Year 11 – Week 8: The Pandemic, Part 3 - The Battle Lines

The end of the school year felt like a battlefield, empty and scared by explosions.  It was quiet, but panic, trauma, and violence hung in the air.  

All of the year ending rituals were on Zoom. At their best, they were a shadow of they were replacing, and at the worst, they were a painful exercise of technology failing to meet expectations and the needs of our community.  

Everything was hard when we went remote, and everything was overwhelming. Each week, each day had a new challenge. We were blessed with resources at our schools, but no amount of money could make up for the insecurity of doing things for the first time with students without adequate planning time.  

Most teachers teach with a combination of tried and true lessons and new units in their curriculum. Last spring, so many of us had to develop new units because what we had done in the past didn't work. I teach the middle school concert band.  

You can't do the middle school concert band over Zoom. So, the curriculum changed into small group lessons. I didn't know how to teach my 5th graders the music of the middle ages that they normally performed at the end of the year. Virtual choir is a lot harder and more expensive than it looks, and teaching almost sixty students how to sing a song over Zoom was a challenge I could not overcome. 

I had a lot of new material in my curriculum and lesson that I taught before from years past; I had to teach differently in a way I never taught before. Everything was new, and teaching last spring felt like being a first-year teacher.  

Teachers all across America were scrambling like I was because the schools were not ready to be remote. The transitions for most schools were sudden, rushed, and felt like a violent earthquake.  

Guardians panicked and struggled with remote learning. I was privileged to be a remote teacher while my child was in remote learning. Many adults were not so lucky. Some were able to work remotely. Schools' critical role in childcare for millions of children in America was taken away to little to no notice. Some parents' solutions included compromising their quarantine while others had to quit jobs to make distance learning work. The vast majority of the people who quit jobs were women.  

While I struggled with Google Classroom and Zooms, other teachers struggled with so much more. Some communities didn't have the privilege of access to fast internet. Teachers resorted to using WIFI from stores and churches sitting in their cars in parking lots.  

Many schools did not have enough devices for students, so siblings had to share, and some families had to go without. This led to teachers delivering packets of materials door to door and teaching over phone landlines to make things work.  

Many schools all across America weren't even focused on teaching when schools closed. They were trying to get food to children. 29.6 million children every day in America get free or reduced-price lunches from schools while 11.9 million get breakfast. For many children, this is the only meal they get that day. Administrators and teachers had no guidance or support from the federal government, and many only had little help from local governments. Communities came together in amazing ways to make sure food got to children. There were many bumps in the road to make this happen, but school came through in amazing ways during this tough time.  

As we are struggling to make this work, people are dying at alarming rates. Stressed, scared, overworked, and exhausted teachers yearning for a message of empathy and needing financial support instead get a president urging schools to open up before the school year ends. 

Even though it's an absurd idea, and it feels like a punch in the gut, a callous disregard for children and teachers' safety. In response, the battle lines are drawn, and teachers and parents fight to keep schools closed. Science and reasons prevail, and schools in America stayed closed for the end of the 2019-2020 school year, but the conflict is not over.  As teachers close the school year and walk away from school year shell-shocked, not knowing how or when they would have to return to battle.  

They take respite in the silence, many not realizing that there is something even more challenging up ahead. 

This is what I wrote about the possibility of going back to in-person learning on 5/8/20 from this blog post. 

Can American schools open in the fall with the current trends? No. The way that we think about schools, asking educator to make magic happen with limited resources, as opposed to asking them what they need to be successful and providing what they ask for is not setting us up for success in this crisis. By sheer force of will and hard work, a teacher can make an out of date history book work in a classroom, force of will cannot provide sanitation supplies and smaller class sizes.  

In the past week there have been a flurry of articles talking about plans for opening schools next year. Most of them completely lack an understanding of child development. Having first graders sit six feet apart, not move from classroom from classroom, eat lunch at their desks, and have no recess is not developmentally appropriate. Is it worse than having students stay at home? For some children yes, for others no. This makes things complicated. And articles that respond to these concerns that state that children are “resilient,” should be immediately disregarded, as this pop psychology myth of childhood resilience is completely false and misguided.  

If schools continue to have to make choices in the fall like they have this past spring with little financial support, meaningful leadership, and plans that are both educationally and psychologically sound, the only safe choice will be to start the year with distance learning that will last until at least until the new year.

