Teaching during a pandemic Resilience
The world as we know it
has come to a standstill.
The educational system of busing children
to a school
and having a community and
a network of synchronous learning
came to a screeching halt, for
my district, on Friday March 13th.
Education during this pandemic is like
an infomercial: “But wait! There’s more!”
More to do, and definitely more to worry
about.
The main thing that was bothering me
was
how was I going to make these
connections with 21 first graders online?
Roughly 60% or more of Pakistani
population lives in outside major cities
from villages, remote areas,
far-flung areas, and there,
reliable fast internet access
is a big challenge.
We can see a lot of the lack of equity,
the inequalities when it comes to
the digital divide.
93.2% of my total students do not have
a smartphone,
95% do not have internet access, and
80% of students do not have television
to watch government
programs for students.
Many of our students are also working.
Remember rural America is also farmland
America
and so because it is starting to get warmer,
our students are starting to prepare.
After three or four conversations, I came
to note that more than 40% of my students
are facing domestic violence.
We are their advocates and more than
ever, we have become counselors, friends,
parental figures, other than educators
during this pandemic.
Teachers also serve as therapists
and some teachers are working almost
as a food bank for their students.
And for those of us that have
children of our own,
there is no quarter in which to hide
our emotions.
My daughter Faith is in sixth grade.
She is intellectually disabled.
When the shutdown began, it was very clear
that I had my hands full working full-time
and trying to manage Faith’s education
and schedule.
I want to actually talk about
self-care for teachers
predominantly because what we can
practice we can model to others.
Many teachers are going through mental
health issues
and people did not recognize that we
were having that mental health issues.
If all our focus is only on preparing in
facilitating classes,
I feel that teachers might quickly burnout
due to emotional strain.
What we need to do as educators is when
we see amazing things, let’s celebrate it,
but let’s understand that we cannot be
and we don’t have to be
everything to every single person.
So please please, don’t ever feel like
you have to suffer by yourself.
I have classes on Zoom and WhatsApp and
I’m also constantly text messaging options.
Also part of the work I do is trying to raise
funds to provide Internet access
for those that can’t afford it.
Control is easily given back to a student
by having them create a self-care plan.
When they create this plan, they also
plan for what are bad days or triggers
that cause them to feel upset,
and they create a plan for how
to mitigate those problems.
And I feel that it’s a call to action to
make sure that our students understand
that we’re there for them and that
we understand what they’re going through.
So do a welfare check.
Check on your students, make sure
their well-being is okay.
In other places, there may be only one
teacher for an entire department,
so in some places there might be only
one Social Studies teacher,
only one Phys Ed teacher, so in rural
America, I will say this, we’re industrious
and while we are not incredibly numerous,
and rarely have the news spotlighted
on us for good things,
we often find all kinds of ways to
accomplish a task in an equitable way.
As a veteran teacher, I’ve had to create all
new lessons
and it’s kind of gotten that spark
going again, you know,
I’m getting excited about the stuff that
I’ve been teaching for years
because I’m being forced to look at
it in new ways.
Dear community, please check in with
teachers because they are humans first.
We can rise to the occasion, but for this we
need to keep our emotional well-being intact,
so let’s work on this together.
The whole world, we’re all living in a
really difficult time right now,
and if we are together we will overcome this
and we will make sure our students learn
and we’ll make sure that our students
know that they have
all sorts of cheerleaders, whether
they’re in their home
or virtually in their houses,
wherever the case may be.
We all need to show a beautiful
showing of gratitude to educators.
When we do this, we ignite hope.
You are an educator,
you’re an igniter of hope.
So I want you to know in this moment,
you are valued, you’re appreciated,
and I encourage you to
go out there virtually,
and ignite hope within this day
and with every day that comes.