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Finding Rainbows

It’s been 72 days since my family came home and stayed home. We abruptly went from two different whiteboard calendars filled with color-coded plans, times, and appointments to completely blank slates. Our once jam packed days that were scheduled down to the minute have since slowed to a crawl. Some changes have been hard to accept. Schools closed their physical doors and learning moved online. One by one performances were cancelled and there was no prom. Long-awaited dreams of trips popped like soap bubbles, and celebrations started to take much different shape.

We now eat every meal at home. We don’t get to see our friends or extended family in person. So many birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays have been celebrated quietly with the same three people. The world looks very different through these new and suddenly acquired pandemic lenses. It has been a stormy season for sure, but if you sit still and look, you can still find some rainbows.

“So many tiny bright spots and rainbows can be found in the present if we all just learn to be still enough to embrace them.”

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard or said the words “when all of this is over” in the past few months. When all of this is over, I am going to take that trip. When all of this is over, I am going to make those plans and see those people. When all of this is over, I am going to go to that restaurant again. With such an uncertain immediate future I found myself only making plans for “when all this is over.” But then I sat and began to think about all the little ways that life has slowed down and created positive change. So many tiny bright spots and rainbows can be found in the present if we all just learn to be still enough to embrace them.

Before the pandemic, I usually traveled a few days out of the week. I’d leave the house at 7:45 am and return about 12 hours later having had two of my meals in the car. Don’t get me wrong. I love being busy. I thrive on it. But being busy had become a habit that I built up and placed on a pedestal, and I thought I couldn’t live without it. If I found myself with spare time, I quickly looked for ways to fill it. I remember once my parents took the kids to the beach for spring break. I don’t schedule work on spring break, so I wasn’t traveling, and I found myself at home. I scurried around town looking for places to volunteer. I spent a few days at a nursing home, volunteered to speak to representatives at the State Capital, and I read Shakespeare to some hospice patients. It was a glorious week. As much as I loved it, I found myself exhausted and frustrated when the kids returned home. I hadn’t given myself time to relax.

This pandemic has forced me to slow down and embrace stillness. These days, instead of bouncing out of bed, rushing for coffee, packing lunches, dropping off children, getting ready, and then go, go, go … I am still. Instead of waking up at 6:00 am, I slowly roll out of bed around 8:00 am. I have made a habit of practicing yoga in the backyard before even getting dressed. I am much less inhibited in my pajamas! Who knew? (Sorry, neighbors.) While in the backyard on my yoga mat I have started to take notice of the birds. The same birds I’ve looked at a million times but never really seen! Am I a bird lady now? I have bought three different bird feeders online. And I have given all my regular bird visitors names. I guess I am a bird lady.

I’ve started a garden even though I have never gardened in my entire life. One day I made every member of my family come outside in a rainstorm to look at the teensiest, tiniest tomato buds and take my picture as I smiled proudly beside them. Normally my cooking talents include opening a box of cereal and making sure we are good on clean spoons. But now I have learned how to (kind of) cook! I made soup and everyone actually ate it without complaint. We are even making our own sourdough bread almost every day.

Before all of this, my friends and I could go weeks, sometimes months, without checking in, but now we text, call, or Facetime every day. One friend sent me a four-minute video of a hummingbird, and I gleefully watched every second. Perhaps the most astonishing thing to come out of this pandemic is the fact that for the first time in my adult life I have found the bottom of the laundry basket. It exists! The only clothes that need to be washed are the ones we are wearing. WHO AM I? Not only am I shocked that, after decades of washing and drying and piling, I actually have an empty laundry room, I am also shocked at how happy that empty laundry room has made me. To me, an empty laundry room is a giant rainbow.

The pandemic has robbed many people of once in a lifetime memories – yearbook signings, prom, graduation, and a semester-long goodbye that marks the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. But if you look close enough, there might be rainbows.

This year our entire neighborhood held a graduation parade. It was heartwarming to see the excited faces of the many high school seniors who grew up on the sidewalks and swing sets in our neighborhood. Seeing them proudly wear their cap and gown while waving from the back of their parents’ pick-up truck seemed somehow perfect.

