On Friday night, a friend said, “Congratulations. You survived your school year. Did you hold up okay?”
“It was one of the best years of my teaching career,” I replied.
At first he looked surprised. Then he assumed that I was expressing pride in being able to help others during this perilous time. He thought I might be reflecting on the risks taken in order to support my students and their families and feeling good about what I had accomplished on behalf of others.
And yes, it’s true. While most of my friends and clients spent a majority of the pandemic working from home and maintaining social distance from the world, I spent seven hours a day, five days a week, in a room filled with 20 other human beings.
Kids, too. Less than reliable human beings when it came to mask adherence and social distancing.
Many of my friends and clients thought I was crazy. While school districts across the country remained remote, our school district was back in business by October. Credit administration and teachers for making this happen, but also credit the residents of the state in which I live, which has enjoyed some of the lowest infection rates, high mask adherence rates, and highest vaccination rates in the nation.
When everyone pulls on the same rope, good things can happen.
Nevertheless, it’s true. There were certainly risks involved.
More than half of my students entered quarantine at some point during the school year as a result of contact tracing.
I also went into a two week quarantine after Elysha contracted COVID-19 – almost certainly while teaching – and isolated herself in the bedroom for two weeks. During that time, I slept on the couch, kept my family fed, supported my own children – also in quarantine – as they learned from home and worried about their mother, and taught my students by beaming to the Smartboard from my dining room table while a paraprofessional supported me in the classroom.
We also drove to the testing site every day for yet another COVID test, assuming that we’d all eventually test positive.
Miraculously, we never did.
It was a tough couple weeks that included Clara’s birthday, celebrated at a distance and not like any birthday we’ve ever celebrated before.
To Clara’s credit, she said it was great. “One of her best birthdays ever,” she told us. Friends delivered gifts and well wishes. Elysha wore a mask and stood on the other side of the house as Clara made a wish and blew out the candles on cake made and delivered by friends. Gifts were opened. Somehow we found a way to enjoy the day, mostly thanks to Clara’s indomitable spirit.
Still, I was frightened almost every day. Frightened for my safety but even more afraid for my students, their families, my family, and my colleagues.
I know fellow teachers with certain risk factors that made COVID-19 especially dangerous who still came to work every day because they thought it was important to be with children during this time.
I worried about them constantly.
But none of these sacrifices were why it was one of my best years of teaching ever.
It simply was.
Despite the loss of treasured traditions like our four day trip to Camp Jewell, our hike of the Freedom Trail, our annual science fair, and our weekly Town Meeting, it was still one of my best years ever.
Even though social distancing required the removal of the stage, curtains, and sound system that I had built into my classroom, and with it, the loss of our annual Shakespearean production, it was still one of my best years ever.
Why?
Mostly it was my students.
A collection of human beings who bonded like no other under the fear and pressure of a pandemic. A group of children who engaged in conversations about social justice, racism, and bigotry in ways no class ever before. Kids who fought like hell to have fun in a world where smiles were constantly hidden and games of tag were not allowed.
It was a school year spent under the trees in front of our school, reading books together and talking. It was a year filled with walks in the adjacent forest, through sun, rain, and two feet of snow. It was the day we spent watching the inauguration of a new President and our first female, black Vice President of Asian descent. It was school days filled with happy, grateful children struggling for normalcy in a world turned upside down.
It wasn’t always easy.
Planning and teaching lessons to children in class and quarantined students at home simultaneously was not easy. Redesigning lessons to remove elements that did not support social distancing was a pain in the ass. Supporting students who had lost family members was hard.
But those kids made it all better. Every day they made it better. They came to school happy to learn, excited to see what crazy thing I might do next, and prepared to support one another in this time of crisis and fear.
I remember the way our country came together in the wake of 9/11. For a brief but glorious moment in American history, I felt like everyone was pulling on the same rope. Americans united as building burned.
Maybe that’s what made this year especially good. A group of students – facing the hardship and fear of a pandemic – came together like few before and bonded like no other. Maybe the struggle and grind of our daily existence made all the petty problems of past years disappear. Maybe the way the tragic events of the summer opened up conversations about social justice, bigotry, and racism brought us closer together than ever before.
Or perhaps I just got lucky. Maybe I was blessed with a group of extraordinary human beings who did extraordinary things.
I think it might be that.
Whatever the reason, this past school year was one of my best. An unforgettable and delightful year of teaching young people who I find myself already missing on this first real day of summer vacation.
