Remote Learning

There are these truths that I find myself repeating over and over to students and parents of remote learners which I thought might be worth gathering and trying to organize.  One thing this pandemic has taught me to do is to value my own contribution to this world in a way that is counterintuitive to many white women like me.  We are often not poised to feel confident in our thoughts but these axioms do not seem harmful, and others have found them useful to consider.

Remote Learning is probably here in some form or another to stay.

First thing first we must face the facts.  Remote learning is a new reality.  It may currently be your only option, and that may be temporary, but biding your time and ignoring Meet after Zoom, after text, after email, after phone calls from teachers, from teacher’s aids, from school staff and from school administration is only going to further delay your own evolution.  Students procrastinating their studies, parents procrastinating their parenting need heed these facts.  Vaccines maybe on their way but they won’t be for everybody, and their protection may not even last.  And even if there are enough of us to achieve a kind of herd immunity, the kids cannot yet be vaccinated.  And even if next year they can, or numbers go low enough it is possible, even likely that a new set of circumstances could put us right back in this position.  Especially, if enough of us refuse to evolve past our fears.

Face your fears.  This one keeps coming up for me.  Fear of speaking.  Fear of turning a camera on.  Fear of the accidental unmute.  Fear of having often a written recording of even the most mundane interactions.  Fear of the pause.  Fear of remote status.  Fear of losing remote status.  Everywhere you look there is fear both ways.  Life is and has always been full of fear.  Our kids were facing an epidemic of anxieties before any threat of of any coronavirus.  They know the reigns will be theirs soon, consciously or not.  What tools were we giving them?  What direction were we headed?

See the bigger picture.  The complacency we felt before was not real.  Society was falling, not flying.   But hope is not a choice.  It’s a necessity.  Things could not have continued the way they were going.  We would not have survived.  The environment must be paid attention.  Oppression based on social location is unjust.  An unjust society breaches the social contract and will not endure.  Sustainability of power is key - in your world, in your family, in your relationships, in yourself.  Everyone needed to stop and think about what they were doing.  Humanity was put in a time out.

So embrace the chaos.  Chaos is nature’s way of righting wrongs.  It’s natural.  Don’t be consumed by the storm.  Be your own storm.  Take this time to dig deep inside yourself, and your family dynamics.  Put yourself in therapy (we could all use a little therapy).  You can do it via Zoom!  Journal!  Journal until your hand gets tired.  You’re living through a global pandemic.  This is the stuff history is made of.  Read.  Explore.  Experiment.  Grow.  If we’re going to make it we’ll value the way we did.  And why not?  You busy?  You got someplace else to be?

Have patience.  This is a biggie.  Everything - every little thing requires patience.  All too often in life we are reacting as opposed to acting.  Adults do what they believe they need to do as opposed to what they want.  Students are punished as opposed to understood and supported.  Technology can be frustrating but in each frustration there is opportunity to learn and grow.  Ironically the world won’t crumble if your wifi drops.  We’ve all come light years from where we started.  Students on government aid are now issued school laptops.  Access to the web has almost become a right.  When that access is glitched, attention is paid.  We are becoming more and more energetically connected.

So take your time.  Learn to value the coincidences.  Listen to the lessons your life is teaching you.  What are you doing?  What is it you are trying to learn in school?  Why?  What are you working towards?  Teachers are not babysitters.  They are resources.  You are your own resource, including your questions.  Subjects are all languages whether it’s English or Spanish, Mandorin, mathematics, science or coding.  You progress with your peers not just to see their faces, or to navigate the consuming nuances of social interactions and be safe until your guardians return.  You are there to progress yourself.  You must actively learn to connect and communicate.  If not, that’s sus.

Value connection.  After all this time this one may be the easiest.  It’ll feel weird and it’ll take careful thought and consideration, but sooner or later, we’ll be together again.  And this time it’s going to feel different.  This time, we’re going to talk about what we’re really feeling.  We’ll be armed with more evolved vocabulary and we’ll value the pause.  We had no choice.  We all went through this together and it changed our trajectory.  I’m really looking forward to it.  We’ll stop thoughtlessly shaking hands with strangers, and finally we’ll all embrace as friends.  

