I Should Be Grading Right Now

23 April 2020

Dear Reader,

I attended my daughter's circle time with my hair like this. When I saw that her teacher's hair was wet from the shower, I felt a little better.

It's been a week, man.

Monday, E scratched my face and screamed at me because I wouldn't let her watch a "night night movie." Yesterday, she "redecorated" the living room and her hands with my favorite blue fingernail polish. Our house still smells like remover and the kid has blue varnish in the cracks of all of her fingers. In this picture she's "cleaning" the mirror and the sink with her toothbrush, and I need a shower.

Today, I've graded and entered two class's assignments, answered three or four emails, created new resources, collaborated with two colleagues, and met with my student teacher for the fall.

Five hours of childcare, meal preparation and cleaning later, E is finally asleep, and I'm here to write. I'm so tired, but I can't sleep because of the to-do lists. And I can't leave because my wonderful, handsome, intelligent, patient, (hi honey!) hardworking husband is teaching 20 college-credit hours this semester. Sooooo, he lives on Zoom, and I've got to stay alert because the nail-polish vandal could wake up at any minute.

All I can see is the list of work I haven't done yet.

I mean, at least she's brushing something, right?

I captioned this "proof that toddlers are a**holes" in my IG stories.

First, parenting.

I saw a post on Instagram the other day from The Gottman Institute that stuck with me: "Under stress, we all regress."

My husband and I have worked HARD for years to undo some toxic habits that we knew would creep up from our own childhoods when we became parents. Yelling, shaming, manipulating, spanking, threatening: those strategies have left lasting, painful memories that we do NOT want for our girl.

Guess what we've been doing since quarantine started?

My wake-up call came when E approached me with an imaginary baby and said, "Mom, get this kid away from me. I need a break or I'll spank her."

Ouch.

So, this week, I've been doing repair work. I've been crouching down to her level, holding space for her big emotions, staying present through the three-brain cycle, telling her specific things I love about her. In hindsight, the crouching was probably a mistake.

We have an awesome kid. Honestly. She's incredible. Smart. Kind. Clever. But the daily meltdowns, the throwing, the screaming, the willful disobedience... It's a lot. My husband and I take turns reminding ourselves that she's scared, and she's lost control of the few things she knew before the pandemic.

Girl, same.

When that Instagram post scrolled through my feed, I felt so relieved. We're all regressing. It's normal. We can try again tomorrow.

If it were just the parenting, I think I'd be okay. But it's never just one thing with teaching is it?

What's that analogy all first-year teachers cling to? Learning to teach is like learning to fly while building the airplane. In my mind, we're all sitting in our houses, learning to build AND fly an airplane while emotionally regressing with our significant others, our kids, our pets, our friends.

It's a lot. But, maybe knowing it – shedding some light on the monster – will make it a little less scary.

Confession: I feel like a complete failure of a teacher right now.

I have three to-do lists running and I haven't checked anything off of them for five hours. I promised my students a video four days ago that I still haven't made. I have an inbox full of unanswered student emails with pictures of work that I need to put in the grade book. I really want to skip office hours tomorrow so I can get more work done, and my weekend is going to be sucked up by all the grad-school work I haven't had the time or energy to touch all week.

In addition to all of that, so-and-so on the TeacherGram just finished her fifth book and third project of the week, and such-and-such is ROCKING the at-home tutoring with her little angels.

Can I just get props for bathing my kid every night? Please?

Edweek published an article recently about teachers that I felt in my bones. Catherine Gewertz writes: "Stress isn’t new to teachers, but what they’re experiencing now makes their typical stress seem like a picnic." The article sources a lot of the things I've been battling myself –understanding the fluctuating policy that strains and frustrates everyone, finding time to do work that requires more time to do, worrying about the kids I haven't heard from in five weeks. The article is compelling and ends on a hopeful note. After reading it, I was reminded that we're all learning this new thing, and as long as we're passing out grace, we should give some to ourselves.

Then the parent emails came.

In the course of four days, I've been accused of sending NOTHING at all; commanded to enter all of my grades by a parent-selected deadline; and told to create a brand new packet of work to be sent immediately.

Normally, angry parent emails are a blip in the day. When I was a first-year teacher, they devastated me. Now I recognize it as part of the job. NORMALLY, I suck it up, write a straightforward reply (ignoring the comments about my character), and move on with the good parts of my job. But, right now, I'm stressed. And, right now, there are very few good parts to my job. So, right now, I'm devastated. I keep frantically tidying my house, cooking, and chasing my toddler with a loop playing through my head. Can't they see that I'm TRYING? I've done so much already. There isn't any more time in the day. Maybe I should pull an all-nighter. It's a pandemic, can't they just be kind? The ruminating is proof that I've "regressed" back to first-year me.

I want to cry but I can't. Because we're in a pandemic, and, according to The Mighty, I handle stress by staying absolutely calm until the crisis is over. So I keep working, and I don't sleep.

A colleague and I always joke about how teachers often have to be the adult-i-est adults in the room. With teenagers, parents, spouses, offspring, *ahem* bosses, we have to be the one to take a deep breath, see others' stress, and problem-solve. I'm trying to remember that these parents are being demanding and unkind because they're also very stressed.

I'm doing everything I can to be a good mom, a good wife, a good daughter, a good teacher, a good housekeeper, a good friend, a good colleague, and just generally a good person. I really really wish we could all just collectively take one deep breath and remember that we're all doing our best.

Where do we go from here, dear reader?

Brene Brown would call this an FFT, a ****ing First Time. It's my first time surviving a pandemic. My first time being a stay-at-home mom. My first time teaching online. My first time using Zoom, Google Meet, FlipGrid... It's a big dang bundle of first times.

I'm the last person to be doling out life advice. My high school, college, and adult friends can attest that I've been a hot-mess express for decades now.

But I'm smart. I'm resilient. And I'm stubborn.

So I'm going to start over tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day. Like Daily Stoic advises, I'm going to play the game of inches. I'm going to keep waking up, working, and being gentle until it sticks or until this is over.

In the time that it took me to write this, I probably could have finished grading the papers I've been promising my students. But maybe, just maybe, tonight, I will be able to sleep.

Be gentle with each other, my friends. But, more importantly, be gentle with yourself.

Love,

Ashley

I posed very carefully for this so my scratch wasn't the first thing everyone saw in my Random Fandom pic for school.

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