Please stop! I Don't Like It!

 ***OPINIONS ARE MY OWN***

     Can we just please stop with the whole "Learning loss" and "It's because of the pandemic" narrative?  It's not like our kids are the only ones who suffered from the pandemic. The pandemic is world-wide, for crying out loud. EVERY STUDENT, in the WHOLE WORLD, lost instructional time.  Why are we expecting any of our kids to be where they were, according to some random list of standards that were established pre-pandemic? 

     It's not fair to our students and it's not fair to put those kinds of expectations on our teachers. No wonder so many schools can't fill positions or have teachers leaving the profession in droves!  Historically, teachers have always done more than what is expected, paying for supplies out of their own pockets, meeting with students outside of the instructional day, attending their students' extra-curricular activities, lesson planning outside of their allotted "planning time," in the evenings and on weekends, all for pennies on the dollar.  Other professions are able to leave work at work. They walk out the door at 5:00 and they're done for the day. Not teachers. We think about our kids and new ideas to inspire them 24/7. When will enough actually be enough?

     Now teachers are being required to "catch students up."  Seriously?? Catch them up to what?  Maybe, just maybe, we should be honoring our teachers for putting their lives on the line each and every day, for their students.  Maybe the standards should be changed to meet the world in which we're living, a world dealing with the pandemic.  The Delta Variant seems to be attacking the younger children. Just last week a middle schooler in our state died from Covid.  We have students who don't, or won't wear their masks.  Every day, teachers and their students run the risk of catching this horrible disease, and yet, the teachers keep on teaching.  Why? For the love of the children. For those light bulb moments? Because it is truly an honor to impact the next generation. 

   So, please stop! Stop blaming learning loss on the pandemic. Stop saying the we need to catch our students up to where they should have been before the world was plunged into a pandemic. Stop piling more and more on the plates of our teachers. Many of us are at our breaking point.  Just stop! I don't like it.

It Never Gets Easier

      Fifty-three years ago, on September 17th, life changed dramatically for me. I was only seven years old when my father's plane went down just three miles short of the runway in Ubon, Thailand. He was flying missions for the United States Air Force in Vietnam.  I will never forget that knock on the door and the two Air Force officers in their dress blues at our front door. Sometimes I still dream about it. For the longest time, I wondered why I was always in a kind of funk around this time of year.  As I did more research into my father's death, the reason became clearer in lots of ways and muddier in others.

     Clearer because I now knew why I am always in a funk this time of year. It is the anniversary of the death of my father.  While that was such a long time ago, I can still remember how it affected me. I remember hiding under the kitchen table, refusing to go to school, because, in my seven year-old brain, my dad died when I was in school and if I go to school, my mom could die, too.  I remember going to his graveside services on Long Island, New York.  I would still like to visit there some time.  The family name died with him overseas, as my step-dad adopted us a few years later.

     Muddier because, when his plane went down, he was flying a fighter jet, which was weird because his training was in flying B-52 Bombers.  Why was he flying a fighter jet?  No one knows. All they know is that he was coming in too low and his co-pilot told him to pull up. He did not and was pinned beneath the wreckage. They say that he died instantly. Did his plane flip? How was it that he ended up under the wreckage? His co-pilot survived the crash, by some miracle.  I did receive a detailed email about that night from him, years later, as I was doing my research.  God bless him. He'd only been in Vietnam three months and had never flown with my father.

     Don't get me wrong! I had the most amazing life, growing up on the farm in Nebraska!  I am forever grateful for the life and the family and friends that I have.  Still, sometimes I find myself wondering how different my life might have been, had my father lived.