I talked my husband’s ear off as we cleaned up after dinner the other night, lamenting The Discourse I’ve seen about school reopenings in my social media travels. I have been out of the classroom for almost two years now—missing the phenomenon of pandemic teaching entirely—and I still feel vicariously angry and defeated by comments I’ve read. How clearly people don’t understand what teachers’ work lives were already like, and what they’re like now. How much they’re overestimating teachers’ capacities and access to resources. How it seems there are some pretty big differences of opinion on what the purpose (and, again, capacity) of public education even is.
I’m not the one to write a whole thing on the state of the school reopening debate and the perspectives involved, but I did see a couple of things that spoke to me. This highlighted passage feels very true and recognizable to me right now, especially in the framing of teacher reluctance to return to reopened schools without proper precautions (including vaccination) as fundamentally threatening, antisocial behavior:
And I really, really appreciated reading Teachers, Parents, and Cans Full Of Snakes Part 1 and Part 2 from Garrett Bucks and Sarah Wheeler. They tried to hold two truths in one hand: how utterly awful the past year has been for so many parents and kids, and how teachers and schools are functioning as a scapegoat for the rage resulting from that struggle.
I don’t have any grand takeaway. It has been 355 days since my own kid’s school closed. This is all really hard, still, and hard to watch. Hard as a parent, hard as a former-teacher-who-still-self-identifies-as-a-teacher. I do think the least we could do is refrain from writing scathing public rants about our kids’ second grade teacher attempting to facilitate a virtual Valentine’s Day celebration, though. (Had to mute that particular Facebook group for a while after that one.)
If you like reading Extra Credit, would you consider sharing it somewhere, or with someone? Parenting can be hard and isolating even in non-pandemic times, and lately…..well, you know. It helps to connect!
Ask A Teacher
I’ve answered two letters in the column in recent weeks:
My parents just say he is a bad teacher, and that we all have them, but they don’t understand how it is to be doing school from home and to have a teacher who is not teaching. Please help. How can I focus when I don’t want to listen to him? I understand distance learning is hard for everyone, especially teachers, but I have had multiple breakdowns about how I’m getting behind in school. I have always had dreams for myself with colleges, but I feel this teacher will ruin them. I am still ahead in every other subject; I just want to stay ahead in math. Please help me.
I reassured this very earnest sixth grader that her current math teacher will not limit her college prospects, and:
I am wondering how to handle issues we’re having with our 12-year-old daughter’s school. We are a nontraditional, blended family. Her parents had her young and never married. Her dad (my partner) has primary custody during the school year. Last year and this year, our daughter’s teachers have given us a hard time about our situation and are constantly insisting she is better off with her mother, or that she should be at mom’s house for remote school.
I have some lingering questions about this situation, but I advised the parent nonetheless!
Recommendations
Ken & I watched Palm Springs on Hulu a few weekends ago, and it was a movie experience I really needed. It’s a Groundhog Day concept, with two people (Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti) stuck in an endless time loop of repeating a day at a Palm Springs wedding. I have not laughed that hard in a long time (at a movie, or at….anything, really) and it’s also a sweet romance. Finally! Andy Samberg ascending into the romantic lead category I have always known he could fulfill! (ANDY SAMBERG IS SO HOT I HAVE BEEN SAYING IT FOR YEARS I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL)
I haven’t watched the Framing Britney Spears documentary yet, but I sat and stared at a wall for ten minutes to process Tavi Gevinson’s piece responding to it: “Britney Spears Was Never In Control.”
Even young women who are not megafamous have typically picked up on what makes them appear valuable by the age of 15. Their capacity to perpetuate these standards doesn’t mean they are not also victims of these standards. If anything, it shows how girls’ bodies and sexuality are so deeply regulated by a society that despises women and fetishizes youth that some of us learned how to carry out its work all on our own.
There is a lot of parenting content on Instagram that I like and simultaneously recognize as not for me. Creating stuff—making sensory bins, setting up play concepts and crafts, that kind of thing—has never really been part of my parenting. An account I really like is @theworkspaceforchildren; she focuses a LOT on fostering independent play in a way that resonates for me personally and the way I operate with my kids.
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