As we said in my youth, "Stick a fork in me; I'm done." This semester--for that matter, this week--has been an arduous mountain journey, full of difficulty and heartbreak followed by moments of beauty and hope. I feel that the hardest part about it is that we so desperately wanted it to be a normal school year that we deceived ourselves into believing that the world was going to let it be normal.
I believe that it has shown how delicate of a balance everything had been before. I learned from reading The Expanse, that artificial systems are prone to cascade failure. A large enough of a disturbance can lead to the collapse of one overstrained system to another until the entire ecosystem collapses.
Before COVID, our public school system was being pushed to a point of collapse. The continued denigration of the teaching profession, the systematic removal of healthcare and retirement programs, the added burdens and tasks on school personnel, the flat or reduced levels of funding, the increased focus on testing, and the incessant pressure to move students along at all costs was already reaching untenable levels. The shutdown and massive shift to online learning in the spring of 2020 showed just how necessary our public systems are to our communities, but rather than take that time to evaluate and repair, we just kept trying to return to "normalcy."
Unfortunately, I don't have the answer for how to fix it. I'm too exhausted at the moment. I feel like our school has taken some good steps in the right direction, but everything feels muddled now, so I'm not even sure what that direction is. Time is part of it, so hopefully this break will give me some of that time to catch my breath and clarify my vision.
Still, I've had some fantastic moments with some of my students this year. Yes, there have been some low points, and certainly some frustrations, but those wonderful moments made the rest worth the struggle. I am certain that there will be more of those great moments in this coming semester.
I believe that it has shown how delicate of a balance everything had been before. I learned from reading The Expanse, that artificial systems are prone to cascade failure. A large enough of a disturbance can lead to the collapse of one overstrained system to another until the entire ecosystem collapses.
Before COVID, our public school system was being pushed to a point of collapse. The continued denigration of the teaching profession, the systematic removal of healthcare and retirement programs, the added burdens and tasks on school personnel, the flat or reduced levels of funding, the increased focus on testing, and the incessant pressure to move students along at all costs was already reaching untenable levels. The shutdown and massive shift to online learning in the spring of 2020 showed just how necessary our public systems are to our communities, but rather than take that time to evaluate and repair, we just kept trying to return to "normalcy."
Unfortunately, I don't have the answer for how to fix it. I'm too exhausted at the moment. I feel like our school has taken some good steps in the right direction, but everything feels muddled now, so I'm not even sure what that direction is. Time is part of it, so hopefully this break will give me some of that time to catch my breath and clarify my vision.
Still, I've had some fantastic moments with some of my students this year. Yes, there have been some low points, and certainly some frustrations, but those wonderful moments made the rest worth the struggle. I am certain that there will be more of those great moments in this coming semester.
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