We are working inside the darkness. Anyone teaching these days is shadow walking. There is nothing solid; there are rumors and possibilities existing always just a step ahead in a dimly lit alley. The alley keeps opening out into nothing solid again. I sleep badly. My dreams are confused images and patterns. Everyone keeps saying, ‘every day is a new normal’. There lies a great chasm between hearing that and living through the middle of it.
I exit the salted parking lot at day’s end, folding up my mind into small pieces I tuck away. Years ago, I carried my teaching job around with me like a beloved and naughty rag doll. I thought about it. I planned around it. I hovered over it. I nurtured it. I scolded it. Now I don’t make livable sense of it. It keeps shifting and rolling over. It flops and stares. But then, going on is in the nature of things and so we do that.
Some don’t go on. A young teacher stops me in the hall. ‘I’m getting out’ he says. ‘I’m looking for a new career. I did not sign up for this’. He asks me, ‘How long have you been here?’ ‘Twenty-five years’ I respond. ‘God bless you’ he mumbles heading toward the elevator. I look at my watch. He’s leaving early. I’ve left early. When there are no students on Zoom, why stay? I’m one of the dinosaurs now. Now, I am one of the old guard.
Regents exams, an educational pillar in New York, are cancelled again. With this cancellation comes the strange sense that the sacred cow has been slaughtered. Nothing is forever. Nothing is indispensable. The plague of Covid has done something nothing else has been able to do in decades. It has shaken public education to its core.
On my lunch break I think that if I hear the word ‘unprecedented’ again, I shall remove it from Webster’s with a shiv.
I have hardened over the past few years; not toward people, certainly not in my own physical person. On the contrary, I feel more deeply the vulnerability of things in my own body and mind and in the fragility of the children I teach. I am hardened up against systems; against this system which refuses to die, which refuses to root out mismanagement and pretense, refuses to rip out unreachable mandates and poor choices in spending; a system calling our students ‘scholars’ when in fact a number of them are actually thugs. My little ones are not thugs. But someday they might be.
Passive resistance means I am ignoring most of my emails; at least for a few hours. I am not jumping quickly anymore.
We are back online; sentenced to remote learning until the 18th of January. Staffing needs can’t be met. Another 15 teachers and administrators are out today.
First morning back on Zoom…screaming in the background, ‘Are you harassing your brother?’ Silence. ‘Yes. Get off…you can’t listen to it…get offfffff!’ ‘Wait. Eat your breakfast and I am muting you’. ‘How do I take attendance now?’ ‘Wait, the code comes on your phone? On your phone’. Silence. ‘Miss…can I go to the bathroom?’ ‘Yes”…hmmm…absent/excused…absent/unexcused, tardy/remote…tardy/in person. No…no one is in person. Except me. Our students are home on remote. The teachers are in the building. ‘Good morning! Good morning…unmute yourself!’ Three children lying sleepily in bed, stretch and stare at me.
In the afternoon…’Get closer to the MiFi…get closer to your MiFi’. ‘Are you doing okay? Can you hear me? There’s a lag. Now you’re frozen again. Try to find another spot. Okay. We’ll come back to you’. “I never thought we’d go back on remote learning, Miss’. ‘Ok. You’re going to go into the break out room, so please join. Press the button. The button! Press. The. Button!’ One child eats spaghetti with great gusto…tipping her head back…dropping a large quantity of noodles into her mouth.
Broadband width is wobbly at best for a number of my students today. We descend into a cacophony of staggered speech, frozen screens, staccato words and finally black rectangles. We joke about it. ‘There he goes!’ and ‘Oh, we just lost her!’ ‘Why is he back in the waiting room?’
Mid-week and the energy shifts. Nobody wants to do this. No one. The parking lot is half empty when I pull in at 7:30. I sip hot blueberry tea and watch my students dribble in; popping onto the Zoom screens; a sea of rectangles. They crawl out from under blankets. One child sits with a large cat on her lap and stares blankly at me.
The weather alters and the remaining ground snow is wet and soggy. Patches of stiff grass and stalks stand up in a polka dotted pattern across the front yard. Someone has walked their dog late in the night or very early. Large paw prints and small boot markings run the length of the end of our driveway. The house is dark and disappears as I drive away.
I think about the dream I had last night. I was on a date and it did not seem real. In my dream, I knew the man was too popular, too handsome for me. We visited his family homestead in Pennsylvania. We met his family in a huge, well lit, decorated barn filled with tables and food and white linen. I wore all black; a swimsuit cover up which flowed and gapped. I was exposed everywhere. I soldiered on through dinner. I knew if I pretended, everyone else would pretend as well. We are doing that now.
Some teachers bring their dogs to work this week. I am startled more than once to encounter a large dog in the silent hallway. They don’t bark. They don’t run around. They lie on the floor or under the desk next to the teachers instructing on Zoom. I see them in the hall with their owners several times and on camera as I share a Zoom link with certain classes. They bring life to the building which is deathly quiet. No children in the classroom. No noise in the corriders.
When I enter the side door, I hear a few voices somewhere, closer to the main office. I drag several heavy bags and the metal doors slam behind me. I lower my mask since I do not see anyone. Around the corner, I pass closed classroom doors. There are quiet murmurings as people start up their Zoom links. One more turn and I see the elevator. The empty cafeteria at the far end is dark and I see stacked tables and chairs. I swipe my badge and press the button. I enter as the door opens and wait as it closes on a silent, empty hall.
690 Saint Paul 