Parenthood: Week 394 – Early Intervention, Part 1

I felt lost. 

In that first month of Ethan's life, we lived with the possibility that he did not have the ability to hear in one ear. He failed the initial hearing tests in his right ear, and all we had in front of us was another test the day after Thanksgiving to confirm what we knew was likely, our child had a disability. When it was confirmed that he had conductive non-sensorineural unilateral hearing loss in the right ear a couple of weeks later in December, it was a relief.  

We finally had a name for this thing that we had been worried about every single day of his life. While this felt like an affirmation of our concerns, it left more worries and anxiety in its wake. There were so many questions in my mind. Would we have to learn sign language? Can this be fixed with surgery? How do we raise a child who can only functionally hear out of one ear?  What do we have to do to help this baby love himself and know that he is loved with this disability?  

Soon after we got the results from Ethan's hearing test, we got a letter in the mail about how Ethan qualified for Early Intervention. This government program gave us hope, forever changed our lives, and dramatically affected the development of Ethan's hearing and speech abilities that forever changed the trajectory of his life for the better.  

When the program was first laid out to us in our first meeting with our Early Intervention case worker when Ethan was two months old, I was skeptical. They were going to send a therapist to come to our house and do sessions?  How good could this be?  

I thought at the time, "if the service in the DMV is any indicator, this is not going to go well."  

I was wrong, so wrong.

People like to complain about how things run by the government are mediocre. We've all heard people talk about how the lines are too long at the Post Office and how the Department of Motor Vehicles is the worst.  I literally laughed out loud when I watched this scene for the first time.  

 

I wonder though, how this makes people feel who work hard at the DMV to make the roads safer.  This depiction isn't fair.  

Some rant about how public schools are horrible and how the welfare system is mismanaged.  Many of these complaints reflect real, systemic issues in our society like the racism at the foundation of our police force, which leads to murders of Black and brown Americans regularly.  

Other complaints reflect a level of privilege and/or a lack of perspective. People are willing to wait in the grocery store to check out but, for some reason, feel like they shouldn't have to wait at the post office. Yes, there are horrible public schools, but there are great public schools out there too. On rare occasions, people exploit the welfare system, but far more rely on this program, albeit flawed, on getting through each day.  

There are government programs and agencies that fail and need to do better, and many do a great job. The myth that anything run by the government is bad is destructive, wrong, and needs to be privatized is racist. Just think about how our jail system's privatization continues to put Black and brown people in jail at an alarming rate.  

I'm a critic of our government as all citizens should be, and the solution to solving the problems I see is to make the government better, not smaller. Because there is so much good in what our government does that should be built upon and kept whole.  

I believe this more than ever now that we are on the other side of Early Intervention. This program showed us the way, gave us the tools to move forward, and changed how I thought about the government, myself as a parent, and my son Ethan. 

Though it didn't start off great with that first therapist...

 

Year 11 – Week 7: The Pandemic, Part 2 – Closing In Four Moments

Date: Thursday 3/11/20
Announcement: Remote from 3/16/20-4/3/20, starting with one week off for teacher preparations.

My school decided to go remote for three weeks. Rumors were starting to go around that other schools in Chicago were also going to close earlier that week.

We knew for about a week and a half that this was on the horizon, but the reality hadn't sunk in that this was going to really happen until earlier this week. This decision was made by my school administration and was not handed down by any government officials.

There was great anxiety in my school, but this was tempered because the administration had communicated to us that we would have a week off of teaching to prep for remote learning.

Yes, this was going to be difficult, but we had a week to prep. Also, we were only looking at two weeks of remote teaching. Like many other faculty members, I thought that we'd be back in three weeks and that this was going to be a bump in the road. Little did I know that this was the beginning of a turning off the road and going on a completely unknown journey. 

  

 

Date: Thursday 3/19/20 

Announcement: Remote learning would be extended two more weeks until April 21st (including one week of Spring Break). Remote school is now from 3/16/20-4/21/20.

Other schools that announced that they were going remote had Spring break the following week, so going remote wasn't that big of an adjustment. There were some questions about whether we would not have our spring break since we basically a week off earlier. The other thing that felt odd about our initial plan is that we would have a week off, two weeks of remote learning, then one week of in-person school, followed by spring break. Even without COVID-19 concerns, coming back for one more week and then going to break didn't make a lot of sense.

