Not a Wasted Word

Yesterday it was raining and for some brief moments it felt like it probably would have in the rightside up*. I would have felt a fair amount of dread about going back to school the next day (going back after spring break is always hard because there are no more breaks until the end of the school year – and this year that was an 11 week stint). I would have felt under prepared for what was coming, and I would have regretted squandering what I had. I would have chided myself on the state of the house, disappointed that I hadn’t purged all the shit like I’d planned to. I felt all the things I normally would have felt, and even though they were mostly negative feelings, I kind of reveled in them. Truly, I felt almost normal.

But there was a competing feeling, that voice whispering a futile reminder: you were supposed to be going back tomorrow, the shelter-in-place was supposed to be over. I can still go back and feel the shock of confirmation that we were missing just two simple weeks of school. It felt unfathomable. And now we’re officially out for four more weeks, and everyone is talking like we won’t go back at all, even though our district is too cowardly to make the official announcement. (Internally we are speaking like is has been formally ordered – per the governor and state superintendent’s announcements – but parents have not received that messaging yet). It’s crazy to think that three weeks ago the suggestion that we’d never go back would have been met with total denial. Nobody would have believed it. And yet here we are. What a difference three weeks can make.

{And I suppose that is why our district is not saying it outright yet – because they want to give people time to digest the fact that we’re out four more weeks before they bring the hammer down on hope for the remaining seven.}

I’m struggling with what to do with my kids during this time. I’m not so stressed about the schooling they will miss – I know they will be fine with their post-bachelor-degree parents and the copious resources at our disposal. But I hate the idea of them sitting in front of screens all day. And yet, what else do I offer them? It’s one thing to request imaginative play a couple of hours a day, but for its entirety? For a week? For a month? And now that our outside adventure time has been whittled down to a mere hour spent wandering the neighborhood (where the only adventure is avoiding the dog shit that suddenly is EVERYWHERE – I guess pet owners don’t need to clean up after the dogs in the times of coronavirus) there are even more hours every week to fill.

I don’t know how we’re going to get through this. There are SO MANY HOURS before then and now. My son is already struggling so much.

{And as a teacher, I’m terrified to go back to school in the fall and try to engage students that haven’t sat in a desk for six months – many of them facing food scarcity and getting no breaks from the trauma of their home life.}

So yeah, just trying to reconcile the two different feelings, one of almost-normalcy and one that feels like things will NEVER be the same again. I’m sure the latter is closer to the truth, and I’ve mostly accepting that. Which is probably why I feel so bad right now.

*I’ve taken to thinking of our new coronavirus reality as the upside down, mostly so I can refer, in my head, to what I think of as my “real life” as the “rightstide up.” The parallels aren’t really there, I know, but it’s working for me right now.

I’m really struggling right now. My focus has been decimated by all this. I can’t get anything done. I’ve lost hundreds of dollars worth of things – important things – over the past few weeks (my Rx glasses, my nice sun glasses, my earpods). I wander around getting nothing done. I burn food on the stove because I forget I’m cooking it. I wander around with something I’m supposed to put away, but just set it down in another random spot. Not only am I not accomplishing anything, but I’m making a lot of things worse. I am a mess.

My marriage feels like it’s falling apart. I know it’s not, but that is what it feels like.

My kids are having a hard time. The excess Switch time (for Spring Break) is coming back to bite us in the ass. It’s harder to get them outside for a long enough stretch that it resets them now that most of the spaces are closed (though a city just south of us is leaving their beach open and that day was amazing). Yesterday I couldn’t convince them to leave the house at all, when all I had to offer was a walk around the block. (Yes, they lost privileges for making that decision, but they preferred to lose those privileges than to go outside.)

Our spring break is ending and it’s back to the distance learning grind on Monday. For all of us. My principal was so desperate for us to take an actual break that she wouldn’t even entertain the idea of us collaborating on the new schedule until our “work days” this coming Monday and Tuesday. So I’m not sure what will be expected of me once we start distance learning again and I can’t really plan what I’m going to do, which is driving me crazy.

