Hindsight

Hindsight is the understanding of a situation or event only after it has happened or developed.  Interestingly, it is possible to both anticipate and understand scenarios, especially if 1) you're older and 2) you've been paying attention.  If your resulting decision-making culminates in better choices and more satisfactory outcomes, you end up being credited with demonstrating common sense.

In so many aspects of life, common sense often partners with compromise, especially when mitigating factors make it near impossible to follow your plan as originally imagined. When faced with a forced, unanticipated readjustment, you experience shock, denial, anger and/or frustration, and you try to bargain with whatever the opposing element may be to see if you can't work a compromise to get back what you're terribly anxious to not lose, even if the loss is temporary. You may wallow in despair when a compromise can't be reached, finding no point in the idea of trying to carry on. You refuse to accept the simple truths laid before you as you repeat the cycle of anger, bargaining (even begging) and depression over and over again.

You grieve, which is normal for all of us. 

Some educators have been grieving since mid-March, while others, likely administrators, haven't been able to grieve fully since they first caught wind of the directives that were going to come from their governor's offices.  They had to experience a much-abbreviated moment of shock before being leapfrogged into acceptance and action, being problem-solvers first, keeping their students, teachers, colleagues and staff safe before steering the ship to turn on a dime while advocating that the need for schooling, the establishment of new learning routines and environments and the building of even stronger parent-teacher partnerships were necessary for the emotional and academic well-being of all of our students.  They reminded us that we'd all be in the business of granting and receiving grace and that our own self-care was critical.  They led and gave us direction.

Families grieved while having to take back many of the responsibilities that they've ceded to schools over the years. Some succeeded, some struggled, and some failed.  Some parents, who previously demonstrated little appreciation for their child's teachers experienced cathartic revelations of having seen the light, pledging to purchase any and all future class supplies and offering to subscribe teachers and staff to wine-of-the-month clubs and advocate for higher pay if we'd "just take my kids back."  Humorous bargaining, but bargaining just the same. "I don't know how ya'll do it" and "no one will ever take you for granted again" were some of the affirmations showered upon us.  March to May was doable for some families, a blessing for others.  Some families, for whatever reasons, never rose to the occasion.

My grief cycle has been dictated by my self-and-family-preservation button remaining engaged causing me to hurdle back and forth through and/or over the usual stages. Schools are now closed: shock, d-e-n-i... acceptance. You have thirty minutes to grab necessities from your classroom: shock, acceptance. You'll be using tools that you've never used before in your classroom beginning next week: s-h-o... acceptance. No, you can't use appropriate content even though you know how to run it through filters and have been for years: anger, acceptance, depression. You'll be teaching your teenager curriculum content along with digital resource navigation while you teach from home: bargaining, acceptance, anger.  You can have fifteen-minute Zoom meetings once a week for your seventeen students and their families: bargaining, anger, acceptance, bargaining, depression. Time to come back to the building to pack up for the summer: acceptance, depression. 

All of these emotions have continued to be in play for me this summer as I've watched and reflected upon the civil unrest, racism, inequality and frankly bad behavior of rather entitled members of our society.  My husband and I continue to discover COVID19 infiltrating our circle of friends near and far, and we see that the numbers haven't dropped, the curve hasn't flattened, realizing now that it likely won't thanks to so many Americans placing their wants before their neighbors' needs.  Taking part in PD and regularly crocheting between visits to my greenhouse and tending my gardening spaces has provided me with pockets of peace and glimmers of hope, but they're not as enduring as I'd like them to be.  As I navigate suggested solutions via social media ranging from homeschooling or digital academy options, pool-noodle hats, temperature checks that don't identify asymptomatic carriers, seven or eight students per classroom, ten online with the acknowledgment that it's likely to be all seventeen or eighteen online a month later, optional mask-wearing partnered with masks worn incorrectly, and at least four times more cleaning and disinfecting that will increase the likelihood of poisoning which is still preferable to dying from "the 'rona," my mind remembers the already present avalanche of other germy, illness-producing normalcies that still occur in classrooms during the best of years.  Twitter users and those posting on Facebook are being polite by not mentioning the urine and feces that accompany the snot, saliva and barf.  I'm thinking this isn't the time to adhere to decorum and professional mystery.

Like many other educators, I'm having a great deal of difficulty believing that the lives of my students, myself and my colleagues are of much value as people granted more decision-making power who want to get back to their own sense of normalcy push us into environments that are now deadlier than they were in March.  They are dancing every version of the sidestep possible in order to justify avoiding common sense and simple truths, and they are willfully, stubbornly committed to the present, not the future.  They're acting as if they'll never have to look back and measure the costs of the decisions they've made. 

I get it. But it's not good enough.

This is tough and it's going to remain difficult.  We don't have all of the answers we need... yet.  They're coming, but not on our fall-through-spring/early summer school schedule.  We're wasting time pretending that they will.

It's also a waste of time trying to ease people into the idea that it will only take some adjustments to get students back to a traditional-ish school setting, and once that setting closes again (which it likely will... ~hindsight~), we're back to square one.  To quote a tweet I stumbled across, "rip the bandaid off, already." Commit to remote learning, and ease back into shared spaces.  We could start making tangible, real plans and preparing, acknowledging that it's a difficult precedent, and sharing the common goal of being back together when it's the right time.  It will only be right when it's more, not less safe for us all, no matter what the budget ledger looks like.

Calling this pandemic a hoax doesn't make what we're experiencing any less deadly.  Not everyone believes what they should, but educators, child advocates and mandated reporters don't get the luxury of being passive spectators. We must err on the side of safety even if it's not perfectly defined and we have no guarantees.  Our solutions can be imperfect, but they must not be dangerously so. 

Setting a precedent happened in March.  It can happen again in August.  It's easier to do difficult things when we can reassure ourselves that the price is worth it.  My son's life is worth it. Your life, my life, our lives are worth it.  Simple.

Inconvenienced is better than suffering and dying.

Grief is normal.

Unpopular is better than guilt-ridden. 

Hindsight is 20/20.

(found on Facebook- contact me if you're the creator so I can credit you, and thank you for the common sense)