Only a week into the school closure, we got an announcement that we would basically we off until after Spring break. This change added one more week of remote learning.  It was logical, and it gave us a solid chunk of time away from school. We hadn't started remote learning, so even though we had made some plans, it seemed like this wasn't going to be a big adjustment.

This didn't feel like a decision that was made because things were dire. It was just a logical way to schedule our classes to deal better with remote-teaching and not have to deal with one week of awkward in-person teaching.

Date: Tuesday 3/31/20

Announcement: Governor Pritzker makes stay at home order. Remote school is now from 3/16/20-4/30/20.

A week and a half later, in our second week of remote learning, we got the announcement that the school would be remote for the rest of the month. Illinois was a mess. Many schools were closed, but many weren't. I went to an Asian grocery store on March 13th, and they handed me a mask as I walked in, and even though some people by the end of the month were wearing masks, most were not.

In only two and a half weeks, this virus that was going to shut down our school for a couple of weeks became a pandemic that would shut down America. Hospitals were full, doctors and nurses were dangerously low on supplies.  People were dying at an alarming rate.

Leaders were playing responsibility chicken. Many school administrators and mayors didn't want to make difficult decisions, so they did nothing and waited for someone higher up to make the hard call so they wouldn't have to. Finally, Governor Pritzker did it.

We were previously planning on closing until 4/21/20, so the governor extending our closing until 4/30/20 really wasn't that big a deal logically, but it felt big. This felt more serious, direr, and consequential than my school administration's first two announcements.

The day this announcement went down, I started hearing that other states closing down schools for in-person learning for the rest of the school year. This possibility scared me.

 

 

Date: Friday 4/17/20

Announcement: Governor Pritzker declares school will be closed for the remainder of the year. Remote school is now from 3/16/20-6/4/20.

The first three announcements that closed schools happened over a twenty-day span, and the last and final announcement came seventeen days after the previous announcement. This was the longest period of time that we had to sit and think about what we were going to do as teachers. In this time, we had canceled performance, put projects aside, disregarded carefully planned units and lesson plans, and learned how to teach remotely.

Creating multiple contingency plans became a regular and exhausting process during this time. We were making plans to go back to school, and we were planning to stay remote. Things never felt "normal." It felt like we were barely getting through the weeks, clinging onto what joys we could find in our work.

My hope that we would be back, that we, as a country to change the direction of this pandemic for our children's benefits, was bashed away by the reality of this final announcement. I kept it together during the first three announcements, but I lost it on this final announcement.

My blog on this day captures how I felt:

I'm sad because I will not be able to say goodbye to my students at the end of the year. I'm sad because I won't be there to help that student see that they really can do what they think they cannot. And I'm sad because amazing moments that I cannot foresee, that happens every day when we share our wonderful building with my wonderful colleagues and my students, will not happen.

Not all is lost. I do have the ability, as I have been for the past month, to teach my students remotely. My colleagues and administration are with me every step of the way. And I'm blessed with resources.

My work will not be as effective as it would be if I shared a classroom with my students. My teaching is not as smooth online, and my lessons lack the benefit of years of development, but I'm still here. I'm still damn good at my job, and I can still make a difference in my students' lives.

I'm still a teacher. 

Yes, there was finally certainty for how the remainder of the school year. We could make hard plans, cancel the concerts that were in limbo, and we could focus on making remote learning work for the rest of the year instead of making it work for the rest of the month.

This was the most difficult time I had as a teacher up this point in my professional life. While most of my energy was focused on the present and near future, there were signs that there was an even more difficult time ahead of us.

Teachers in parts of America had to fight to close schools for their students' safety and themselves.  And some leaders urged schools to open later in the Spring.  Schools stumbled, and many failed at remote-learning because of a lack of resources and support. And COVID-19 was not going away.

By June, it hit me. Closing schools was hard, but opening schools would be much harder.

Parenthood: Week 393 - A Decent Man

Every single day I see it: male-identified people oppressing others, being unkind, and acting selfishly.

