Not a Wasted Word

{First I wanted to thank people for the supportive comments yesterday. I didn’t expect that post to be linked to elsewhere and I didn’t expect so many people to read it, but I’m glad I wrote it and I hope it helped at least a few people better understand where teachers are coming from. I also want to make clear that just because I don’t think it’s safe to return to the classroom right now, that doesn’t mean I support the “we won’t return until there are no new cases for 14 days” movement either. I do believe there is a middle ground, and I would be willing to take it, but I doubt federal, or even state, leadership will do what is needed to get us there any time soon. And now, on to today’s post.}

I couldn’t sleep last night. I went to be early because our son had woken us up several times the night before and I was exhausted. I did everything right – I didn’t watch TV before bed, I read my book instead of scrolling on my phone and then I turned out the lights at 11pm. Three hours later I was losing my ever loving mind.

Sometimes it sneaks up on me, the anxiety. I don’t even know I’m feeling it until I start spiraling through a million aspects of my life, and the lives of those I care about, that I have no control over, and I can’t shut my mind off no matter how hard I try.

It was a reminder that things are hard right now and people are struggling. Of course I didn’t need the reminder, two of the things I was anxiety spiraling about were a good friend’s very troubled marriage and another good friend’s serious mental health issues. Both make me incredibly sad and both are directly related to the fucked up situation we all find ourselves in.

I’m also realizing that just because I finally know that we will be starting the year in distance learning, I don’t really know enough else to start planning. I usually channel my anxious energy into planning, but right now I don’t know what my kids’ daily distance learning schedules will look like and I don’t know what my own daily distance learning schedule will look like. Everything is up in the air, so I can’t even start test driving possible ways to make it work in my mind.

And the clock is ticking. My kids “start school” in less than three weeks. I start with students only two days after they do. I’m trying so hard to get some meaningful, productive work done but most days I’m just spinning my wheels. It’s frustrating and I’m exhausted.

I think today I’ll try to be productive, but I’ll also try to cut myself some slack. I’m not a napper, and the thought of lying somewhere and trying to sleep, when I spent SO MANY HOURS doing that last night, just causes me more anxiety, so I’m going to have to push through the exhaustion. I will NOT read anything from the NYT or WaPo and I’ll take something to make sure I sleep tonight.

Tomorrow I’m sure things will be better. In the meantime, I need to keep on putting one foot in front of the other.

I have had a lot of complicated feelings about returning to school in the fall. At the beginning of the summer I was all about going back – for both me and my kids. I thought that kids weren’t big transmitters of the virus, that California was keeping community spread under control, and that we could find a way to make it safe. I saw countries in Europe and Asia opening up schools without a huge change in virus numbers, and I assumed we could too. I also thought that whatever we did in the classroom would be a huge improvement over distance learning.

As the summer progressed, a lot of things changed. We learned that kids older than 10 transmit the virus at about the same rate as adults (I teach middle school so that made me feel very differently about being seeing 48 middle schoolers a week). Despite a governor, and mayor, who took the virus seriously and waited longer than most states, or cities, to start reopening, numbers in California, and even in the Bay Area rose at alarming rates. I also realized that we couldn’t look to countries in Europe and Asia for guidance on how to open schools safely when their responses to this health crisis look nothing like what we’re doing in the United States.

At this point I stand with teachers who believe it’s not safe to return to classrooms in most parts of the country, including the Bay Area. I understand how detrimental it is that students not return to school, but it’s not appropriate to blame teachers for refusing to put our own health and safety at risk when we had nothing to do with the failures of leadership that lead us to this point.

I get that it looks like teachers are flat out refusing to return to the classroom, when essential workers have been forced to return to clinics, hospitals, grocery stores and other essential businesses. While educators have not been classified as essential workforce in California (and I doubt other places), I appreciate that society is starting to recognize what an important service we provide. If teachers and other school staff are eventually classified as essential, I think it’s important to remember that teachers are being asked to return to work in the exact conditions that have been identified as the most conducive to spreading the virus: spending long periods with the the same group of people, inside a small, poorly ventilated space.

