You Keep Using That Word

Dear Parents,

Hi. I'm your child's teacher. You know, the one your kid loves and talks to you about every day? The one you actually requested the principal assign your child? Yes, hello! We met at conferences, and I had your older son three years ago. Can we talk for a moment?

I saw your post about this awful new SEL that schools are "forcing down your child's throat!" and "using to indoctrinate innocent students!" I read the memes that your group shared that are frightening everyone around you into thinking that I'm trying to convert your child into something dreadful. I thought, maybe, we could chat about that. SEL is being made out to be one of those scary, deep state acronyms, but really it just stands for "Social-Emotional Learning." 

The most important thing I want to share with you is that SEL isn't new like they're saying. It's been around since we both were in school*, only then we just called it the "School Principles" (because they were very punny that way) or the "Highland Cares" curriculum and we made posters and signs about Kindness, Respect, Determination, Fairness and Caring. Our teachers read us books about Ramona and Beezus and we talked about how Ramona faced consequences for her decisions, and didn't we have to do that, too? Later on we had debates about the Effects of Pollution versus Meeting the Needs of the Human Population, and about whether it was fair for King George to impose taxes unilaterally. We cried at our desks when our boyfriends broke up with us, and we knew which teacher to go to when we really, really just needed to talk. Ninety percent of middle school was learning how to navigate the social structures and get a grip on my emotions. Thank God for the teachers who understood how hard that was, and helped me through it because Lord knows that they weren't trained for it. Social Emotional learning was the bedrock of our education, even though they didn't call it that.

So why do we call it that now? Probably because of this guy named Maslow, who came up with a list of Needs, in order, that people have to have in order to survive**. At the bottom are Physical Needs like food, clothing and shelter, which is why schools have free breakfasts and lunches now, and why the secretaries have a stash of extra clothes for kids. Because the child who is hungry or filthy isn't going to be learning anything today. Next is the Need for Safety and Security, so teachers are trained now on how to help kids feel safe as possible in an uncertain world. Some children come to us from seriously unsafe places, and there are days it's all hands on deck trying to help those kids know that here, in this classroom they are safe. 

You'd think, that if we have those basics down, we'd be all set to learn, right? Maslow says no, we're not. Next is the Need to feel Loved and like we Belong. Love and acceptance. Those are powerful ideas, and this is where SEL truly lives. That survey we give about the "values we're indoctrinating" into your child? That is us trying our hardest to see how well we are doing right here at this level. Want to know what those values are? Here you go:

Compassion    

Grit    

Growth Mindset    

Hope     

Sense of Belonging 

Emotional Regulation

That's it. That's what we're trying to help your children attain. Hope for their future. Determination to overcome challenges. The ability to feel their big emotions and cope with them every day. The feeling they are loved, valued, and respected and above all that they belong to a caring community. 

Why do this thing that you say "doesn't belong in schools" and "only belongs in the home?" We do this vital, important work because without it we can never get kids to that next level of actually being able to successfully learn. Just as a hungry child can't learn, neither can a child who is convinced the world hates him and feels he has nothing of value to contribute. We cannot teach a child who is balled up in a corner, head and knees drawn into her shirt. And we have these children in our classrooms every single day.

This is what SEL is. And that is why we embrace it. We are social beings, and learning how to manage our emotions is a huge part of being human. We do not just teach math, or science, or reading. We teach CHILDREN.

If you're still worried, come talk to me. I'll make the time. If we sit down and talk to one another, we might both come away with a better understanding. If there's still something wrong, I want to help fix it.

Just like I would with your child.

Sincerely,

Your child's teacher

*approximately 100 years ago in "the 1900s" as my students call it. 

**If you'd like to learn more about Maslow and his ideas, and why so many people think he was correct, this site is pretty decent, but there are roughly 10 million others, too.

When Your February Starts in September, You Know Things Aren't Going Well

The Bloggess posted about it being September and how Septembers are always hard for her, and she doesn't remember it until she goes back to previous years and sees that, yes, Septembers are harder. There is less light, and it's time to get out the light box. And maybe it's other things, too, I don't know. 

For me, the hardest month has always been February and not just because it's weird to spell. There's not a ton of light in February, either, and we're still at least month away from going onto daylight savings time* and everything is gray. The trees, the snow on the ground, the sky, everything. You suffer through 3 weeks of cold, neverending slush and wake up to realize it's February 6th. Every day is Tuesday and there's a staff meeting you forgot. That's February for you, and I hate it every year.

But this September isn't breaking any records for me, either. 

Last year at this time we were starting a new and scary school year in hybrid, and learning how to use online teaching and zoom and masking and staying 6 feet apart and it was all pretty terrible and challenging. My department lost a staff position to budget cuts and needing the person to staff the online school, but everyone was taking hits for the team so we buckled down and did it. We were a TEAM, by gum, and we would pull together and do the job because it was important.

This year, the district hired over 140 new teachers and did not replace the one gifted teacher we lost.

We have more kids to serve than we did a couple years ago, and they could not, somehow, find it in the budget to replace one gifted teacher.

We have been cut, and cut and cut.