It’s frustrating and depressing how much trauma and pain these “men” cause through thoughtless action as a habit, and sometimes through actions that are deliberate and insidious. The patriarchy is real, it is strong, and it is pervasive.

Changing what it means to be a man and fighting the oppression by men in society is work that is  done by women, but men are in a place to make these changes happen in ways that women cannot. Making men better is a heavy responsibility as a guy myself who wants to make things better and is a responsibility as a father of three sons that I take very seriously.

There are times that I have a clear idea of how to respond to things. Ollie asked us recently if a woman was the opposite of a man. Both Diana and I quickly responded that these were not opposite terms. Creating a false dichotomy between men and women is a foundation in sexism. Without a clear division between men and women, men cannot effectively oppress women. Hence, the connection between conservative patriarchal leaders and their desire to oppress Gay men.

Other times I act deliberately to create an environment that helps our sons develop their masculinity less traditionally. The clothing we chose for them is not focused on sports and feature a wide range of colors. When Ethan and Ollie were getting into superheroes, I showed him the show DC Super Hero Girls so that he would have a broader view of the genre beyond the male superheroes.

Diana is currently reading Little House In The Big Woods for a bedtime story, and in the past, I’ve read other books that have female protagonist. It’s been nice that so many Disney films have featured strong female characters like Moana, and Frozen 2, which we took our sons to watch in the theater.

The saying is that “children do as we do, and not as we say.” Therein lies the most important thing we can do as men to help our boys grow up to be good decent men. It’s the small things, saying “thank you” and “please” to Diana, trying my best not to interrupt her or take over the conversation at dinner, and showing with my words and actions the value of being respectful and kind to women.

I can’t change our patriarchal and sexist society right now. But I can make our home a place where we can have honest conversations about identity, celebrate what is great and wonderful about being a boy, and grow together as a family. 

Soon, those horrible guys will creep back to their basements, back to their seedy bars, and back to their racist country clubs.  Decent good men are coming forward to remind guys in America of who we can become and how we can be better.  It's happening and will become a blue wave...if you want it.  

Joe Biden is ready, and so am I.

Vote.   

Year 11 – Week 6: The Pandemic, Part 1 - March 13th

March 13th. 

Like a storm on the hurricane approach, you could feel a change in the air. It wasn’t just on this day but it had been building slowly over the months. At first it was a whisper at the edge of my consciousness. There was something going on in Asia, a fever, a virus that was spreading. Then slowly through in late February and into early March the unimaginable starting becoming an incomprehensible reality.

Before we had time to process what was happening, with no clear information to settled our anxiety, cracks in American invulnerability started appearing. A world away, in countries like China, schools were closed had been closed for months, people were wearing masks, and hospitals were out of beds. Even though I have aunts, uncles and cousins in Hong Kong and Taiwan whose kids were stuck at home and whose lives were dramatically changed, it just didn’t seem like this would hit America as hard.

America the brave, the rich, the powerful, and the intelligent. With the most resources, and the best of everything how could a virus devastate our country. So many Americans saw other countries running out of hospital beds, and wearing mask, and figured this wouldn’t happen in America because they are not as good as America. These Americans were wrong, and so was I.

First the talk was among our administration, and then to department chairs, and finally after much consideration a letter was sent out to families on February 27th outlining our schools plan if we had to shut down and switch to remote learning. As I write about this moment right now, I feel tension and anxiety build in my body. Because that moment when that email came out, brought forth anxiety that I did not acknowledge that is only coming out now as I give myself permission to reflect and feel what that moment was like.

I was optimistic. I didn’t think we’d close. And even we did, it would only be for a couple weeks. I was so naïve that I looked forward to the idea of closing for two weeks so that I could get a break from school. I had small idea that it might be worse than a couple weeks off, but I had no idea that we would be out for the rest of the school year, and no idea of the trauma that was on the horizon. Part of me was scared and the unknowns were beyond comprehension on that moment and leaning on the faith and optimism that got me through this moment took its toll.

On March 3rd the department chairs, which includes me as the music department chairs received further details about a possible school closure. There was a three-week plan. One week off to switch to remote, and two weeks of remote teaching. That week off for students would like an extra spring break. We were charged to consider plans and schedules and figure out how we’d make this work if we had to go remote. There was so much to figure out as most of us had never even heard of Zoom and had limited if no experience with Google Meet.