We also are acutely aware of what happens in classroom and we know how trying to return to school while following masking and social distancing guidelines will look.

We know students aren’t going to want to wear masks and that many of them will be getting messages from their parents that they don’t actually have to. We know that even the ones who do want to wear them will struggle because kids, especially younger ones, have only developing body awareness and masks are tricky to manage for long periods of time.

We know some parents will send their kids to school even when they are sick, because they have always done that and they will continue to do that.

We know that tests will be hard to get and that results will take a long time to come back, and that all the uncertainty and waiting will be stressful for everyone.

We know kids will show up with no symptoms, but will actually have the virus and be spreading it to their teachers and peers.

We know we might have the virus, and not realize it, and that we might actually be spreading it to our students. We know the guilt we would feel if we gave it to our students, and they gave it to their families, and a student or family member died, would be crippling.

We know we will feel we should stay home at the slightest sign of illness, and there won’t be subs available to take our classes. We know that if there are subs available, they will have been in other classes with other groups in other schools and even districts.

We know that when there is a confirmed case, the teacher and entire class will have to quarantine for two weeks before returning to school. We know that when there are enough confirmed cases, the entire school will have to shut down. We know there will be a lot of confirmed cases, and a lot of disruption for students, parents, and teachers.

We know some kids will be hanging out with their friends outside of school, and they won’t be following social distancing guidelines, and that the actual number of contacts we’ll be seeing will be far greater than the number of kids sitting in our room.

We know our classrooms are small, and cramped, that our windows don’t always open and that our ventilation systems don’t work, or are very old. We know that when we request things be fixed, the maintenance staff can’t respond in a timely matter, or at all, because there are way more requests than staff and resources to address them. We know the maintenance staff will be stretched thin already trying to make an old, decrepit building safe for staff and students.

We know that our schools and districts are chronically underfunded, so much so that providing basic learning tools like paper, pencils, and books can be a challenge. We know that public schools are facing massive budget cuts, and that the protocols required to make it safe for students and teachers to be together in classroom will cost significant amounts of money. We don’t understand how our school districts, that struggle to provide the resources required for successful learning during a normal school year can possibly provide the PPE and other resources necessary to keep teachers and students safe now.

We know that we are not valued or respected by society, and that we are popular scapegoats for society’s failures. We know that when kids start getting sick, people will come after us personally, and professionally.

We know that we can’t look to other countries who have successfully reopened their schools because they have:
– testing capacity that FAR exceeds our own
– robust and effective contract tracing in place
– safety nets to support for people who have to isolate for 14 day
– national and local governments that recognize the threat of the virus and have taken the appropriate actions to contain its spread
– nationally and locally required safety measures that are understood and accepted by the general population
– much lower rates of percentage positive and community spread

We know that socially distanced school will look nothing like what kids are used to. It will not bring them the sense of normalcy their parents want so desperately for them. It will not allow for the socialization that parents recognize kids are desperate for, and it will not foster effective instruction or learning.

We know that having 10-12 kids in a classroom, with masks on for the duration, unable to work, or socialize with their peers, and unable to approach their teacher or to even see their teacher’s face, spending 30 seconds x the number of students in the room washing hands every hour, constantly aware of the threat of the virus, is not an effective way to learn.

We know that the belief that in-class learning is somehow a far superior option when compared to distance learning, does not take into account the reality of what school will actually be. We know that until we get this virus under control we will not be providing optimal learning experiences at school or with distance learning, but at least with distance learning everyone has a chance to stay safe and healthy.

Teachers know this because they are in classrooms every day and they know what it will actually look like. They know what kids need in order to learn and socialize and they know neither will happen in classrooms where kids can and will be transmitting the coronavirus to their teachers and peers.