“You can’t see a rainbow if you are running too fast chasing the sun.”

Everything is suddenly different, but different doesn’t mean bad. In no other timeline would I sit in the backyard with my two teenagers and sing the Top 40 of the 1960s for an hour. In no other timeline would I see my kids this much or talk with them this much. In no other timeline would my laundry be done. The pandemic has taken away many things, but it has also gifted us stillness. You can’t see a rainbow if you are running too fast chasing the sun.

This pandemic has forced me to slow down enough to look for all those little rainbows. Instead of trying to plan what I will do when all of this is over, I am focusing on how I will show gratitude in the present. When all this is over, I will appreciate so much more. When all this is over, I wont take a hug for granted. When all this is over, I will not complain about the length of an awards assembly or having to sit on hard bleachers. When all this is over, I will have the ability to be still by choice. When all this is over, I hope I will still look for birds, tomato buds, and rainbows.

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Navigating Uncharted Waters

Spring break is typically the week dedicated to relaxation, travel, and maybe a little catch up around the house. School families, teachers, and staff also use the time to reenergize before the last quarter of the school year wraps up for summer. Spring Break 2020, however, was anything but typical. And it turned out to be a turning point.

I had plans to travel to New England to attend my daughter’s bridal shower and then return home to finalize plans before her wedding, only three weeks away. The beginning of the week started with the first of many sad events.

I canceled my flight and missed the bridal shower. By mid-week, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic with unknown implications. Social distancing protocols were announced and we had to make sense of all the new restrictions. As a result, my daughter was forced to cancel her dream wedding, a heartbreaking decision for the now devastated couple. By the end of the week, Dripping Springs ISD Superintendent Todd Washburn announced that we would not be returning to school until at least late March. Alternative models of education were being evaluated.

I quickly shifted my focus from canceled wedding plans to figuring out what school was going to look like. The challenges began almost immediately. My teammates and I had many questions but few answers, and we were hearing many different terms: digital learning, online classes, distance education, remote learning, schooling at home, e-learning, and even extended spring break. Whatever the name, I suddenly felt unprepared, overwhelmed, and anxious. How was I going to teach and deliver lessons to my students now?

Teachers had two days to prepare before beginning the new form of instruction. As I walked into our empty school building to gather books, resources, and materials, I was overcome with sadness. The halls were still covered with student artwork and motivational messages, and there were traces of a once vibrant and busy school everywhere. It was almost as if time had frozen. I had a classroom filled with books, charts, student projects, computers, and school supplies, but the most important piece of the classroom was missing, my students.

We were told to treat the first week of distance learning like the first week of school. The focus was on building relationships and establishing a sense of community. We had to find a way to interact, collaborate, and learn. I became very much aware of the challenges suddenly faced by school families. They had to provide an environment for learning while also working from home. They were asked to teach and help their children learn with limited internet access, a lack of devices, bandwidth issues, and for some, little experience handling technology. In addition, many of my colleagues now had to teach while caring for their own young children. I felt an overwhelming need to do more, but I didn’t know what more looked like.

“Navigating uncharted waters” was an appropriate way to describe what we were dealing with. Leading up to our first day of remote instruction, I tried to stay positive and confident although the uncertainty of the unknown made me anxious. I spent a significant amount of time online trying to find the best resources. First, I had to quickly learn how to use Zoom video conferencing to hold a class. My students and I had limited experience using Skype to virtually connect with authors, experts, and classes across the country, but that was the extent of my video conferencing proficiency.

The first class meeting two weeks after we first left for spring break turned out to be the highlight of my week. When we connected on Zoom, I was thrilled to see “my kids” and interact with them! I think I needed to see them more than they needed to see me. The kids were so excited to see their classmates and reestablish our classroom community. They also wanted to show off their pets, and so we shared our time with dogs, cats, hamsters, bunnies, guinea pigs, and a leopard gecko.