School events started to be cancelled. Field trips at first were discouraged, and then also cancelled. We started getting warning to wash our hands more, not touch our face, and keep our teaching spaces clean. Still I was relatively optimistic that we could just make this work. It’s just two weeks of remote teaching and we’d have a week to prep. At this point there was no guarantee that this was even going to happen. Part of me actually believed that the incompetence of the trump administration would somehow turn around when faced with this crisis and prevent the closing of schools.

The week of March 8th we were told to start sending supplies home with students every day just in case we would close. Then we got the call over our emergency phone system on Thursday that Friday, March 13th would be our last day before switching to remote learning. In that moment I felt relief. There was a decision hanging over this whole school for weeks and now we had certainty, a plan for at least the next three weeks. I didn’t know how I was going to make remote teaching work, but I knew it was going to happen and I had a week to figure it out.

I gave up that week in moving the curriculum forward and focused on having fun in music class. I wrote about the how I said goodbye to my 8th graders that week in this blogpost that I published on March 13th.

Leaving school that Friday, I had no idea the road ahead. It felt like the storm and hit and passing over, but we were only in the eye. There was much more ahead of us, much worse ahead of us.

It wasn’t three weeks away from school. Announcements would come, hopes would be squashed. Politics would be thrust upon, and the respite of summer schools would be struggle through stress and anxiety. Teachers not realizing that in many ways opening back up in the fall would be harder than closing in the spring would be slammed in late August and early September with unprecedented challenges never before seen in education. And right now conflicts continue as teachers holding the line to keep schools closed from the Spring face a very different reality.

This is the story of what started on March 13th, the summer that followed, how we made it to back to school, and the future.

Parenthood: Week 392 – I'm Voting For…Part 2

I'm voting for my children, so they will better understand what it means to be a man.

Joe Biden demonstrates that being a man is about the strength to care, the strength to love, and the strength to understand. It took strength for him to keep moving after suffering an unthinkable personal tragedies. Committing himself to his family isn't easy and working to have a balance in his life between a career and his family was difficult. Still, he never gave up on the idea of being a present and loving father. When faced with the tragedy, he was ready to pick his family over his career. So many men would have prioritized their career in his generation, as so many men still do today.

Joe Biden understands that feminism is the idea that women are, in fact, human beings, equal in deserving the same respect and dignity as men. He co-sponsored the Violence Against Women act and collaborated with President Obama through his feminist work, including the Libby Ledbetter Act. He is committed to his wife and his daughters and elevates their work and their humanity.

The people who think all men cheat and all men engage in "locker room talk" are wrong. There are plenty of guys out there who are sexist and misogynistic, but the real men are not. How you talk about women and treat women in your personal life reflects policy decisions and hiring decisions. I want my sons to live in an America where women are freer, and that will not happen if the person at the top expresses through his words, actions, and policies that women are sub-human. My boys will be men of character who treat women well, but they need the support of leaders who refuse to accept the subjugation of women.

  

I'm voting for my children so that they will be a less racist society.

trump has never stopped his anti-Asian racist language to describe the pandemic. Three days ago, he once again used racist language to describe the virus. Racism doesn't stay static. It gets worse, or it gets better, and anti-Asian racism is getting worse in America. Anti-immigrant language may have ebbed, but it never disappeared from trump's language and ideology and embedded in all his does, and all he says is a disdain for other races.

Labeling trump as a racist is not an opinion, it's a fact, and the existence of systemic racism is not a debatable subjective opinion. It's a fact backed up by research like the molecular makeup of water and the air temperature on a given day.

Many People of Color have persevered and triumphed in the face of racism, though many more have not. To love my children, to make sure they grow up healthy and happy, I need to make sure they healthy food, are bather, go to the doctor and live in a less racist society.  A less racist society is essential to my children's health and well-being as clean water, clear air, and access to health care, things that trump and many Republicans don't view as basic human rights.

Joe Biden served, supported, and was number 2 to a Black man. He has elevated a mix-raced, Black women to the role of Vice President.  When addressing racism in America, he listens, learns, tries, and has evolved. He is a model for how White-ness can become anti-racist, how older generations can be better than their upbringing, and how privilege can be used to serve others. Yes, Biden is fighting for the soul of our nation, and with empathy across racial barriers, he can win this battle. 

