First Day of School 2021

As I slid desks across the shiny, clean floors in anticipation for another school year, I was more nervous and anxious than I've been in years. There is still the exciting promise of a fresh start and the tension of meeting a new group of students, but this year hits a little differently. I struggled to see how I could maintain social distancing for 34 students, and I kept coming across relics from the past: file folders and assignments from my last students in the before times back in the spring of 2020. 

I'm trying to stay optimistic. After all, I'm sending my own unvaccinated elementary school students to their first and fourth grade teachers tomorrow. We are all hoping that universal masking is enough. We hope this variant can be kept in check. We hope we can keep our kids healthy. 

But after 18 months of weighing every decision about what to do and what risks to take, it is the letting go that is hardest right now. And maybe letting go isn't the right thing. Maybe instead we have to hold on to the things most important to us. 

We've learned the importance of our physical and mental health over these past months, so we will be vigilant about masking and about holding space for both the trauma and the joy our students will carry into our classrooms. We are aware of the attacks on our public schools, our elected public officials, and our medical professionals, so we will continue to teach and show up for our students. We can see the world shaking in Haiti, hear of the political upheaval here and abroad, and smell the smoke from global fires, so we must wake up in the morning and continue to fight in our small ways. 

The isolation of this past year has caused me to lose faith in so much, but after sliding those desks around, I was able to arrange my room in order to maintain 3-feet distance. When new sixth and seventh graders came in for orientation, they were full of nervous anticipation as well. We are all feeling so much. I'm certain my students this year will once again restore me to some kind of faith. They do this every year. So as I start back, carrying all of my own trauma and joy, I look forward to the restorative healing a new school year can provide.

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This Year's Speech for the Class of 2021

How do you let go of something that you never held to begin with? That's how I feel about this year. Still, tomorrow is the Emerson Middle School culmination and here is my speech for our eighth graders. I am so proud of them. They got through the eighth grade during a global pandemic. Wow. 

Class of 2021, 

This past August, we opened the school year like no other. Instead of opening my classroom door, I opened a Zoom and instead of meeting you all in person, I met you through these screens. It was the first day of eighth grade, and I worried you might not come. But you logged on, and you said hi when I called your names. And then, to my surprise, you kept coming. On Zoom. Day after long day.

Back in August, we were still feeling our way through this pandemic. We were hoping for the best and we learned not to look too far ahead. It was too hard to think about the possibility of disappointment, so I didn’t allow myself to think about today, your graduation day. 

But now it is June, and time has a funny way of just carrying on. 

This past November we took time to write novels and it seems like so long ago. Fast forward to April, we paused to write poems in little four-minute increments. Minutes, class periods, days, weeks, months. A school year. 

The musical Rent asks how we measure time: “In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life? Seasons of love,”

Last summer, we stayed home to try to keep our city safe. In fall there was an election and then in winter an insurrection as cases in LA surged, I learned not to ask too many questions of you. Students and families were dealing with COVID, and so many of us were grieving loss.

It has been a long year, four long seasons, but spring is here and the waves of vaccines have begun. Doors have started to crack open again and we have continued to show up in little fits and spurts, to learn, and to be together in these strange learning communities. We made it through this year together, and in ways that are completely unique to this class of 2021.

And now, it’s over. A few of you have come back in person, but most stayed home, and as we reflect on this wild, wild, year, I hope you all measure this year by all you have learned. Maybe your English hasn’t developed the way it might have had we been in school in person, maybe your math feels a little shaky and your science lab skills uncertain, maybe you feel a little soft from no PE running days, but you have made it through a year we will never forget, even though we might like to.

What your learning reflects is a deep compassion. You seem to really understand that the struggle is real and everyone single one of us is struggling through. You know if someone’s camera is off, they probably have a good reason, and that even though someone else's struggle isn’t your own, you can still empathize with their circumstances. 

There is no room for regret for what this year might have been, and as Ralph Waldo Emerson says “It is about your outlook towards life. You can either regret or rejoice.”

With this next season and in all the seasons to come, you get to choose: regret or rejoice. Thank you for teaching me how to see and feel regret and to still choose joy. Today it’s your day. And as Charles Bukowski says, 

“Your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.”