With each new Zoom meeting, I was learning how to better lead a virtual class while also dealing with siblings vying for attention or crying in the background, dogs barking (often my own), and kids wanting to talk over one another. I learned how to navigate the mute and chat options so we could hear each other and stay focused. I also learned that the kids wanted to feel connected and reclaim some sense of normalcy.

The lesson plans educators were now creating looked very different than the ones we made before the world fell apart. We now created lesson boards with videos, links, choices, and options that could fit a flexible schedule. We had a lot of information, websites, and assignments to share, but we didn’t want to overwhelm parents or students. We worked to differentiate the instruction to meet the needs of all learners. We tried to connect new content to what the kids already knew – not too much, not too little; not too difficult, not too easy. We worked to find a balance between screen time and options for paper and printing. We worked to make our lessons engaging and instructional but relatively easy to navigate.

I soon realized how challenging it was for my colleagues to teach and parent from home. I felt guilty for not having the same distractions and tried to lighten their loads. But honestly, I was also somewhat envious of all the time they were able to spend with their kids. My adult children live in their own homes, and I wasn’t able to see them. On Easter Sunday, there was no family gathering and no excited children who had just seen the Easter Bunny.

On the day Governor Abbott announced that schools would remain closed for the rest of the school year, I cried. It was expected, but hearing it as a certainty made me very sad. I thought about all that my students and I would not experience together. The last part of a school year is when we celebrate everything we worked hard to accomplish. I learned that several students were overcome with emotion, anxiety, and grief at hearing this announcement too. We wouldn’t be able to hug one another goodbye before summer.

I continue to lead several class conference calls a week thanks to Zoom. I worry about and miss the students who can’t or don’t join us on a regular basis. I try to provide support to parents who have questions while working with their children at home. I give options to those who want more material as well as those who want less. I provide virtual office hours, have phone conferences, and exchange many, many emails. I give feedback and make comments on student work to validate all the efforts families are making at home. I continue to try to keep the kids engaged and interested in our lessons by balancing fun with learning. I plan scavenger hunts along with mini-lessons. I make time for show-and-tell as well as instruction. I teach fun facts on Hat Day along with new material. I try to stay positive when the kids realize they have missed out on a field trip, P.E. Fun Day, or an end-of-school celebration.

Recently, I drove to our school building to collect some materials. I pulled into the parking lot, which was empty except for a few staff cars. It was a school day, but children were not in school, at least not in our school building. I watched a family with young children riding their bicycles down the sidewalk in front of the school. I got teary-eyed seeing the kids. My heart grew heavy as I realized how much I missed my own students and their presence in my life. I hadn’t seen kids that close since before spring break. That time seemed eons ago, yet it had only been weeks.

Today, we don’t know how school supplies will be returned, how yearbooks will be distributed, or what school will look like when we start a new year in August. There is so much uncertainty, so much unknown, but there is one thing I am very certain about: I love being a teacher. And the best part of teaching is my students. I love them and they are a part of my heart, whether we are in the same room or several gigabytes apart.

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The Teacher in Me

“I am a teacher.” It has rolled off my tongue a million times over, and in many ways, it defines me – at least in part. As a little girl, I taught my stuffed animals. For Christmas, while other kids wished for bikes and dolls, my list always had some kind of teacher goody at the top! One year I was so excited to receive my very own chalkboard. Another year I got a red typewriter that actually worked! I played the role of teacher until somehow, miraculously, it became real. I will never forget walking across the stage at Baylor and then into that room at Smithfield Elementary School in Birdville ISD. Jolene Armstrong handed me the keys and gave me a shot at what I consider to be the greatest of all professions – teaching. It’s been twenty-eight years now.

I am a teacher. It runs in my blood, I suppose. Both of my parents are teachers. They taught high school and college and both had lengthy careers in education, and there are many other teachers in my family, including my great grandfather who taught in Oklahoma territory before it was a state.

“We see the stress in their eyes. We get it. This roller coaster ride has us all a bit up and down.”

