all the sun the day before and was going to sit the last day out. I have to admit, I was pretty shocked. Who doesn’t go to the last day of a three week camp? Don’t you want to say goodbye? It’s especially strange to me when we will all be stuck at home for the next nine months wishing desperately we had something like this to do.

I made the mistake of telling my daughter her friend wasn’t going while we were getting ready. She was very upset. It was a difficult morning. She kept asking why her friend wasn’t coming and I didn’t know how to respond. I said she was tired and got a lot of sun and didn’t feel that great. My daughter said that was true for her too. And I’m sure it was. But I don’t let my daughter miss stuff because she’s tired. And I always make my kids finish what they started.

It seems that very few of my kids’ friends families make them finish what they started. They quit activities because they don’t want to keep doing them. They don’t go to school because they “just need a break.” I am definitely one of the few moms I know who force my kids to do stuff when they don’t want to. Yes, they stay home when they are sick, but otherwise, they show up.

But I wonder sometimes if I’m doing that wrong. I was never allowed to miss school. I literally didn’t miss a day for SEVEN YEARS. I had mumps during that time but I still went to school (to be fair, I don’t get fevers often and no one knew it was mumps for a while because we get vaccinated against them and they aren’t very common anymore – by the time they diagnosed it I was pretty much better). My mom grew up in a family of 12; her mom died when she was seven, and her dad was an abusive alcoholic, so she was probably not well cared for when she sick. I understand that she was doing the best she knew how when I was growing up. But I don’t think she always made the right choices around allowing me stay home when I was sick. And I worry that the mindset of “we show up unless we’re very ill” is ingrained in me more than I realize.

I do think my work ethic plays a part in my successes. I always show up and I follow through on my commitments, to myself and others (well, always to others and mostly to myself). I think it’s important to teach my kids to show up when they said they would do something, or when there is an expectation they will participate (like for a class presentation at the triennial cultural nights). I think it’s important to show them they can push through a little discomfort or boredom to do something they aren’t that excited to do. But it seems like I’m alone in pushing this stuff a lot of the time and I wonder if I’m being too stubborn. I wonder if I am less capable of recognizing legitimate reasons to sit something out.

I reached out to my friend about her why her daughter didn’t come. I guess she gets overheated easily and had a hard time sleeping last night because she was dehydrated. It sounded like a perfectly reasonable reason to stay home from camp, even on the last day, and especially if you knew it was supposed to be even hotter. But I knew as I read her texts that I probably would have made my daughter go in a similar situation. I would have sent her with extra water and told her to get through the day.

Which answer is the right one? Or is the range of acceptability bigger than I realize?

What are your thoughts on finishing what you’ve started and/or not doing something because you just need a break? I’d love to get some guidance on this from people with different backgrounds and attitudes. I really feel like I can’t trust myself on this stuff at all.

I have a much better idea of my schedule this school year and it’s… not great.

It’s going to be really hard to work this out. I have a 1st grader who will need a lot of support to participate in distance learning. I have a 5th grader with ADHD that will need a lot of check-ins, reminders, and redirections. They will get, MAX, two hours of live instruction a day, but it could be less than that if teachers work with small groups or one-on-one.

Meanwhile I have to deliver 4.5 hours of instruction a day – 1.5 hours in the mornings and three hours in the afternoons.

I know we’ll make it work. We’ll have to. But right now I can’t quite fathom how. I don’t think I can participate in the set up my friends are putting together because I have less flexibility than I thought I would. They say we can make it work, but I’m not so sure. We still don’t have ONE SINGLE DETAIL from our school about what our kids’ days might look like so we can’t try to plan anything yet. It’s exhausting and frustrating to be stuck in this limbo, especially when their first day is Monday, the 17th.

My first day is Wednesday, the 19th.

Right now I am in actively suppressing panic mode. I just keep telling myself IT WILL BE OKAY, in a very firm voice, like maybe if I can muster up enough false authority I’ll get myself to believe it.

I’ve noticed that the little throw away line, “possibly for the entire school year” in articles about distance learning, is morphing into “probably for the entire school year.” That’s how they get us conditioned so we don’t lose our minds when we realize it’s happening. It’s little throw away lines that build a foundation so that the unfathomable will become something we can wrap our heads around.

I think higher ups know we aren’t going back this year. That is the vague, quiet messaging in my district anyway. They are saying it a little louder at my kids’ district, at least as far as my kids are concerned (they will bring back urgent learners first, if at all, and my kids are not urgent learners).

I try not to think about the fact that whatever we figure out will have to do for the entirety of the school year. I try just to focus on the first six weeks. But I’m tired and kind of terrified and even six weeks feels like too long.

School starts next week and I feel like I’m standing at a precipice. I’m working frantically to put up some guardrails but I don’t have the resources I need and the terrain is rocky and provides an unstable foundation. I know that whatever safe guards I put in place will be flimsy and bound to fail.

But I keep working at it, because what else can I do? A flimsy guardrail is better than none at all, right?

Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just something I need to see, even if it’s so ineffective as to serve no real purpose.

The danger is that it brings a false sense of security and eventually I forget how flimsy it is and when I lean on it, it collapses and I fall into the abyss.

Maybe, for this particular challenge, the fear of facing the precipice with no guardrail is what will keep me away from the ledge.

I try to plan to make this easier. To give myself some confidence that I can get through this. But deep down I know it’s going to come down to waking up every day and just making it work. There is no amount of planning or creative thinking that can keep us safely away from the precipice.

And that terrifies me more than the precipice itself.

Well, I got through the week. It turned out my son’s dentist appointment is actually next Wednesday, and I accidentally turned off the recording of the professional development presentation I was most definitely supposed to record and upload, but for the most part it went okay.

I am so, so, so, so happy to have those two presentations behind me. I’m glad I did them, and I’m even more glad that they are over. They challenged me and got my out of my comfort zone, and also helped me get to know other educators in my district (I know almost no one at the elementary level). And of course, I will get $$$ for them (we’re even getting paid for our prep time, which frankly is shocking). They also stressed me out and made me really nervous and possibly caused some painful neck issues that I’m currently managing.

But I worked out early this morning so I could shower before my presentation (and so I would have the second part of my “no kid” window to use as I saw fit) and now I have another precious hour before I pick up my son.

I’ve talked to my principal about next year and while I still don’t know enough to do anything useful, I can start rolling ideas around in my head. We officially start next staff days Thursday, and I will get paid for up to 12 hours of PD that I do myself before then (I am very impressed with this offering and am pleasantly surprised that they tapped staff to do the extra training they are offering themselves. I’m also impressed they are letting me do the stuff I was already doing so I’ll get paid for Spanish-specific professional development! Woot!) I’m eager to get to next Thursday so we can start having real conversations about how things are going to look moving forward.

I’m very relieved that it’s Friday and am very much looking forward to having a drink tonight.

Happy weekend everyone!