Virtual Ending

Today endeth my 18th year teaching at Wellington High School. Not with a celebration, but with a thud.

The past 11 weeks have been, to be honest, exhausting beyond belief. I've felt like a first-year teacher in so many ways, and what's scary is I'm fairly tech-savvy. But like my peers, and our students, I've had to relearn and reinvent the wheel, sometimes daily, in order to try and offer some semblance of a positive educational experience to close out 2019-20.

Eleven weeks. Seventy-seven days.

This paradigm shift has been stressful for educators, students, and their families in a plethora of ways. Between hoping the Internet works and having enough computers, to juggling financial responsibilities, to learning to prioritize academic challenges differently, to in some cases moving to other areas of the state or nation, to the stress and/or monotony of being quarantined, to restructuring lesson plans and teaching methods, it's been one hell of a way to acclimate to the new world order.

This pandemic has brought out the best in my profession, and I am so very proud of my peers (at Wellington and across the nation) who have stepped up to the plate and made solid attempts at a positive learning experience. It's been more time consuming than the usual routine, and there's been many a morning I dreaded firing up the computer, because I just didn't have anything meaningful or new to discuss that day. (Or maybe I did, but just didn't feel like it was there that day.)

It's been doubly challenging on my end, because (and I've not mentioned this on Facebook at all) I've spent most of this time at my mother's Boca Raton condo, serving as a caregiver of sorts after she had an emergency appendectomy on March 25. So taking on distance learning while simultaneously working to help plan and coordinate my mom's post-surgery nursing and PT/OT appointments, shopping, cooking meals, paying her bills, and so much more, was an interesting and at times stressful process. (It also included multiple calls/texts daily to family and a few of mom's close friends over the two weeks she was in the hospital and rehab, during which time I was not allowed to visit due to the virus.) BTW, mom is doing great now! (And on the plus side, no food poisoning as a result of my cooking! Yay!)

Despite this, I think the most difficult part of this endeavor has been the lack of personal contact. I'm an introvert by nature, but usually I sequester myself in my condo by choice. I've missed seeing my fellow teachers in the hallways, the courtyard, the office, the teacher's lounge. I've missed seeing my students - yes, even the PITAs who make what's left of my hair fall out. I've missed interacting with other human beings. I've missed proctoring exams (OK, that's a lie, lol). I've missed seeing and working with my debate coach peers from other schools on weekends. And I've missed ... just the benign normality of life before COVID.

Wednesday night was my debate program's end-of-year Virtual DeBanquet and Senior Celebration. Yesterday was my last day teaching virtually. And I feel like a part of me will never find closure from this year. I cried May 18 when, after being allowed a three-hour window on the WHS campus for the first time in what seems like ages to close 4-104 down for the summer, I turned off the lights to an empty room and walked down an empty, dark hallway to exit the campus until August. I laughed and cried during the banquet's superlative announcements and senior speeches (especially during Jordyn Bergman's speech). I cried again, silently, after my last Google Meet class concluded yesterday. To paraphrase Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams, "The end of this school year was like having part of me amputated. I've heard that old men wake up and scratch itchy legs that been dust for over fifty years. That was me.”

So here I am ... with grades submitted and an online faculty meeting Monday morning, and virtual commencement that evening, to try and bring some semblance of closure to a year where none really seems possible. It's not the way my students wanted to end the year. I know it's not the way the Class of 2020 wanted to wrap things up. But it is what it is. And my peers and I will come back refreshed and stronger in the fall, ready to take on whatever challenges face us. I salute you, my educational warriors. You mean the world to me.