I have 100 kids on my list to serve. and 14 teachers to support. And my load is lighter than most. From higher ups I hear how I ought to be doing more, and I'm sent articles on how gifted education isn't having any impact.**

We are back at school full time, and we are all wearing masks now. We are trying to be as "normal" as possible, with some parents full on attacking teachers, attacking science, and accusing us of brainwashing their children for daring to read a book with a Black main character. 

It is disheartening. 

The kids are troopers. They are good about masking and they just want to be kids. They give me hugs and light up when they see me. They are the best thing, and they keep me going. 

But this September has been hard, and while I feel the job I do is important, I don't have the time to serve the kids the way they deserve. The work I do does not feel meaningful, in the same way that spreading out a charity donation of $100 to 50 charities isn't really meaningful. The effort of cashing the checks negates the value of the $2. But I'm still out the hundred bucks, and all anybody got was annoyed. I want to have hope that things will get better, but it seems like right now the light at the end of the tunnel has been redistributed to another department. 

The best news I've gotten is that the State wants to give teachers booster shots starting in October. And my hometown has gone rogue and declared masks mandatory for public indoor spaces. So there's that. But I'm still down.

And I'm not looking forward to February.

*which we should always be on, imo. To hell with reality and matching sundials. It's not like using time zones doesn't muck about with time anyway, and I'm okay with kids going to school in the dark. 90% of the kids in my neighborhood have parents waiting with them at the bus stop anyways if they're in grade school. And yes, I realize we've got a lot of privilege to do that, but having it be a little lighter in the morning for a month or two isn't going to fix the problem. Give me my light in the afternoons. I cannot abide having the sun go down at 4pm.

**how much impact does any education have when you reduce it 90 minutes a week at best? The answer here isn't "let's just get rid of it, it clearly doesn't work" it's "maybe we ought to try doing it right for a change, and then see what happens?"

As Real as a Tumor and About as Funny

 It started with a cough. Day 0.

Coughs are unusual for me. But still, it couldn't be Covid. Nobody I work with was sick, no one I'd come into contact with over the last two weeks was ill (and they still aren't.) So how could I possibly have Covid?* The next day I got a fever. Those are really unusual for me. Nightfall arrived with the blinding headache, body ache and chills. I didn't sleep much. Everything hurt.

We scheduled a rapid covid test for the morning of Day 2, and J drove, as I was unfit to take myself. It was supposed to be a rapid one, but "Oh, the website says we have them, but that's only some locations in the city. Not this one." Sigh. Home again to continue the alternating regimen of ibuprofen and acetaminophen that were doing nothing to reduce the fever and a succession of hot baths that were helping with the joint pain. I felt like I'd been hit by a truck.

On day 3 the fever was gone but so was any energy to do...anything. Use the bathroom, lie down for an hour. Put on clothes, lie down for an hour. Sit up to eat some food, lie down for an hour. Was this what they meant by fatigue? It seemed an inadequate word. I could still smell everything, though, and we wondered if it was really covid or just some bad, bad cold. 

On day 4 I woke to a text that declared "POSITIVE" in big red letters. I was now a statistic. Still, my energy had started to return, and I was able to sit through a zoom work meeting and remain coherent so hey! Maybe it's not all that bad. I'm one of the lucky ones. And I am, really, even though Day 5 saw the return of the fatigue and mental fuzziness. 

Well. Now we had gone into clearly unfair territory. I was getting better! I'd fought this off! We were past the worst of it and ... why doesn't my coffee smell as strong? Why is J saying "hey dinner smells really good" when it doesn't smell like anything? (This is especially unfair when I was making a new recipe of folded, filled tortillas and they were just sort of bland, salty and greasy instead of the fabulous treat they were supposed to be. J said they were delicious.) My sense of smell is largely gone. 

I have lousy hearing. My eyesight isn't great and I'm likely getting glasses this year. But my sense of smell? That's the one sense I have that works better than J's. And while the interwebs informs me that a "majority" of people have their sense of smell return in 3 weeks, for some it is up to 6 months and there's just no way to know! I am not good with uncertainty.

We're on Day 6 now, and I'm still about the same, but with increasing congestion. We bought a pulse oximeter to keep an eye on my O2 levels. (They're fine.) True story: my hands are often so cold that it won't work on me, and I have to jump around and rub my hands together to get it to register me as alive. 

I have four more days until I'm allowed back at work. Four days to stop being exhausted, congested and achy. And I'm lucky. I know that I am. This is a mild case. And I have a really, really good job that allows for sick leave and even demands that I stay home for 10 days. So I didn't write this to just be whiny about being sick (though I admit, I get pretty whiny) but because someone mentioned that talking about it makes it more real for people who just don't see it yet. I'm not sure how that is, but there are a lot of folks who still don't think it's real or not a big deal. Or that it's all some kind of joke or a hoax. And no, this hasn't been a huge deal for me, and hopefully still won't turn into one. But imagine this happened to a someone who works at a job with no sick time? They'd likely still be dragging themselves into work, sick, feverish, aching or not. And they do. And more people get sick. Some of them, maybe even me, will face lifelong complications from it. Nobody knows. And frankly that's only a tiny bit about what it terrifying about this disease.

It's not a hoax. The vaccine can't get here fast enough. 

Wash your hands and wear your mask.

*I have no idea. The choices boil down to one of the unmasked Amish people at the gas station where I used the restroom, or someone asymptomatic at work.