6th grade
Pet Harmony
Chalk Pastel
5th grade
Optical Art
Marker
The evening of March 12, 2020 I went to bed later than usual. The sound of news on MSNBC and CNN and the automated voicemail announcing school closures still running through my head. The next morning I overslept. This never happens. I am that person. To bed at the same time. Out of bed at the same time. Out the door for the commute to work at the same time. For many years I have cultivated an early morning routine that allows time for prayer, exercise and coffee. The morning of March 13, 2020, with a ‘stand up meeting’ at 8:00am I got out of bed at 6:30am and left the house for my thirty minute commute thirty minutes later. I have been trying to wake up ever since.
From March to May my students and I walked together arm in arm through a sludge of sleeplessness and wishful thinking as we reached across a different sort of digital divide. Our learning curve was steep. There were times when I felt that this was actually fun. It was different. It was a challenge that I had never imagined facing as an educator especially as an art educator. And there were more times when the wholesale enterprise made me feel so sad, or frustrated, or isolated that I could hardly see a way that we were learning anything at all. We, my students and parents and I clung to one another through email and art making. We got through it together my students, their parents and me.
Now summer, with windows open, the sound of the lawn crew filling the spaces between the sound of barking dogs and birds. I am here. Still here. Now awake. Staring at the teacher that was in March and imaging the teacher that will be in August. What will she look like? How will I help and make space for my students be safe, create, honor and respect one another? No answers yet. Now awake.
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