Remembering the Good Stuff by Anne Pedro
Everything feels exhausting. Even the good stuff. And I bet everyone reading this — in fact, even those not reading this — feels exactly the same way. Just finding the time to try to write this seemed impossible, and when I did, I stared at a blank screen and into a mind of nothingness. There were no words; I had nothing to say. But I knew that wasn’t true. I had so much to say about so many things. I was just too tired to let them out. Maybe because I felt I had to write about teaching, and for the first time in 16 years, my job feels most exhausting of all. This school year has been abysmal at best. We all thought, “This year will be so much better than the last two.” And then it wasn’t. In many ways, it was worse. The pandemic obviously shook up the world of education. Teaching through the pandemic — virtual, in-person, hybrid, masked, maskless — left us all drained in a way that was new to us. We came back this September hopeful, excited. We couldn’t wait to see our students, to bring the life back into what we do for a living. Then the year started, and while we were excited to get back to “normal”, the only normal this year was that the expectations and requirements increased while the time and resources to accomplish them did not. Other years we were able to handle that with a little more grace, but we were all returning to school this time with a little pandemic trauma and we were tired. Tired of “reinventing the wheel” for the 20th time in as many months, tired of being praised for our dedication one day to be told we were lazy/indoctrinating/worthless the next. The kids were tired and traumatized too. Some of them hadn’t been inside a school building in over a year. Adults and kids alike needed to be socialized all over again.
I realized just how bad it was when, in my attempt to practice the “self-care” our higher-ups kept telling us about but giving us no time for, I decided I would no longer work through my lunch break. I put Netflix on my computer while I ate so that it literally blocked my view of the 37 tabs of work I always had open. Emails could wait the 25 minutes I had to heat my food, chew, and take a mental break. I started finding that this worked well for my mental health, so every day I watched part of an episode of Criminal Minds to destress from the chaos around me. That’s right, I watched stories about psychopaths who abduct, torture, and kill men, women, and children as a way to relax. Don’t worry, my therapist assured me that this doesn’t make me a psychopath, too. I’m still eating lunch in my room alone though. Most of us haven’t shifted back to the break room. We were forced into isolation for so long, we are having a difficult time finding our way back to each other.
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Despite this, I am still so grateful for the group of people I work with. In a year where it was so easy not to be kind to each other or ourselves, they still made work a better place to be and they deserve a shout out. To the coworkers who make sure the coffee pot is never empty; watch my class for a minute so I can pee when there is no line; remind me that my certification needs renewing because they know I forgot last time; leave handwritten cards with encouraging words; say how are you, not as a mere greeting, but because they care about the answer; give me a rock when it’s exactly what I need; offer help when they have so much on their plates already; and bring my daughter thoughtful gifts just because: thank you. Thank you all for picking me up this year even though I was too overwhelmed to do the same.
My students deserve a shout out as well — even the ones that can be incredibly annoying. I adore them. They came in tired and traumatized from the previous year too, but they made my every day better. They are kind, and they make me laugh, and I’m excited to see the people they continue to grow to be. I will thank them on the last day of class for showing up, doing what they could, and helping me do the same.
With so many people fleeing the profession, it’s my colleagues and my students — the good stuff — that will remind me why I stay.
Anne Pedro is a reading specialist at Scituate High School and has been a part of the Rhode Island Writing Project since 2010.