{Before we were pushing work to kids on a daily basis, but that workload felt unsustainable for most of us. We also want to start zooming with our kids on a more regular basis (our students could not access zoom with their school accounts until the end of last week so we weren’t all teaching that way regularly yet), which presents scheduling challenges at the middle school level where each students has six or seven classes/teachers. So we are considering block schedule-like alternatives where students only zoom with, and get work from, certain teachers on certain days. But we haven’t talked about what that might look like at all, and as an elective teacher who teachers four different grade levels, there is a lot of uncertainty for me.}

We get almost no communication from our kids’ school, which has such a large population of free-and-reduced-lunch families that they don’t even have a way to email parents in situations like these. I keep hoping for something in the mail but it doesn’t come. So I have no idea what they will be expected to do starting Monday, and I doubt I’ll receive any clarification, which means their distance learning will be up to me, at least for a little while, probably for the duration.

{There have been multiple articles about how varied the distance learning situations are across districts in the Bay Area. I’m definitely teaching in a district that is providing more than most and my kids are at a district – and especially at a school – where they are doing less than most. It’s… interesting to see the differences first hand.}

My house is a perpetual mess. I’m trying to declutter but, well see the first paragraph.

I’m trying meditation. I’m trying to “stay connected.” I’m trying to get good sleep (my son wakes up with bad dreams every night so that makes it hard). I’m trying all the things I’m supposed to be trying to make things better. It’s not really working. (Or maybe it is, but not enough to make me feel better?) I’m hoping that with my husband available this weekend (he’s been working his normal hours this week – he doesn’t get a spring break), I’ll be able to get caught up on a couple of projects and things will start to feel more manageable. Because right now, nothing feels manageable. At all.

Thank you for educating me on the necessity of these steps. When I went to the beach, it looked like this.

But clearly that is not the case elsewhere. Just because I have not seen the behavior that warrants an action doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I do believe officials are making decisions based on our overall well-being in these impossible times. I will remember that moving forward.

The reality is that our mental health cannot be a concern right now. It just can’t. And of course protecting our physical health is the main goal.

…

The state superintendent of California announced today that we will not be returning to school this academic year.

I am gutted. I expected this decision, but somehow the confirmation has totally leveled me. I can’t stop crying.

I’ll never see my 8th graders again. Not in real life. I won’t get to see them graduate or hug them after they’ve walked. The grief they must be feeling… I can’t imagine.

I haven’t told my kids yet. They will be devastated.

I need to change my mindset and start taking this one week at a time. If I look ahead anymore than that, I won’t be able to keep it together.

When the Bay Area’s shelter in place order was announced over two weeks ago, I was relieved to hear that they considered “recreation” an essential activity and that outside spaces would remain open. Being outside, and getting exercise, are essential to our mental and physical health.

Two weeks later and they’ve changed their tune. First the playgrounds closed. They said it wasn’t safe for kids to be touching surfaces touched by other kids, even if they did wash their hands afterward. A lot of parents, especially those with younger kids who are going crazy being stuck inside, cried that day. I know I did, and my kids aren’t even that young.

You can see on the sign that even though the playgrounds were closed, they urged us to run, bike, hike, and enjoy nature. Then they closed all the open spaces.

On Friday my daughter and I went for a run in a county park not far from us. It requires a $6 parking fee, so I bought an annual parking pass in January, that is how much I love this park.

We went again on Monday, for a walk, and found this.

I understand that people were using the open spaces to get together in non-social distancing ways, and I understand that that behavior is not okay. I also recognize that some open spaces don’t allow for social distancing. My favorite running trail on the peninsula is too narrow and too popular for people to stay the requisite six-feet apart; I understand why it was closed. But some spaces really are not conducive to gathering – they are great for walking and provide enough space that people can practice social distancing. The fact that those spaces are closing is insane to me.

When we realized our park was closed, I sat thinking about what open space would still be open. I realized Lake Merced cannot be closed because its perimeter is a sidewalk on regular roads. So we headed over there, and as I suspected on the drive, it was packed because it’s one of the few places left for people to run and walk. This is another way closing big, open spaces back fires – it crowds the spaces they can’t close like beaches and running trails with street access.

The city’s new line is that we should be going outside only in our own neighborhoods. I find this suggestion totally short-sighted. San Francisco is not as densely populated as most cities, but still crowded enough that if people only have their own neighborhoods available for getting outside, and getting outside is the only way to leave one’s house for exercise and fresh air (and a break from the monotony of being stuck in one’s house), then those neighborhoods will be so overrun with people that they can’t possibly keep six-feet from each other.