This pandemic has led teachers to new ways of doing things. We don’t meet in classrooms now, but in little grids on our computer screens. We see their faces and don’t really know what to say, and yet we say something. We have to. We are the teachers. We peek into their worlds in a way we haven’t before. We hear baby brother crying in the background. We see the stress in their eyes. We get it. This roller coaster ride has us all a bit up and down. The kids talked about school at first. They talked about “when” we return. Now they say “if.” They laughed at first. Now they are more solemn. At first I asked them what they’d been up to. Now that question leaves us all a bit … silent. There isn’t a lot to say, for life as they knew it, life as we all knew it has slowed down, paused, okay – stopped. So we make things to talk about. We tell them to wear crazy hats or school colors or bring show and tell. We let them do magic tricks and hold up their lazy cats. We ooh and ahh over an Indian Head penny or shriek (to their delight) at a huge, plastic lizard. They hold up their treasures. They show them to a screen. And we respond. We value their stuff, and in doing so, we value them.

The teacher in me wants to get back to the classroom – back to the stink of fourth grade right after recess in the springtime, back to kids not turning their work in (oh yeah, they don’t turn it in online either!), back to school cafeteria mashed potatoes, back to the countdown to Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break, and summer. I’d like to think I would not even count the days away now … or maybe I would. But normal would feel so good.

The teacher in me wants to bring a novel to life, just once more this school year, in such a way that we all forget to watch the clock and find ourselves apologizing for being late to our next class. I want to sit in the spot where I conference with my writers, listen to their words, hear their hearts spilled out on paper, and oh so gently guide them to spill them out with a bit more structure, or pizzazz, or with a few more commas and apostrophes.

Instead, I find myself in a very peculiar spot. I find myself learning. I watch them tackle this online thing and message one another on my Google Classroom stream. I watch my own daughter who is nearly five. She’s adjusted to all this time at home. Her Buzz Lightyear doll has become a constant companion, a brother of sorts. He does whatever she does. He even wears her shirts and shorts. She runs the bases in the backyard the way only children do these days – alone. She doesn’t let it stop her from hitting that ball as hard and far as she can. She plays every position at once. And she begs me to “be the coach.” I oblige; after all, I am a teacher. I call out exercises for her warm-up and then tell her what to do during the “game.”

I watch them, these children of the great American shutdown, and I see it in them – resilience. They will bounce back from this. It will be a memory soon. At least we pray. You can shut down the malls and the stores and even the schools, but you cannot shut down the human spirit. It is a strong thing. It comes back fighting. It must be about its essential business – the essential business of life.

The teacher in me pauses, takes a deep breath, and attempts to do what I have done for almost three decades in the classroom. How many times have I veered left or right in a lesson in order to tackle it – the moment, the exact time and place that a kid “gets it,” and his teacher is granted that deep satisfaction of knowing that he will never lack that little bit of understanding again. In these unprecedented days, I will choose the teachable moment – only this time … I am the one being taught.

What will tomorrow bring? More of the juggling act, trying to find the balance between my roles of mom and educator. I teeter between acceptance of and frustration towards our situation hour by hour, sometimes moment by moment, but always six feet away … This is not normal. No one can pretend it is. But it is okay to not be normal for a while. It is a time for learning, a time for reassessing what is really important, and as teachers, perhaps when normal comes back around we need to let them show us their Indian Head pennies and plastic lizards a bit more often. Maybe, in the end, that is the stuff that really matters – even more than the apostrophes.

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Disrupting the Opportunity Gap

Inequity in public education has a long and persistent history in the United States. Progress to close these disparities associated with race, gender, economic status, community, and familial situations has been both slow and challenging.

As educators, one of the challenges we face is how we measure student success and what steps we take when we see significant differences in test scores.

It is common to read about “closing the achievement gap” — meaning end the disparities among students taking state-administered annual tests. When looked at through the lens of race and income levels we continue to see major gaps between historically marginalized populations and white students who are not economically disadvantaged.

When we focus on the test scores, we situate the problem as one with the student – if performance isn’t satisfactory, we assume that the issue is a lack of skill development.

Alternatively, the “opportunity gap” focuses on the ways in which public education systems create and sustain an unequal or inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities that contribute to student success. This perspective situates the problem as one with the system. We see this unfolding now as communities scramble to offer distance learning during COVID-19 school closures and grapple with learning from home for students who do not have devices or wifi sufficient for video platforms.