We know how this is going to play out, and we know it’s not going to provide the security and socialization that parents are arguing for when they insist their kids return to school. The school experience parents think their kids are missing out on by returning to distance learning does not, and will not, exist.

Yes, parents need child care to return to work. Yes, under served students need support so they can engage in distance learning successfully and receive the services they need. State and local governments should be addressing those very real and exceedingly important issues. But sending kids back to school now, while the viruses ranges, is a solution buttressed by anxiety, panic, and wishful thinking.

I know these are desperate times and they call for desperate measures, but please don’t ask students and teachers to risk their lives when the return on investment is, in reality, shockingly low. Please don’t attack and demean teachers for not wanting to return to schools, and instead remember that we are not responsible for this reality, and there is nowhere we’d rather be than in our classrooms.

Our district pivoted to starting the school year with six weeks of distance learning. They sent out their announcement yesterday.

I am relieved that we know how we’re starting, and don’t have have to spend the next three weeks going back and forth wondering how we will be delivering our curriculum. I’m relieved that I can ask my parents to help me with my kids because I won’t be with middle schoolers all day, who are believed to catch and spread the virus as well as adults, even if I do have to go to my classroom to teach from a computer to all my students at home.

I’m so tired of this debate, and the shit teachers are taking for being selfish and unwilling to show up for their students. I’m sick of people saying we’re essential workers when schools/educators are not listed in California’s Essential Workforce.

I can promise you that few people teach for long if they don’t love their students. Why do people think we become teachers? The fabulous paycheck? The respect and admiration of society? It’s a thankless job that pays very little for the amount of education required and earns little to no respect. And yes, June, July and August are nice, but they clearly don’t make up for the what we deal with during the rest of the school year or our country wouldn’t be facing a severe teaching shortage. Evidently teaching is the easiest profession to be in if you don’t give a shit about anything or anybody, and yet no one wants to do it. Weird.

I have a post in the works that talks more about this, but honestly I don’t really want to post it. I’m tired of hearing that we’re choosing the “easy” option of distance learning when distance learning is incredibly hard and requires way more time and energy than actually being in the classroom (it’s like writing sub plans every day of my freaking life – and it’s miserable). I’m tired of being told to push everything asynchronously (which is considered more equitable because it can be accessed at any time) and also being told when I do that I’m not adequately servicing the most urgent learners, who need synchronous instruction (but also are the least likely to be able to access it).

For the umpteenth time in the history of public education, schools are being asked to solve the problems society has created by perpetuating generational poverty and stripping social safety nets. Schools are being asked to prop up the economy by allowing parents to get back to work, provide services to disadvantaged students that society has abandoned to a disgraceful fate, and solve the inequitable access to internet technology, all while being a chronically underfunded public institution that federal and state policy has continuously ignored or blatantly refused to support.

So yeah, I’m really tired of the shit talking. Really, really tired. I wrote something else but I’m not going to post it. I’m just going to leave it at this.

The bright spot of our summer that got snuffed out earlier this month was the only bright spot I had planned. I put all my eggs in that basket and then that basket got thrown against a wall, so while friends have gone camping or spent weekends on the river, we’ve done nothing but stay home.

Until this week.

On Wednesday we went to Safari West in the north bay and spent three hours seeing giraffes and zebras up close and personal, without even a fence between us.

We got dinner outside at a restaurant in Calistoga before setting up camp in a yurt in Bothe-Napa State Park. We made a fire and roasted marshmallows and ate s’mores. We slept (well, most of us did), woke up, packed up the yurt, ate breakfast, and went on a three mile hike.

We got In-n-Out for lunch, then went to a Steelhead Beach on the Russian River for a little swim. We were home by dinner time on Thursday.

They were some big, busy days, filled with a lot of fun, and also a fair amount of grumbling and frustration. I didn’t sleep great and I was entirely over my kids griping before I tucked them into their sleeping bags.

