It’s June 3, 2021 and today was my high school’s graduation. It was an actual, live, in-person graduation. All 570 graduating seniors donned their caps and gowns and walked across the stage as their names were read. Parents, family members, and friends filled the bleachers with no attempt at social distancing. A few people wore masks, but not because of a mandate. The whole event felt normal, like the worldwide pandemic had *finally* ended.
And yet…
Even as mask mandates end and case counts drop, even as things reopen fully and big events are rescheduled, things are not normal. I think we all know it by now. We will be living with the effects of this pandemic for years to come. I’m not talking about the economic consequences or the much-needed educational remediation. I’m talking about how the pandemic has deeply affected each one of us. We are all a little broken. Some of us are shattered. Where do we go from here?
I see the effects in so many little (and not so little) ways. More students struggling with debilitating anxiety and depression. Responsible students who don’t care as much about getting their work done and are happy to take a lower grade for it. Students who simply stopped coming to class altogether. Less commitment. Less motivation. And it’s not just in the students. I see the same things happening to me.
Is it any wonder this is happening? Our entire world came to a halt overnight. I know this sounds silly, but the moment that shook my world the most was when I heard that Disneyland was closing. Just a few days before Disneyland made that announcement, I held a final parent meeting to go over the details of our planned trip to go there. When students asked if the trip was going to be cancelled, I told them that the only way we wouldn’t go is if Disneyland closed, and I was very confident that wouldn’t happen. Days later, what I thought was impossible became reality, and the impossible kept happening again and again over the following days and months. The things we thought would always be certain became uncertain. We learned to deal with and even expect massive, life-altering changes in the course of days or even hours. And all of that was the least of it. Many people dealt with much more.
Our world has been upturned. We can’t go back to the way things were.
So how do we navigate this new territory? I’ve heard and read a lot about educational reform recently. Many people want to use this disruption to change the way we do things in education permanently. While I hope positive, systematic changes happen, right now I’m just worried about the changes I need to make personally to reach the students I have now. As one of my students wrote in his year-end reflection, COVID has changed them in ways that they don’t like.
Relationships are vital. I often hear teachers talk about ways to connect and build relationships with their students, but I don’t hear much about helping students build relationships with each other. They need those peer relationships desperately, and COVID has taken a lot of that away. Even in person, masks made it difficult to talk and get to know new people. I plan to make sure my students have plenty of time to build those relationships with each other, even if it means sacrificing some of my class time.
After our final concert last week, one of my students left a message on the board. “Maybe the real orchestra was the friends we made along the way,” he wrote. Ironically, he was the student who struggled the most to make friends and who often felt lonely and left out.
I plan to be more understanding of my students’ circumstances and priorities. This year I had a student tell me that she wanted to miss the last three weeks of school so she could take a summer job. I was shocked. As a teacher, that seemed ludicrous. Shouldn’t school take priority over a summer job? After a few days of thinking it over, I realized that school might not be the most important thing in that student’s life right now. The pandemic hit her hard, and she struggled to stay motivated while dealing with her mental health issues. She did enough to pass and stay on track to graduate. I would rather see her working a summer job that she’s excited about than spend three more weeks in school if it means sacrificing her mental health. What’s important to me may not be what’s most important for my students.
Lastly, I’m going to focus more on music making. One of my students wrote me a thank you letter today. In the letter he said that the most meaningful part of last year was when we went online. Since we couldn’t play music, I taught the students how to use some audio editing and music notation programs and then had them create a project with it. He said that project taught him what it meant to connect to music and put himself into it. I have never done much with composing or improvising in my classes. Performance was always more important. Maybe it shouldn’t be. Creating and connecting with music is important, whatever that looks like.
Through COVID I’ve learned that I personally need music. I need to make music. It grounds me and keeps me going when I just want to give up. When I teach them music, I’m giving them a tool to cope, an outlet to express their pent-up emotions.
I don’t know what next year will look like. I’m hopeful that things will be better. Maybe the summer will allow us time to heal and reset. In any case, I know that my priorities will be a little different going forward. I hope that’s a good thing.