It’s one thing to ask people to stay at home, without open spaces available, for two weeks. It’s quite another to do that for two months (or more!). The levels of anxiety and depression in the general public is rapidly rising, and giving people outside spaces would do a lot to alleviate that. I’ve never felt as panicked during this time as I did yesterday, when I realized the open-space parks were closed. I don’t know how we’ll stay sane when there is no where to walk, or ride bikes.

The city used to recognize that “recreation” is an essential activity and that our open spaces are adequate for social distancing. I hope they remember that again soon.

My husband is struggling mightily with this situation. Because his job involves counseling business owners who are trying to decide if they should take out loans or shut down, he understands the gravity of the economic collapse we’re facing better than most. He was keenly aware of how bad everything was going when most of us were still parroting “but the flu kills tens of thousands of people every year too!” I’ve never seen him so visibly affected by events outside of his control.

He’s also really busy. Just like me. And after a day of juggling work and our kids, we’re both exhausted. The connection between us feels tenuous, fading every day.

We’re also not sleeping together. In an attempt to keep the possible bed bugs downstairs, we moved the bed down there, but only one of us is sleeping on it. My husband is downstairs where he can keep the bedding from hitting the floor (an important bed bug precaution) and I am upstairs, thrashing around on the couch bed. We’ve been sleeping apart for 10 days. I have to admit, I don’t miss his snoring, and we’d probably be going to bed at different times anyway (I’m letting my night-owl side play a little while I can sleep in), so I don’t think it’s necessarily contributing to the distance, but it can’t be helping.

We’re trying to connect during the moments we have together, but it’s hard. And there obviously won’t be any date nights happening any time soon.

People joke that a lot of babies will be born in December, but I wonder how many divorce papers will be served. This isn’t an easy situation for most couples. And the struggle will continue for a long, long time.

So, how do we create a space that feels like spring break when we’ve been home for two weeks, and will be home for at least four more weeks afterward? These are the questions I’ve been asking myself as we started our spring break today.

My husband initially thought we should just keep pushing through with “distance learning,” but I quickly shot down that idea. They have finished all the the work that was sent home from school (we were really good about completing those daily assignments over the past two weeks), and I didn’t really want to create more work for them. Also, they need a break from the craziness that is distance learning as much as I do. Things will really ramp up when they go back, with daily zoom meetings and more work assigned by teachers, so I think having this week “off” is important. After I explained my reasoning, my husband easily agreed.

So how do we make this week feel a little special when we’ve already been home and we’ll stay home when it’s over… Letting them play as much Switch as they want would make everyone insane, and I still think things like getting outside are important (we’ve done a REALLY good job of getting the kids outside – we’ve been out for at least an hour every day since quarantine started). I also think my kids thrive on routines, if not schedules, so we wanted something in place that kept us all sane.

{Also, while I happen to have the same spring break as my kids (for the first time ever!) my husband has no spring break at all, so I’ll be with them for the bulk of each day while my husband is working downstairs. This also makes a routine important to me.}

We sat down with the kids today and talked to them about how we wanted them to have a fun spring break, but that we also wanted to make sure everyone was happy and healthy (we talk a lot about how video games make us happy in the moment, but sometimes make us angry or frustrated later in the day). Then we asked them what they wanted out of our spring break.

After some negotiation, we came up with a routine that we think will work for everyone. It involves copious (in my opinion) amounts of screen time, but it also involves taking care of ourselves, each other, and our surroundings. My sticking point, besides basic self-care (you’ll notice I had to write down the three meals of the day, because my kids hate eating), was going outside every day. We’re also trying to get them to do more for themselves around the house, and we’re giving them some new chores.

{I’m embarrassed to report that they’ve basically never had chores before, besides the bare minimum of picking up their own room. But now that we have the time to teach them how to do things, and we are home enough that they have many times to practice doing them, we’re going to start. I’m hoping that, if we really stick to the chores this week, they will be easier to keep up in April when we’re also doing distance learning.}

So that is what we’re doing for our spring break. My husband laughed at me for writing out yet another schedule on the big white board, but I think it helps to see the routine. It keeps my grounded and it helps manage the kids’ expectations; they won’t be getting three hours of Switch/Kindle/iPad time if they aren’t taking care of themselves, each other, or their surroundings! I hope my white board helps them remember that.

