Year 11 – Week -1: The Next Right Thing

I've seen dark before,
but not like this
This is cold,
this is empty, this is numb

There have been tough moments in my teaching career. I’ve been fired. I have been told things by other teachers that have hurt deeply, and I have felt the deep and profound failure of letting students down. I’ve been told by people that I’m overpaid, that I don’t have a real job, and how to do my job as if their opinion with no knowledge of education is more valid than mine.  Right now, I feel the challenge of being an educator in America in a complete different way. This is different.

You are lost, hope is gone
But you must go on

We are working with no clear sense of the future. We don’t know when schools that opened remote will be in person.  Schools across America who tried to start in person as closing at a rapid pace. The arc of the school year is hazey. There is no savior, no one who can answer all our questions, and tell us what is right. There is no hope for an education for our children that fully provides our children what they need and deserve this school year. Time goes on, and we are trying.  Failure is real possibility for the best of schools, and teachers.  For me, quitting isn't an option.

I don't know anymore what is true
I can't find my direction, I'm all alone

I’ve always felt like that I know how to handle situations. One of the things I’m most proud of as a department chair is that I have been able to explain things, and work to allow my teachers to focus on their teaching. This year, I’ve had to accept that this year that I need to say “I don’t know,” or “I can’t help you with that.” Everything is new, uncharted and filled with uncertainty. Even though there are over three million teachers in America, we struggle more often solitude, as distance and stress pull us apart from each other.

How to rise from the floor?
But it's not you I'm rising for
Just do the next right thing

Take a step, step again
It is all that I can to do
The next right thing

The right thing to do is to focus more on ourselves than our students.  Teachers have to care for themselves so that we can persevere through this school year, and be around to rebuild better an education system in the coming years. The only way to do this is to focus on one thing at a time, and one choice at a time.  However it’s so hard to know what is the right thing when so often what is right feels wrong. It’s right for many schools to start remote, but it feels horrible knowing what is lost because of this decision.

I won't look too far ahead
It's too much for me to take
But break it down to this next breath, this next step
This next choice is one that I can make

We don’t know the future. All we know for sure is that uncertainty will persist. The full tragedy of this pandemic is too much to comprehend. What are students will have lost this school year will have effects on our society for decades. So, we have to focus, feel the air in our bodies, and make choices as we can.

When it's clear that everything will never be the same again
Then I'll make the choice to hear that voice
And do the next right thing

If we try to replicate what we had in the past, somehow preserve something for some envisioned future when things can get back to “normal" it will hider our steps forward. We cannot do what we did last year. After everything that has been lost this school year, and everyone that we will lose, nothing in our schools will ever be the same. There will point of mourning knowing that we can’t return to “normal,” but these feelings will evolve and change as we imagine greater, and build back better for ourselves as teachers and our students.

Let go of what was.  Let it go.  Let the future be created as move through this school year, one step at a time, and one breathe at a time and do "the next right thing."