It Has Been a Hard Year

It has been a hard year.
There have been many blogs started, many finished and few published. Writing is my therapy many times and when a post is born of frustration, sadness, anger…. This are for me. But this one is for everyone.

It has been a hard year. Many children returned to full time learning lacking the academic stamina they had pre-pandemic. Many children returned to our classrooms and had difficulty sitting and attending to instruction, reading for a sustained duration, and self regulating. Our youngest children had their first in classroom experiences and are not able to use a tripod grasp to hold a pencil since the advent of touch screen didn’t require them to do so last year.

It has been a hard year. We see that while the adults had the best of intentions during school shut downs, they also had to redefine how their family ran as they worked their jobs and attempted remote learning. Children, even small children, had less positive adult interactions, were often watched over by older siblings, and the norms of acceptable behavior in many households went down because we were all in survival mode trying to work from home, manage our households, educate our children and maintain ‘normalcy’.

It has been a hard year. Children cooped up in their homes with their immediate families have lost social skills and have had difficulties above and beyond the normal difficulties of navigating conflict. We have seen a decrease in healthy problem solving and communication and an increase of threats and physical responses to conflict. Children’s threshold for tolerance of others is reduced, and children are less empathetic…as a byproduct of survival mode (me first and foremost).

It has been a hard year. Teachers and school staff have redefined how they approach their jobs, switched up the pedagogy of design and delivery of instruction, modified and adjusted instructional methods only to be inundated with the message ‘the kids have lost so much’, and ‘the kids are so far behind’. They have been given no grace by our state level leadership who insists these kids will read by grade three and pass these outrageous exams. If it wasn’t a test violation, I would love to time lapse video a classroom full of children on testing day, so the world can see how hard it is for these kids and teachers. I say time lapse because nobody has 6 hours to watch kids take these tests. Eight year olds…testing for 6 hours….on one subject.

It has been a hard year. HARDly a day has gone by when I didn’t feel the stress of having enough subs in the building…we we were one of the lucky ones who had an excellent building sub or two. But even on days when people were not out sick, we have had two different long term sub situations on top of multiple funerals and multiple quarantines and illnesses, and often at the same time. My morning emails and text messages cause small ripples of panic as I worry about who is calling out at the last minute, what emergency or catastrophe has befallen one of my staff memebrs?

It has been a hard year. There are days when the Principal’s Office feels like the complaint department. Kids complaining about other kids (some of which it attributable to their regression with conflict resolution strategies), parents complaining about teachers and staff, parents complaining about other people’s kids, parents complaining about other parents (and their exes which is SO NOT MY BUSINESS….but eh….complaint department….I guess), district administration complaining because teachers are complaining, teachers complaining about the demands from the state and district….and on….and on….and on. And I am not complaining…. lamenting yes, complaining no.

It has been a hard year. I look back at the master schedule that was hard to develop, and the 30+ intervention reading groups and 12+ math groups that took place each day, that were hard work for the students and adults alike. I look back at how hard it was to schedule classroom guidance lessons in the classrooms where core instructional time is priority, but the social worker and I NEEDED to teach the lessons on conflict resolution, bullying, personal safety, internet safety, communication skills, and self advocacy…among other hard topics. I look back at how hard the kids worked, transitioning from core to intervention and back again.

It has been hard for teachers who are being evaluated on criteria that HARDly reflects the hard work they have done. There are so many aggravating factors associated with the data that is collected to measure teacher efficacy, data that in past years may not be the best way to determine how effective a teacher is during an ordinary year, but this year…..

It has been a hard year, marred by the tragedy of 27 school shootings….in one school year. When I think back to some of the bigger newsworthy incidents such as Sandy Hook, the only real change has been teaching kids to run, hide and fight back. The only real protection that is offered for our teachers and families in the face of domestic terrorism on school campus is our own preparation for active shooter situations. It is hard to be an educator on our own in protecting our students, staff and schools from domestic terrorism. My big emergency binder isn’t going to stop an armed intruder, but it makes sure we know how to lock in, or escape. One would think with as many educators that are registered to vote we would have some legislative protections against gun violence on school campuses.

It has been a hard year. There are days I leave my office wondering if what I do makes any difference…at all. There are days when I just want to get up and take a long walk. Like to Bermuda. And not come back….or Belize since I’m not such a good swimmer. You get the idea.

It has been a hard year. It is hard not to brag about reducing the number of students who started the year reading a year or more below grade level from almost 90- just under 1/3 of the school- to less than 30. It is hard to wait for the end of year summative test scores to be released by the state, because even despising those tests as I do, my teachers and my kids rocked it and I am betting that despite the hard past few years, and the hard test that it was, my teachers and students were exceedingly successful. It is hard to be humble about that. There was HARDly a day that went by that we didn’t have supportive and enthusiastic parents in the building lending a helping hand. We HARDly have room in our kindergarten classes for next year, and it will be Hard to be in overload status next fall.

It is hard to put into words how fortunate I am for the love and support from my families, how much I love these kiddos, and especially how grateful I am for the staff that strives, aspires, works through the exhaustion and frustration, who celebrate the small successes, who collaborate and have each others’ backs, who innovate, create and try new things, who boost each other up when things are HARD, and who deserve teacher and staff appreciation week every week of the year.

The hardest thing for me this year is going to be saying goodbye to staff members who have been exhausted this year, who are tired from the hard things, who have many good years ahead of them and who have impacted and enriched the lives of so many kids. Harder still is saying ghoodbye to those that are ending their careers in education after such a hard year.