This was a stressful week both personally and then for our school community. I have been fighting a bad head cold which morphed into a post-nasal drip that would not stop. It began last Saturday and is not yet done. The final impact was that yesterday I basically could not speak without damaging my voice. That makes it hard to function as a teacher. Fortunately my four AP classes can function largely with student leadership at this point, and if I needed to talk I could snap my fingers and get the entire class very quiet so that they could hear me with minimal volume. For my two non-AP classes, I gave them the day to do other work. Some goofed off, particularly in the last period of the day, but i can live with that for a day.
What was enjoyable despite the stress was the willingness of the students to adjust to my physical problems.
On a personal level, I also found out that one of the possibilities I have explored for next year is now closed, as I did not get invited as one of the "most promising" applicants for a free doctoral program. I can live with that, since it was always a long shot. Not being invited narrowed the possibilities I will have to consider, which in a sense is liberating.
But for our school, Thursday was a difficult day. We had bad news. Some of the faculty and staff learned about it during the day. The rest of us found out at an emergency faculty/staff meeting right after school. The students found out yesterday morning.
We had a well-respected staff member pass away on the way to work on Thursday. He was only 52.
C. was the man who was responsible for keeping all of our computers up and running, as well as our internal network and our connection to the county network. We have several hundred computers, distributed among laptops for all faculty and administration (and the later also have tablets), fixed and mobile computer labs, and some classrooms with desktops as well. C. always had plenty of work to do. He never seemed to get angry or irritated even though some of the faculty and staff could be pretty demanding, others seemed incapable of learning some basics about the equipment they used. I talked with his department chair yesterday, who is still in shock. C. had stopped off at a friend's house on his way to school to help the friend with a computer problem when he began suffering chest pains. The friend called 911 and he was transported to the nearest hospital. THe hospital called and the #2 administrator wound up taking the call. S. herself lost her husband a few years ago, and many of us went to the viewing or the funeral for him. When she was running the emergency faculty meeting she tried to read some Shakespeare, but broke down and had to be supported by some other staff members. She was running it because our principal had gone to help C.s family.
A school like ours is a very much like a small town or a huge extended family. It is like a small town because with around 160-170 faculty and staff and 2500-2600 students and the families of each, we are the size of a small town. It is like a huge extended family because some of us have worked together for more than a decade. Some have been in the building for all 35 years. Loss is not unknown. I have written about this before when one of my students died during the summer between his sophomore and junior years.
Deaths of students have the most severe impact upon our community/family. We always provide an opportunity for those who need to talk, to be consoled. It becomes a high priority. I can think of several students who have passed away since I arrived in 1998. We regularly experience the loss of family members: parents, grandparents, spouses of the adults. I cannot remember a year without several such losses.
C. was 52. He was greatly respected for what he did. His loss has hit our community/family very hard.
We do not yet know the funeral arrangements. If it is during the school day, the school system will ask for people from other schools to come and help cover our school so we can attend. We have done that for other schools.
THere is a banner-sized card that faculty and staff were writing on to give to C.s family yesterday.
I look back at this week and several thoughts come to mind.
Too often those of us who teach do not take enough time for ourselves. Our jobs simply do not allow it. I know at least a few teachers for whom the news of C. served to cause them to self-assess: are they taking care of themselves? As I pushed myself despite my cold and related problems, I realized near the end of yesterday that I was being foolish- if I damaged my voice I would not be able to help my students for longer than the one or two days I could have taken off for illness. I'm stubborn. So long as I am not infectious I do not like to be out of my classes. I am now in my 17th year of teaching, and only once in all that time have my emergency lesson plans had to have been used because of illness, and once because we had to put our beloved sheltie to sleep at the vets. If I feel I am becoming sick I set things up for my classes to be productive without me.
My first principal was wiser than me. At one point she saw I was burning myself out between my teaching and serving as technology chair for a large (1600 students) middle school, and simply told me she was giving me a week of leave and not to worry about my classes, she would see they were covered and doing things productively. She was afraid of burning me out.
I think the kind of commitment I see among our staff and faculty is not unique, but that too many of us do not step back. We need to recognize that if we are doing our jobs properly, our students and our classes should not be so dependent that we cannot take time off to decompress. I suspect the reluctance many of us have is not dissimilar from what those in other caring/service professions experience. But we do ourselves little good if we wear ourselves out, and then we cannot be of service to others.
As part of reflecting on this process, finding out I would not be in that doctoral program is an important part as well. It would have meant being away from home except for perhaps every other weekend. I realize I would feel more than a little bereft being apart from my spouse, but she and I could talk on the phone. What about our beloved cats? It is not just that they would miss me, it is that I would miss them. Sometimes it is one or more of them that insists I stop what I am doing, slow down, so they can crawl on me or curl up next to me, reminding me that what I think is important might not be so important.
Realizing that, I turn my reflection back to my classroom. I realized driving home on Thursday that I need to help my students step back and reflect. I was already doing this with a metacognition exercise for my AP classes. Now I am doing something additional. Had I not changed plans, we would finish the material for the unit Monday, review Tuesday and have a unit exam on Wednesday. We are breaking away from that schedule for two days. I have asked them to consider an important question over the weekend: since completing 6th grade (or for those home-schooled, since June of 2008), what has been the most important/deepest/profound learning experience they have had? It does not have to be in school, it does not have to be academic? What made it so important? I have said that no one will be required to talk about it in class, but I hope that some will be willing to share. I want to use that as a mean of broadening their understanding of what it means to learn.
Between Monday and Tuesday, i hope we are able to explore ideas such as "flow" - when one gets so lost in what one is doing; what makes a learning experience significant; how what we learn outside of academic settings can inform how we learn in academic settings; and then . . . what are the questions that really concern us, and why?
What is important, and why? That is a question that I will also be asking myself. I still do not know what I will be doing next year. The range of choices has somewhat narrowed. As my students reflect on learning experiences, I will simultaneously be reflecting on how I best fulfill my role of being of service to others. Yes, I am a teacher, but should I remain a classroom teacher, or teach in some other fashion. Increasingly I am becoming a writer, but what form should my writing take.
I have been sick.
A man I knew and respected died suddenly, and far too soon.
One possible option for next year is now gone.
All things making the school week difficult.
All grist for the mill of my reflective process.
All opportunities to learn, perhaps to broaden my understanding.
It is Saturday morning. As is my wont I have taken time to reflect.
As is my custom, I have chosen to share that reflective process.
Thank you for being willing to read, and if so inclined, to respond.
Peace.