My Story

It’s so crazy who is allowed to tell their stories.  

I miss my uncle.  I remember him regaling us nightly with captivating stories from his adventures at work.  He was always the hero of these stories, and he perhaps as a result became my hero.  The love and comfort he provided me? - was honestly what saved me from feeling completely broken off this world.  He was dynamic, and loving, authentic, and smart.  It took about a year for me to even feel anything but grief after he died.  That was two years ago now.

How about this pandemic, huh?  I’m just gonna say it: I’m kinda enjoying myself.  I mean it’s all in the perspective, right?  Gotta find silver linings.  No more waking up at 5AM to not exercise and make breakfasts; driving 3 hours a day in commute.  Now I wake at 2 even when I’m so tired and battle week long migraines from staring at screens.  And people are dying.

Feeling alone.  Lucky, but still we’re all profoundly isolated.  Facing demons.  I’m personally trying to rethink everything so I can emerge like a good white woman should (biodegradable laundry detergent on subscription, reusable plastic sealed in happy bees wax, glass jars everywhere again...  There’s even talk of composting.  But there’s little escape suddenly from control issues, power issues, tempers.

I have no physical prowess.  I used to feel strong but I no longer feel even that gender dysphoric compensation.  I’m long passed wearing anything but flats, my hair is what it is and the answer to which “lines” would be the ones to grace my face?  Turned out to be wonder lines.

As a teacher somewhere I realized I am not the “expert” teacher.  I am the relatable support.  I’m a Special Education Generalist, which means I’m an expert of nothing, but I know how to learn.  This works only if I’m honest.  Only if I stay ethical.  That means no lying.  That means facing the fallout of every mistake.  Asking for forgiveness.

See, this is Hell.  Realizing this I started to feel crazy.  Friends go with you so far, but in the end - it’s party banter.  It’s become much, much more for me.  I began to see that if we choose our own realities than I must have chosen this pandemic.  Smh... stupid!  But then I had to really think - was that true?  All this suffering I sometimes “see” - am I creating that?  Choosing that??  Energizing that???

A “friend” strongly suggested therapy.  So this has been fun.  My wife and I had similar childhoods.  We both emerged siding with patriarchal judgments as opposed to apathetic feelings.  But there’s a lot there for both of us.  I’m all about truth because it took me so long to uncover it, but, like packing up my uncle’s house felt, there are these boxed issues all around me: grief.  abandonment, isolation, rape.  

So I’ve come to learn, that I have control issues.  My property became my boundary.  2020 became the year I became an expert.  All those floundering years of college when I majored in philosophy and learned the nuances of epistemology - I knew the only thing to fear was that nobody knew.  Everyone is fallible.  Nobody cares enough.  

Maybe it stemmed from my issues.  Maybe it’s energized by thought.  There is nobody I trust.  There is nobody, anyone, always trusts.

So I face the fears.  I have rules.  Boundaries!  I have power over my wife and children.  (She’s gonna lose it on me when this makes it’s way to her!)  But I did.  I do.  Thank God.  She empowers me.  

So do they, my beautiful boys.  I haven’t screwed them up yet enough to ruin that.

We are hunkered.  We are remote.  We have schedules.  We adapt.  We learn.  We are thriving despite...

I think maybe therapy has lead me back to this creative drive.  I have no illusions of grandeur.  I do have an intense appreciation for the process.  The only way to face a world-wide epidemically-proportioned fear of death is to live.  Access the only thing we ever know we can - the moment.  Face the issues.  Employ patience.  Find something worth anything to leave behind if it comes to it.

So I’m reaching out.  Sharing my truths if I can.  Trying to do no harm (really tripping over that one!)  Attending the questions.  What if there are no homosexuals in Heaven?  What if pride really goeth before the fall?  Maybe everything I’ve come to have faith in is bullshit.  What if it’s not?  How far can I stretch my solipsistic existence?  With all the power I can muster, what can I trust?  How can I grow to become trustworthy?  Do my stories have merit?

I’d be nothing without her.  I’d have zero access to me.  That really wasn’t a choice I made.  It was an amazing connective discovery.  Having children expanded it.  Maybe this is Hell.  Does that mean we give up?  I say no.  Am I right?