With the close of last school year, I completed my 30th campaign in education. Each of those years has been filled with joy and sorrow, challenges and successes, ups and downs and a ton of stories worth sharing. My (True) Life in Education Thus Far will detail 30 or so of those stories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed living (most) of them!
INCONCEIVABLE
MAY 10, 2023
It seems to me that there are not enough adjectives in the English language (the language I know, but I venture to include all languages in this statement) to describe the feelings of bewilderment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Inconceivable comes close for me. What the world went through was inconceivable and what many, many endured (and continue to endure) was more than anyone should have to bear.
I spent a year writing about COVID and I do not really wish to write much more. The reality is that, no matter what I say and what words I choose, I cannot begin to adequately express the suffering and pain shared by so many.
Rather, what I present here is what some of what we did at Mullen High School in response to the pressures, counter pressures, internal pressures and external pressures brought on by the pandemic.
We shut down to in person learning. We were not alone. At a faculty meeting prior to Spring Break 2020, I explained to the faculty and staff that we were going to take a few extra weeks off around break and “deep clean the school” and that we anticipated being back together after that short time. We informed the community. We took the weeks. We deep cleaned. We were not back after that short time.
We went asynchronous. We really did not know what else to do. About four of us had heard of Zoom at that point and schools were moving towards this model. We moved, too. Following a series of phone conversations and FaceTime chats, we developed expectations and plans and rolled them out to our faculty and students. I was so proud of our teachers and so deeply gratified by what they did in these last weeks of the 2019-2020 school year at Mullen (my second year there). They were heroes. Remember when society said that teachers were heroes? That was a wonderful 15 minutes…
We went online and synchronous. As the 2020-2021 school year dawned, numbers were looking good in Colorado and we felt we could open in person. Then, in very, very late July, those numbers tanked. More meetings, these facilitated by Zoom, more conversations, more plans. We created an online model of instruction that we hoped we would not use for more than a few weeks. It was more than a few weeks.
We dealt with anger – from all sides. Mullen is a private, Catholic school. Our families work very hard to pay tuition to entrust their children to us. Many understood we could not be together due to the legal restrictions placed upon us. Many did not. We were faced with petitions and rage. We confronted anger and resentment. I dealt with personal attacks and vitriol. Mullen was not unique. These challenges continued when we moved to a hybrid model and, finally, back to school as a full community, albeit masked. We could not please everyone. We had vocal detractors. We were not alone and I understood the frustration. I shared it. I lost sleep, I lost confidence, I lost some of the authority and credibility I had gained.
We employed way too many different approaches. I considered going back through my files and emails to catalog the many, many things we did to try to keep school going. As the landscape shifted, we shifted in response. We had hybrid schedules and one-way hallways and masks and quarantines and teachers cleaning desktops and students being sent home and vaccination clinics and more. My heart beats a bit too quickly for my tastes when I put myself mentally back in these spaces. I choose not to do so often.
We survived. We are still here. Mullen High School is still here. It is bigger than any administrator, teacher, student, parent, family or, it turns out, the pandemic. Mullen still stands, perhaps changed, but still here after 90 years. And I am still so very, very proud to serve the school.
Pandemic, I learned a ton from you and I do not mean about infectious diseases and contact tracing, I learned about commitment and teamwork and fortitude. I learned about desire and passion. I learned about rationality and irrationality.