Today is our last day of the first two weeks of distance learning. This coming week is our break. In my mind we’ve finished Phase One and are entering Phase Two. Our district has officially announced that we are returning to distance learning after the break, until May 1st. May 1st is a Friday, so I suppose it’s really May 4th. That will be Phase 3. And they might just extended it again after that. Phase Four?! 🙁

Honestly, I was relieved they didn’t just call it through the end of the school year. At least now we have some hope that we might go back.

At our staff meetings, teachers have made clear that the work load of the last two weeks is not sustainable. We are working together as a staff to create a schedule that is more manageable for everyone – both students and teachers. At this point we think a form of block days makes the most sense, so teachers have days when they are meeting with students via zoom and available to answer emails during specific time periods. Then, on other days, they can focus on creating content and reviewing student work. Doing all of those things simultaneously, every day, is just not possible.

I’m thankful that I work at a school where our staff can come together to solve problems without things getting contentious, or devolving into power plays. I just hope the district listens to our voices, and gives us the authority to implement a schedule that works for us.

At home, things continue to be a mess. I plan to purge a bunch of stuff from the house over the next week, because the clutter is driving me crazy. I also plan to put together some stuff for the next month of teaching remotely. If I learn how to use Explain Everything I will declare the break a success. Mostly, I need to find a better schedule for all of us. I’m hoping, that with the revamp of the school week schedule, the revamp of our home schedule will be easier to determine and implement.

We’re still not sure if the four-week extension of distance learning means a four-week extension of shelter in place. Will my husband be home in April? Will the playgrounds still be closed? I’m assuming so, because this is the “distance learning” I know, but there is still a lot of uncertainty.

Today was a hard day. I felt out of sorts all morning. Just down in the dumps. My kids were pretty well-behaved (given the circumstances), but I kept getting frustrated at them. Everyone at the staff meeting looked so tired and stressed. My friends were struggling at home alone with their kids. My husband kept reading me shitty headlines.

At 7pm I took my regular martial arts class, except I was in our living room instead of the dojo. I miss the dojo so much, and as I tried to lose myself in my class, while my kids called each other names in the neighboring room, I lost it. I just started sobbing. I miss my old life so much. I miss my parents and my friends. I miss my work, and my students. I miss time away from my kids. I miss the dojo and all the people I cherish there. I miss having something that is only for me.

It was the first time I’ve cried for what I miss, for what I’ve lost. I don’t think I let myself realize that I’m mourning my old life – this is just a hiatus after all – it’s not gone for good. But it’s gone now, and I’ll never get these months back. I’ll never get that innocence back, the innocence of a woman who didn’t know she could effectively lose almost everything.

I’ve cried for my future, out of uncertainty and fear. But I haven’t cried yet out of sadness for what we’re going through. Now that I’ve started, I don’t think I’ll stop for a little while.

Not surprisingly, splitting the childcare with my husband while all four of us are home and both adults need to work, has been… difficult. I’ve always covered more of the child care in our family, as I can leave work much earlier and I take our only car for my commute. Both my husband’s later end time, and the fact that he takes public transportation (and our kids’ school is not on a good bus line), means that for years he never picked them up. (Just this year I negotiated for my husband to pick them up one day a week so I could go to an earlier martial arts class, and that had been so nice.) I also take them to more of their activities, and do more with them on the weekends, because I prefer leaving the house and my husband is fine to stay home.

All this to say, I wasn’t surprised when, after the first five days of shelter-in-place, I had to initiate a discussion of how we could more equally divide the child care during these weeks of quarantine.

We have tried a couple different schedules. I even write when each parent is “on” to the right of our schedule on the big white board (that I took from my classroom). I think what will end up working best for us is me taking the kids for the “school day” 8am to 4pm-ish, and my husband taking the afternoon / evening shift of 4pm to 8:30pm ish. My husband also comes up and does lunch with the kids from noon to 1pm. (He’s working down in our unit, where we have a table and chair and a lot of quite.)