I’m glad we did it because my kids had a great time, and made some amazing memories. I’m glad I did it because it scratched an itch I’ve had all summer to just do something already. So we did something and now that itch has been scratched and I can move on to getting ready for the new school year.

Today my son has his last day of rec and park camp and next week both kids will be at camps and I will start preparing for the new school year for real. I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to get work done but spending more time dealing with my daughter and her friends (and other shit) than I wanted. Next week starts three weeks of serious work time. If I use it wisely the start of the school year will be a lot easier.

I’m glad I scratched that itch. Hopefully now I can get focused.

Yesterday was July 19th. My first day with students is August 19th. I’m officially one month away from the start of the school year.

On Friday Governor Newsom announced that schools cannot invite students back to classroom until their county has been off the state’s “watchlist” for 14 days (being placed on the watchlist involves a number of metrics such as percentage of positive tests and how that number is trending, number of hospital beds available, etc). San Mateo County, where my district resides, is currently the only county in the Bay Area that is NOT on the watchlist, though the SF Chronicle reported that it will probably be added early this coming week.

Late Friday evening our superintendent sent out an email to staff and families explaining the new state mandate and promising that our district will start with in-person learning if at all possible.

If they maintain that stance, we will spend the next month preparing for both a return to in-person learning and distance learning, ensuring we will fail to launch the school year successfully in either scenario.

Our union will also probably be in a stressful struggle with our superintendent and board, as we request a return to distance learning while they ensure we can return safely in person (despite not being able to promise that in any way shape or form).

I sent an email on to both asking them to please relieve us, both staff and families, of this unnecessary burden of uncertainty. Spending the next month watching the numbers and our status on the watchlist will make it impossible for anyone to plan effectively for the start of the school year. Our district has a long track record of ignoring staff concerns, so hopefully parents will start communicating their desire for a clear course of action soon too, otherwise it probably won’t happen.

Of course, my district is also currently requiring that teachers return to their classrooms in the fall, even if we are teaching entirely online, despite the governors recommendation that all work that can be done remotely take place at home.

I know there is a still a month left until we start, and there is still hope that my district will announce we are at least starting the school year with distance learning regardless of our status on the watchlist, AND that we will be allowed to work from home if we are using distance learning. The fact that we have to wait for either decision is already a mark against them in my book.

Thank you all for the birthday wishes. I have to admit, I was dreading the day, but it ended up being quite nice.

That was primarily because my cousin set up a tribute.com compilation that all my cousins and aunt and uncles recorded videos for. My parents also did one (and my mom did one for my grandmother by reading a letter from her to me that she found at her house), and my in-laws and my friends. It was so moving to see all my friends wishing me happy birthday, reflecting on favorite memories and saying nice things about me. My husband had it all queued up when I came upstairs, and it was the most amazing way to start the day. It totally turned my attitude around.

Other things I did on my birthday:

Watched The Little Mermaid with my daughter. She had been wanting to watch it again and it’s one of my favorites so I happily obliged. She also let me sing along to all the songs, just because it was my birthday.

Went for a run, and my daughter and her friend did their own walk in the park. We’ve been using a set of walkie-talkies my parents got us at parks so the girls can have some independence and it works out nicely when I want to run.

Listened to part of Governor Newsom’s press conference.

Participated in a two hour union meeting.

Got my period.

Did some work.

Got ice cream cookie sandwiches from Coldstone (I wanted to get a tray of their cupcakes – a bit of a ritual on my birthday at this point – but evidently they don’t make them anymore (or you have to order them ahead of time? I was confused)). The ice cream cookie sandwiches were plenty yummy so I was fine.

Picked up my favorite dish – thrice cooked bacon with rice cakes from Mission Chinese.

Talked to, and texted with, a ton of friends who reached out on my birthday.

Watched Memento with my husband, which I had been wanting to watch again for a long time.

Enjoyed some yummy cocktails that my husband mixed us.

