This week had it all. There were moments when I felt effective as a teacher and other moments when I felt inadequate. Many things happened as planned, and there were surprises thrown at me that I didn’t expect. People did supportive work that felt validating, and people made choices that puzzled me and led to me having to do more work. I solved problems, learned about new issues, experienced great kindness from some colleagues, and thoughtless words that felt irritating.
Every workday felt like a race. Things I wanted to get done often had to get put aside for something that had to get done. There was little to no lull in my day, as things filled up my day, leaving me to look at my to-do list and have to accept all the things that I planned to get down would be left undone. There were two days when I worked through lunch, and often I felt like I worked right up to the last second of my prep time before running to a class to teach, that I didn’t feel fully prepared to teach.
In short, I experienced all of the highs and lows of a typical school year in one week.
Monday was a teacher in-service day. We had a excellent training around gender. It felt empowering as we learned about best practices to better support all of our students, especially those who are LGBTQ+ and gender non-conforming. It was also a sad and sobering presentation. The presenter talked about the reality of anti-trans and anti-gay sentiment in America and how it would surely lead to more suicide attempts by LGBTQ+ youth.
Later in the morning, I led a session about how to examine and transform traditions to make them more inclusive and better align with our schools’ core values. I didn’t feel like I had adequate time to prepare for this workshop, but it went well. I’m glad that I created a space where people with different experience levels at my school felt comfortable speaking up. The engagement of the participants made me hopeful that we could help some of the traditions in my school evolve to become more inclusive. I want to do more facilitating professional development in diversity work, and I was grateful to have this opportunity to work on these skills.
I was looking forward to getting back to work with my students. My 4th graders, 5th graders, and 7th-grade band all have performances coming up in a couple weeks. All of these students were making significant progress. Ever since our school went to masks optional, I finally felt like I could really teach singing. I’ve had students sing songs since the beginning of the year, but it didn't feel like teaching. For most people wearing a mask prevents people from opening their mouths wide in a relaxed way, which is essential for singing. The way that masks come into contact with the face and mouth gets in the form of articulation. Masks mute sound, making it difficult to assess students’ singing.
Without visualizing students' full faces, many things about singing techniques are nigh-impossible to evaluate and correct. Yes, there were still some students who wore masks after we went for a masks optional policy, but within two weeks, the vast majority of students were not wearing masks. So when I found out Monday night that we were going back to a universal mask policy, I felt profoundly frustrated and sad.
My students were making meaningful and impressive progress with singing techniques because we could sing without masks, and now all of that momentum would stop. I knew I would have to plan differently. With masks back on meant that the students would learn songs slower, and I would once again have to adjust my curriculum and give up focusing on singing technique. What made it worse was that I had no time to process or plan for this change.
I came into school Tuesday morning unsure how to handle all that was ahead of me. My first class was a section of the 7th-grade band. I tried my best to sound excited and optimistic as I started class. I remembered a piece of advice I had heard years ago: always commnicate with your presence that you expect to listen to an excellent musical sound from your students. So I did this, but I didn’t expect the best sounds. This was the first day back after spring break. But then my student started playing, and they sounded tremendous. I wish they could have seen my smile.
My 4th graders participated with great effort in music class. They worked well with the singer despite wearing masks, and they were invested and joyful as we worked on sound effects for their upcoming play. Then I had a challenging 5th-grade class. As we started singing warm-ups, I heard some soft singing, which slowly diminished into nothing. There was literally no singing. This class was shy about singing, and I had made progress getting them to sing out, and now with masks back on, all that progress was gone. I returned the next day and, with energy and enthusiasm, and got them singing louder. Part of me wanted to give up, but I couldn’t. That's just not possible for me. So I gave that class my all. It was exhausting, but the progress felt good.
This week reminded me that I can’t fix everything, good comes with the bad, and the bad is rarely that bad. This week, the best I could do wasn’t enough for some people, but I left work knowing that I gave the day my all. This doesn’t make me impervious to having my feelings affected by other people’s criticism, but it does help.
I genuinely don’t have any regrets this week. I did far more good than bad. Among all the week's challenges, I made some colleagues feel valued and helped some of my students feel joy.
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That’s enough for me.
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