I know this gives my husband a lot more covered hours during the day, but right now he needs those hours more than I do. If I can have the afternoons to grade papers and finalize the stuff going out the next day, I can watch The Outside and go to bed at a decent time. (This happened last night! It was glorious!) I can also get some work done during the day, especially when my kids are playing ABC Mouse and Adventure Academy or listening to podcasts and audiobooks (or reading) during quiet time. It’s harder for my husband to get work done with the kids around because a lot of his work involves phone calls and zoom meetings.

He also doesn’t have to work at all on the weekends right now, which is when I get my big chunks of time to front load my planning. It’s only the beginning of the week, but I do think the work I did over the weekend is making this week go a lot smoother than last week.

I don’t necessarily think this a “fair” division of labor, but I also think it’s probably what will work best for our family. I’ve read a couple of articles about how women shoulder more of the burden when families shelter-in-place, and how this pandemic is horrible for feminism, and I recognize so many of the patterns in our set up. Women already have to deal with so much injustice, it’s frustrating that this is going to further stall out the little progress women have made.

I would love to hear more about how couples and families are handling these new circumstances. Please let me know what is working for you.

Last week ended up being way more stressful than I expected. I was up past 1am every night grading my students’ work and creating what they needed to do for the next day. I spend the daylight hours on Zoom call staff meetings and answering my students’ endless trouble-shooting questions (turns out middle schoolers don’t read directions very carefully, or take the initiative when they aren’t sure about something. Shocking!) Oh, and I was doing all that while managing my own children’s distance learning. Every day felt like a marathon-length sprint and by Friday I was absolutely done.

I worked a lot of hours this weekend (probably half of each day) getting my content created so I could spend less time at night doing that. I still think that posting their grades helps them stay motivated to keep doing their work, because they know they’ll see the effects of a missing assignment immediately the next day (I’m lucky to have students that are, for the most part, motivated by their academic standing). But I hoped to have everything created and ready so that every night I could just paste a slide into my agenda and post a saved announcement on google classroom, and I didn’t meet that goal. I do have three days of work ready, but I’ll need to keep doing things throughout the first half of the week to avoid late nights on Wednesday and Thursday.

And then I have a week of spring break (stuck at home with my kids) to figure out how I’m going to make this situation work for the rest of the school year. (We haven’t been told officially that we’re not going back, but I’m assuming we won’t this school year, with hopes that maybe we’ll get to go back in May… a girl can dream.)

I recognize that my current setup is untenable. The volume of work I’m creating is more than I can maintain. Grading and posting scores every night is also not viable. I’m going to have to figure out a better way, because I simply can’t keep this up in the long term.

One of my problems is that I have five different preps, which means I have to create content for five, unrelated classes, and post it in five different places. The good news is two of those are A/B schedule electives which means I don’t have to post that much for either of those classes; I only would have seen them 2 times a week, and no one cares that much if I give them an impressive set of distance learning activities. Now I just need to remember that, and not push myself to meet my own personal expectations about what I should be giving them.

So yeah, I’m going to be mindful of what feels meaningful and what fills me with frustration this week. Hopefully, with a week afterward to percolate and plan, I’ll have a better map laid out for reaching my overarching goals by the end of the school year.

I also need to do a hard reset on our schedule at home. I’ve been watching what works, and what doesn’t, and I will continue to do so. I’m lucky that my kids have met, or exceeded, most of their grade-level standards this year already (I’m so glad we just got their second trimester report cards last week!), so there isn’t much I need to be too worried about as far as their academics. Mostly I just want them to retain the ability to sit and do some not-so-amusing work, and to maintain their grade levels skills. Oh, and to work on their Spanish. So far I’ve protected our “Hora de español” more fiercely that anything (first “academic” hour of the day) and I’m still brainstorming ways we can keep that up. Otherwise I’d rather they explore some topics of their own with a project based learning approach. The problem is, that while my 9.5yo daughter can probably manage that with less guidance, my 6yo son cannot. I still have to figure it all out, but I know I need to make some big changes.

I really liked this article that mom sent me on the topic. Maybe it will help you shift your expectations too.

I promise to keep writing what I’m doing here, in the hopes that it might help others. To all the people who are just doing what they need to do, and not stressing, my hats off to you. Please don’t think my kids are engaged in meaningful academic work all day. That is not the case at all. Mostly I just want to create a routine that brings them a feeling of security, while also maintaining my own sanity. It sounds like that is what most of us want.