No one was expecting a pandemic when it suddenly arrived in March 2020, and no one is sure when it will end, or even confident that it will. But we now hope that we are starting to see at least a glimmer of light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. Covid-19 created a huge disruption to students’ lives. Many struggled at home with virtual learning, felt the fear of an invisible virus, and missed friendships or saw relatives sick.
Not to mention the learning loss, lack of socialization, and social upheaval that seems to be the signs of our times. Experts are calling it a generational crisis. Some have taken to calling this group of students Gen C for Generation Covid.
Returning to the classroom has been great, but for many teachers, myself included, there have been many challenges. There is anxiety in the air. More students are acting out. Sometimes it seems that we, the teachers and our students’ primary rock of normalcy at school to begin with, are pushing too fast to be back to normal before we are ready.
What can we do to face these challenges? One way is to ensure we give time for social-emotional learning with our students. These times call for more discussions, routines, check-ins, and expressing feelings. While there is a sense of urgency to address the learning loss, we can’t treat the present educational realities as if we are back to normal yet. We aren’t.
As Rabbi and family counselor Edwin H. Friedman advised, lead by being the calm and non-anxious presence in your classroom. Dealing with disruptions while being calm and collected will help build a peaceful community in the classroom. The best advice I received and implemented that gave me perspective was to not take the disruptions and expressed student anxieties personally.
We must be aware of the toll these perennial classroom challenges, now greatly magnified by the pandemic, can take on teachers. Social media is full of posts from teachers near the end of their ropes. Between learning loss, acting out, and administrative demands, some teachers feel burned out and exhausted. This makes it more important than ever for teachers to practice self-care. Like the airlines say, “Put on your own oxygen mask first before helping others.” This pandemic has been terrible in its pervasive scope and absolutely disruptive to our workplace and our students, but we will emerge from this crisis stronger than we were before, unified by the bond of having gone through it together.