 

I'm voting for my children so they can be proud to be American.

In the past four years, I have felt less proud to be an American than at any point in my life. I am ashamed of trump, his administration, his enablers, and many of his followers. I'm angry at the racist people he encourages, the ignorant people he leads, and the callous people who dehumanize others in trump's vision. I am disappointed that our country continues to "turn his head and pretend he just doesn't see," while we wonder, "how many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free."

I am not proud to be an American right now. I'm okay with that. I'm glad that the myth of American exceptionalism has been demolished so that we can more clearly see the American that has always been, not the American myth far too many of us have believed to be true.

Pride is something that is created through hard work with others. It is not a flag that is waved or a song that is sung. Pride is not looking at past myths of accomplishments and celebrating them through fireworks. It is fostered by great leaders who challenge us to be the best of who we are for ourselves and each other. Pride is seeing mistakes, working hard with others to address them, and making a more perfect union built on empathy.

It is an America that Joe Biden believes can be built back better by all of us because if we come together, there is nothing we can't do. 

I'm voting for my children, so they can know years that I did my part in this dark time, acting out of love for country, love for myself, and love for them.

Year 11 – Week 5: I'm Voting For...Part 1

I’m voting for the teachers. 

Partners of teachers get it. They do dishes late at night while their wives grade papers. They struggle to make the budget work as partners have to spend their own money on classroom supplies, and they provide emotional support for the underpaid, and overworked teachers in America.

No one really understands what it’s like to be married to a teacher, unless you yourself are married to a teacher, like Joe Biden.

Teachers of America deserve a President who sees the value of the teachers, who has lived with the challenges, the sacrifices, and the tribulations of being an educator in America. The way that Joe Biden speaks about Jill Biden’s career as a teacher with love, respect, and awe in the way that he sees America’s teachers.

We have suffered at the hands of an incompetent Secretary Of Education, and a President who doesn’t care about education and teachers at all. Both of them did absolutely nothing to help teachers last spring when teachers transitioned to distance learning with little training, limited time to prepare while carrying the hopes of dreams of children and parents on their backs. In the months that followed, no leadership, no initiatives, no support, and not even a “thank you” came from these two people.

I’m voting for teachers so they can get the resources, and support to keep educating the children of American. I’m voting for teachers, so they can be successful because of the President, not despite him, and I’m voting for teachers so they can have a true partner in the White House who will stay up late with us doing the whatever he can do to help while we grade papers. 

 

I’m voting for my students.

“This isn’t about left vs. right. It is about right vs. wrong.”

For the past four years, I’ve watched trump say things and do things that would be unacceptable in my classroom. Unlike the Republicans have accepted his amorality, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and hatefulness as acceptable, I refuse to look the other way because I know how damaging his words and actions are to my students. 

Every time trump comes up in class, great care needs to be taken to discuss him because even the utterance of his name brings to mind real pain and trauma children have experienced because of him.    

I would be doing a disservice to my students if I didn’t vote for a candidate who shared the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion which are the foundation of my teaching. In the same way that I work towards these values in my classroom, I need to stand up for these values outside of my classroom. In this election, it means that I vote for Joe Biden.

I’m voting for my students, so they can see that there are consequences to being unkind, hurtful, and mean. I’m voting for my students, so they have a President that reflects the values in their classroom, and I’m voting for my students so they can see the best in themselves in a President who is guided by empathy and kindness.

Parenthood: Week 391 – trump to my kids?

Wow, what if I wrote what was actually on my mind. Well, why not?

I am so glad that I don’t have to explain trump to my children. Ollie is seven-years-old, and it is important that he has some awareness of what is going on in the world.  However, because our house doesn’t have cable and we don’t put the news on when we walk into the rooms, Ollie doesn’t have a sense of what is happening as it happens for the most part. I don’t think he needs to know the details of all that happened last week right now. He knows that trump is a bad, sad, and pathetic man. That’s enough.

It must take so much effort and thought to be a parent who is helping their teenager process all they are seeing online and hearing from their peers about trump. Every week, often multiple times a week parents all across America trying to do the right thing, are having difficult conversations with their children. This must be exhausting. I understand on one level wanting your children to see the last presidential debate. But I don’t understand being surprised, and disgusted at trump’s horrible behavior and wallace’s pathetic performance as a “moderator.” Of course, it’s inappropriate for children. trump is inappropriate for our children.