Ordered some stuff online (my son’s camp, which was a big, unexpected expense, pushed me to my spending limit much earlier in the month than expected so I had been waiting until my credit card rolled over to the next billing period to use it again).

All in all it was a very nice day, and I was pleasantly surprised. Now we get ready for my husband’s birthday next week…

It took me 20 years to realize that, starting in 2000, I could add the first two digits of the year, and the second two digits of the year, to remember out how old I was.

I wonder if everyone else born in 1980 figured that out a lot sooner than I did.

Regardless, today I am officially 40. So, yay?

So far the only thing that feels different is how aware I am of my (sudden onset?! – I swear this just happened) farsightedness. Ever since I started wearing my glasses again (I got a new pair recently), I’m increasingly frustrated that I can’t see my phone well at the distance I’m used to holding it. I am constantly pushing it back about a foot farther than feels normal so I can read it. I guess it’s time to get reading glasses. Boo.

{I recently enlarged the font on my phone and holy smokes is it amazing. Sure it looks like an old lady’s phone but at least I can read it!}

Otherwise, turning 40 is like any other birthday, except of course that there is a pandemic and I can’t do anything to celebrate. The only things on the docket today are listening to governor Newsom’s press conference before attending a union meeting about going back to the classroom in the fall.

I’m sure I’ll eat a cupcake (and have a drink) at some point too.

SFUSD just announced their recommended “return to school” plan to the board and it will be distance learning for at least the first two months.

My school district is still planning to return to the classroom in the fall, despite the fact that community spread is worse, and the death rate is higher, in San Mateo County, than in San Francisco (which is weirdly a city AND county).

This means I am eligible to take Families First Coronavirus Relief Act leave up to 12 weeks at 2/3rd my pay.

So why in the world wouldn’t I do that?

Well, as is always the case with taking leave from one’s job, it’s complicated.

I am very reticent to take off entirely for any length of time, so I highly doubt I will do that. If I’m not working, my students will not be getting Spanish at all (there is no way they will hire a sub) and if it’s find for students not to learn Spanish for a couple months, it should be fine indefinitely, right? As an elective teacher at the middle school level, I need to take into account the long term stability of my position. I’m tenured and have seniority, but I am not guaranteed my position (teaching Spanish at my school), only a position at my current FTE that can be taught with my credential (which is why I keep my multiple subject credential valid – so they can’t just get rid of Spanish and let me go because I can’t teach anything else). If I want to protect my position, I should definitely be teaching Spanish remotely.

That doesn’t mean I can’t request FFCRA leave at all. I believe I can request it for part time coverage of my job. If I use FFCRA leave to not work the four mornings a week we are currently required to be at school, that would be ideal.

It’s still a hard choice though. If I don’t come into work in the mornings, my school is down one teacher, and every teacher is incredibly important when you’re trying to keep the number of students in each group down. While I don’t appreciate that the parents, board, and superintendent, want us back in the classroom, it’s not my principal’s fault and she is ultimately the one who has to make it work at our site. I don’t like the idea of letting her down.

At the same time, I believe the ROI of middle school students getting just six hours of classroom time a week is not worth the risks we are taking to provide it. I understand taking risks to get elementary students into the classroom 12 hours a week (an A group would come every morning for three hours and a B group would come every afternoon for three hours, four times a week); that ROI makes sense to me. Bringing two separate groups of 350 middle schoolers on campus just two times a week (on an A/B schedule) for just six hours of non-content-specific instruction, does not seem like a smart use of human capital or resources. So in that sense, I don’t feel so bad about requesting the leave, because I don’t think what we’re accomplishing in the classroom – at the middle school level – is worth the risks and use of resources at all.

This may all be a mute point anyway, because evidently employers can reject requests to use FFCRA leave when it is requested for childcare. If my district CAN reject my request, it most certainly will. The have been rejecting requests for leave that are written into our own contract for years and they always have some reason they feel is legitimate (usually a lack of funding). I’m sure they can find a reason now, during a pandemic.

