Three weeks of lockdown, another three (at least) prescribed, schools more or less closed… the Easter holidays drifting away amid the lockdown and online learning mixture…
The truth is, I can’t quite put a label on how it feels.
As English teachers, we are often guilty of asking students to write about their own or fictional characters’ thoughts and feelings, stating the evidence for what they say. ‘I know this because…’ A much-missed former colleague used to hate this sort of question. ‘Bloody thoughts and feelings again,’ he’d grumble, shaking his head. ‘Can’t we get them to write about something else?’ Everyone seems to have found a conduit for their ‘bloody thoughts and feelings’ through the lockdown, but mine seem to be kind of blocked. Like everyone else in the country, possibly even throughout the world, how I feel about it all could probably best be categorised under the heading ‘anxious’. But I think it’s more complicated than that.
An awful lot about the Coronavirus lockdown makes me feel anxious. More than anxious, sometimes: downright scared. I feel anxious about people I know and love getting the virus, maybe not surviving it. I feel anxious about getting it myself: I have asthma, plus a whole medical folder of conditions which would mean that if I got the virus, it probably wouldn’t be a mild case. In fact, I had such a dreadful case of flu in early February that my husband half wonders if I’ve had the virus already, especially as I kindly passed it on to him as well, so he knows just how bad the symptoms were. I’m not convinced at all, though; just this once, he might not be right.
I feel anxious and pretty guilty and uneasy about not being in school. Even though my GP and my more senior colleagues told me I needed to work from home, providing online lessons for my classes and not coming in to look after the tiny number of key workers’ children who have been coming into school, and even though online learning has been busy to the extent of being almost more exhausting than normal school – the guilt’s still there. I feel I should be doing more. Then again, feeling like I should be doing more is almost a default for me, whether it’s in terms of school or home. I find it quite difficult to let myself relax at the best of times. And this is definitely not the best of times.
I miss the normal things about life. In school, I miss the give and take in the classroom; the jokes, the chatter, the laughter, which now feels almost as important as the work. I miss saying hello to people in the corridors. I miss people’s smiles. I am very prone to working through lunchtime, having my sandwiches while marking, answering emails or doing a quick school Facebook post about something that happened during the morning. But I also grab a moment in the staffroom, and I miss my colleagues; the grumpy combat of complaints, the table tennis of ‘why are we doing things like this and not like that?’ … and most of all I miss the gales of laughter. I even miss meetings, something that would make many teachers diagnose something badly wrong with me. I miss SLT meetings; the debate, the ideas; I even miss that fear that I’ll get it wrong, that someone will be offended that I’m taking notes on my iPad instead of in an A4 notebook like everybody else. I miss department meetings, but our lively department WhatsApp group never fails to lift my spirits…
Outside school, I miss the same simple things as everybody else. A wander around the shops. A cup of coffee and ‘a wee bun’, out. Meeting up with a friend for coffee and a chat. I miss hugs. The cinema, the theatre, a concert. Like everyone else, I need my hair done: in fact my phone reminded me this morning that I was meant to be having it done tomorrow. I think I probably need an eye test too. I miss tv programmes without social distancing: the chemistry of Have I Got News For You in the studio, things like that, much as I enjoy seeing a glimpse of people’s houses through reports on Zoom.
But much as I miss things, I am scared about going back to normal too quickly too. I am going to have to self-isolate from a lot of social media, Twitter especially, because it seems to have transformed into the back seat of a family car on a long journey. ‘Are we there yet?’ ‘Are we there yet?’ ‘Mammy, Daddy, how much LONGER???’ And this applies especially where reopening the schools is concerned. Some of the teaching unions have been trying, valiantly, to engage with all of this, whether through social media or through reassuring, cheering daily emails to members (thank you ASCL). One union leader has even written a letter, backed by a petition, urging Boris Johnson that schools should not be fully reopened until it is really, genuinely safe to do so.
The truth is clear. Social distancing and schools don’t mix. My school is seriously overcrowded at the best of times; it can be intimidating at peak moments, but just now it would be terrifying. Yes, children and teenagers don’t usually get Coronavirus badly, but they all go home to families, parents, grandparents, and what about staff members and their families? It’s not a simple case of wanting to stay away. Some days I miss my students and colleagues to the point of near despair, and that’s with a secure, harmonious home life in one of the most beautiful places in Northern Ireland. But the urgent baying on social media to open the schools as normal, as soon as possible, if not sooner, is just not right. It almost guarantees a second Coronavirus spike or wave. I appreciate that what Irish Taoseaich Leo Varadkar said in March about putting lives before livelihoods is not at all as simple as that neat soundbite makes it seem. I appreciate that children and teenagers going back to school would be helpful for the economy. But seriously. Lives would be at stake. Only this morning, the NI Executive announced that fatality figures in the region had, in fact, been much higher than previously revealed. Herd immunity has its arguments. Risking the survival of the herd, less so.
Just before the Coronavirus lockdown happened, we had been working on a Kindness initiative in school. Be kind; think kind; ‘be the I in kind’. At least one class was doing acts of kindness for Lent, there were ‘tear off’ kindness posters here and there, which some of our fourth year reprobates thought it was hilarious to rip apart every lunchtime. A lot of people hope that greater kindness will come out of this horrible situation throughout the world, but some days when I scroll through social media feeds, I’m not so sure it will. We clap for carers every Thursday evening, but there’s hatred for teachers every day online. Lazy teachers on an extended holiday, they say; cowards who are too selfish to go back to their classrooms; unprofessional, self-indulgent idiots who will prejudice this year’s calculated grades through favouritism and vindictiveness. The same people baying for the schools to reopen in full, right now, are calling for the summer holidays in July and August to be cancelled. I even saw one call for teachers to be redeployed to clean hospitals. I’m not sure if these keyboard warriors realise how much work online school entails; notifications coming in almost 24/7, by email, Google Classroom and even through your sneakily searched-out private Facebook account. Trying to make sure every student in every class stays motivated, on board and feels ok is not the same as being on holiday, even if it’s done from home.
But it’s not just about the work. It’s about doing your best, but feeling guilty that you aren’t doing any more. Screwing your courage to the sticking place, but feeling scared. Looking at the stunning scenery and beautiful Spring sunshine, but not knowing how much time is left. Resenting the journalist who asks ‘Are we there yet?’ at every day’s Government briefing, but feeling it’s what you want to know yourself as well. And not knowing what that elusive ‘there’ will be like anyway.
The people calling for schools to reopen fully, right away, want normality to resume. And how do I feel about that? I feel like I did the first time I ventured, nervously, to the deep end of a swimming pool. I didn’t know where the bottom was; all I knew was that my feet wouldn’t reach it.
We can’t see ‘normal’ any more, and who knows if we’ll ever reach what we thought it was, again. Who knows if normal will ever be again what normal used to be. The schools may be largely closed, but the learning still goes on: online and all around us. And some of the lessons go far beyond a Google Classroom curriculum, a Microsoft Teams or Google Hangout meeting, or a lunch break WhatsApp chat. Some of the lessons are unpalatable ones about the unkindness which lies beneath the heroism of these weird times. Some of the lessons are about appreciating the simple things: a spring sunset, birdsong, fresh air.
The biggest lesson of all for me? I’m still the ten-year-old who was scared at not being able to reach the floor in the deep end of the pool. I’m a strong swimmer, I remind myself, but I’m not quite sure what lies beneath. Or how far down it goes.
And that, pretty much, is how I think it feels.
No comments:
Post a Comment