I have shown Ollie speeches by President Obama, Senator Harris, Senator Warren, and other politicians. But I refuse to let Ollie watch a speech or, even a 10-second sound bite from trump. More likely than not Ollie would see a person say something that is hateful, mean, racist, or spiteful. No one wants their children to talk like trump. Why would I let my children see this man model this horrible way of being?

Look I know. I KNOW that life isn’t fair. You can drive the speed limit all your life, and still manage to get a traffic ticket and that guy who is going way too fast doesn’t get caught. I’ve known that people haven’t worked nearly as hard as my family to be safe about the pandemic, and they haven’t gotten Covid-19. It’s annoying to live with the knowledge that people think I’m overreacting, and I’m being an idiot for doing the right thing to keep me and my family safe.

I’m doing all of this stuff as a parent for my children. It’s hard, and it’s stressful, but we keep at it because it’s the right thing to do. Seeing trump just actively mock what I do for my family, and then get Covid-19 and twist his experience to only further gaslight Americans is beyond frustrating.

Every time I think that I could get away with not being as careful, I think about my children, and horrible it would be for them if I got sick. It scares me more to think about how my children would deal with me being sick than the actual experience of having Covid-19. I am so glad that I have my children in my mind, and in my heart to push me past my lazier moments and not give up on doing what is right.

I don’t know what I’m going to tell my children about this time when they are older, but I want to make sure that I am able to tell them that I did the right thing, for myself and for them. They will know about a guy named trump and the damage that he did, but more than that I hope that they will know how much their mom and dad did during this difficult time to help them know that they are loved.

Year 11 – Week 4: Arrival Duty

I’ve done lunch duty, I’ve done recess duty, and I’ve also done dismissal duty, but it wasn’t until this year that I did arrival duty.

With new safety regulations and procedures, we needed as much help as possible to make arrival work. Two entry points wasn’t going to be enough for students to enter in smaller groups and social distance, so we needed to utilize more entrances to the school. This combined with the need to temperature checks  made it clear that many more of us than usual had to jump in to make arrival work.

I was more than willing to chip-in when I saw my name listed as doing arrival duty, but I was not looking forward to it. Nothing about it seemed appealing. Being outside, early in the morning, directing children into building, it didn’t sound like fun.  On the first day of school, it was looking like it would be miserable.

It wasn’t cold, but it was rainy and windy. It was the kind of windy that was hard enough to blow your umbrella inside out, so you just give up and let the sideways rain spray your face. On that day, my job was to help junior kindergarten and senior kindergarten students to their classrooms. They were let in from a door in the fence of our field. It greeted them and walked them across the field and help them find their classroom.

These four and five-year-olds were struggling. Some of them could tell us their teacher, while others couldn’t. I asked them their names trying to make a connection, but their masks and the wind, made it difficult to understand what they were saying. So I made small talk about what they were wearing, how nice their teachers were going to be, and how much fun they were going to have. This process would eventually take less than half an hour, that first day it took almost an hour. Afterwards, I was tired, and wet but I also felt fulfilled and happy. It was a wonderful challenge full of purpose to greet these children and be a positive part of their day.

I shifted spots a couple days later to doing temperature checks with 2nd graders and eventually settled in doing temperature checks with middle school students. I stood outside and as they came up to the door, they were assigned and I took them temperatures with a touch-less thermometer. After the third day of doing this, I brought out a Bluetooth speakers to play music. That first day with music pumping out “9 to 5” as I took temperatures was one of the highlights of my year.

Every day I prepare a mix of music to dance around to while I greet the students and take their temperatures. I can do two at a time now, one thermometer in each hand. I greet the students enthusiastically, and more often than not, they greet me kindly. Many say “thank you,” after I’m done taking their temperature, and some even dance as they approach excited about the music that I’m playing. I don’t make a connection with every student, but through comments and jokes, I can get a positive reaction out of most of them, and that feels pretty good.

After we get to the other side of this, I might just volunteer for arrival duty. There isn’t really a better way to start a school day than bringing a little love and positivity to students with a simple "good morning."