If I can request the part time leave, I will consult with my union and probably do it. If the district wants to refuse it they can, but I want them to be very aware that they are telling me: no, you cannot stay home and care for your children, you have to be here, risking your health and safety to appease the parents of this community.

I know things could still change, and with community spread in San Mateo County on the rise maybe they will. There are still five weeks until students in my district are supposed to return to the classroom, and if this pandemic has taught me anything it’s that A LOT can change in five weeks. I’m going to plan for going back to the classroom while my kids learn at home, because that is what I’m being told will happen. And honestly, even if I get to stay home, I will be required to teach a lot more via “live” zoom meetings, while pushing less asynchronous work, which means I’ll have way less flexibility to help my kids during their school hours than I did in the spring. I will need a lot more support to make this work in either scenario.

No matter where I’m teaching in the fall, it’s going to be really difficult. At least I can be sure of that…

It’s not easy asking a small group of 10-year-old girls to spend four hours, multiple days a week, in a desolate backyard with only a dilapidated picnic table to sit on. It’s been a challenge to find things for them to do.

Today, I brought out a bunch of cardboard and styrofoam that I had been saving from the packaging of various pieces of furniture that have been delivered in the past three months and let them have at it. They had tape, scissors, some air dry clay, and some washable paint, along with other random art supplies and it held their attention for a good two hours.

Unfortunately the wind that San Franciscans are so used to in the summer picked up again this week (after a fairly warm and windless five days last week), and it wreaked havoc on their supplies.

Still, it was a fun project while it lasted. Half the cardboard went out with the recycling last night and the other half was saved for another day in the backyard.

*The Future is Cardboard is the title of Episode 14 of Season 1 of Craig of the Creek – one of my favorite kids’ cartoons to come out in the last decade. So, so good.

We did nothing this weekend, and it was actually kind of nice.

With our weeks feeling busier, especially for my son who is kind of struggling to make it through seven hours of organized activities (drop off is by 9:15 and pick up isn’t until 4:30), we no longer push outside time on the weekend. My kids never even got dressed on Sunday.

It’s what they want so we’re giving it to them. They are only on screens an hour a day during the week so we don’t mind them playing Minecraft for two hours in the mornings and then watching a movie on Saturday night (or TV on Sunday).

It’s nice to feel like the weekends are a little different from the weekdays. It’s nice to have nothing planned, and since I’m doing so much Monday through Friday, sitting around all day doesn’t fill me with dread like it used to.

Here were a few things that did happen this weekend:

• My son had his first remote vision therapy appointment.
• I wrestled with my kids on our big king size bed (and it was actually really fun).
• We played MarioKart together.
• I built my son’s new big kid desk.
• My husband took a bunch of work calls.
• I worked out on the elliptical while participating in a professional development webinar.
• My husband and I watched Palm Springs on Hulu (which I HIGHLY recommend, especially during the pandemic).
• I played EVERY one of the ::cough:: 45 games on PEAK, a brain games an app I just download that I LOVE and that I’m hoping will keep me away from my NYT and WaPo apps for the foreseeable future.
• My husband did a ton of NYT crossword puzzles on his phone.
• I did a bunch of laundry.
• My husband did a bunch of dishes.
• I realized my new glasses aren’t quite right (I think one of the lenses is slightly tilted which makes everything slightly blurry – ESPECIALLY when I watch TV) and made an appointment to take them in.
• I made pretzels and cherry lime rickeys and we watched A Bug’s Life (one of my favorite, and a highly underrated – in my opinion – Pixar film).
• We all put together Pokemon card decks and played each other (we actually know how to play now and it’s actually really engaging and fun).
• I read more of my book.
• My kids played a lot of Minecraft.
• I helped my daughter Marie Kondo her books.
• I wrote a couple of blog posts.

All in all it was a pretty enjoyable weekend, and I attribute that to my son being in a camp all week, which made Saturday and Sunday actually feel different.

How did you pass the last two days?