Working to minimize opportunity gaps requires significant change within our structural systems. For concerned parents, the rhetoric is often too divisive and the path to help incite widescale change can seem daunting.

So how do we face this challenge — as educators and parents? How do we help ensure that our children, their classmates, and their peers across Texas are granted the same opportunities? By recognizing the problem and mitigating inequities at the school level and in classroom practices.

Changes at this level are both tangible and profound.

At New Tech Network (NTN), our innovative project-based learning (PBL) school-wide approach, enabled with technology, recognizes and works to disrupt two crucial aspects of the opportunity gap:

  • The Culture Gap: Students of color and students in poverty are more likely to experience a school environment that isn’t safe, inclusive, or supportive.
  • The Instruction Gap: Students of color and students in poverty are more likely to experience rote, low level instruction that emphasizes memorization.

PBL done well can make a big difference by ensuring students regularly engage in authentic, complex thinking and problem-solving and experience a learning environment that is safe, inclusive, and emotionally supportive, leading them down a path to success that includes:

  • deep systemic work around adult beliefs and mindsets,
  • intensive capacity building to design quality learning experiences, and
  • explicit work to build empowering school cultures and effective leadership.

Two examples of results from this work include PTA campus schools in El Paso ISD and Memorial Early College High School in Comal ISD.

According to data from El Paso ISD, on all end-of-course exams for both the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 academic years, EPISD New Tech Network students continue to outperform others. The first EPISD New Tech Network middle school data from the 2018-2019 academic year shows strong outcomes, including that New Tech Network students consistently outperform other students across all performance bands in reading and math for both sixth and seventh grades.

Results from Memorial Early College High School in Comal ISD are also compelling. The institution now has a TEA A-F Accountability score of “99 out of 100” in how well it prepares students for success in high school and after high school in college, a career, or the military. Additionally, nearly 100% of MECHS students have graduated with both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree in the past three years. This preparation translates, on average, into almost $50,000 in cost-savings for students and their parents.

To further disrupt the opportunity gap, it is critical to measure what matters. We should look to empower teachers in elementary, middle, and high school levels with professional development and resources that help transition to this different approach. Specifically tailored content to assess student work to better prepare them to meet college-ready criteria. Rubrics that assess student skills in collaboration, oral and written communications, and student agency are effective and necessary for this approach to succeed.

Ensuring that schools make complex problem-solving accessible to all students in safe, inclusive, and emotionally supportive environments will help better prepare our most vulnerable students for opportunities to thrive now and in their future endeavors.

My visits with schools across our network consistently show students who display a palpable sense of curiosity and joyful learning. Their skills, scores, and graduation rates also affirm this approach works.

When we partner with schools and parents, and align all levels of the education system around a common vision — grounded in creating equitable learning opportunities for all students — great things happen.

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The True Value

The True Value of Associations in Times of Trouble and Uncertainty

Association trends continue to indicate Americans are joining less and do not always understand the value of membership. Households where adults work more than one job and personal declarations of “not enough time” all make it challenging for associations to maintain, let alone grow, membership.

In recent years, things moved along nicely – job growth was up, unemployment was down, and the stock market yielded amazing results. Most Americans were feeling pretty good about the state of the country. Then came an announcement that rocked the world – a severe, possibly deadly virus that would make its way from country to country. A pandemic. Suddenly, our economic euphoria fell to anxiousness, fear, and worry. Americans now wake up and go to bed hearing the same word – Coronavirus.

In the midst of panic, the first groups to offer solutions for our kids were educators and PTAs. School districts and teachers quickly moved to offer curricula online, and PTAs mobilized to help provide meals and resources to students.

It’s easy in the good times to feel we don’t need nonprofit associations or a community of others, but what do we say now? Belonging to your Council and Local PTAs provides a network of support, love, and encouragement when others are throwing up their hands. We’ve heard it time and again: it’s not about the crisis, it’s about how we respond to it.

Belonging and joining do matter. PTAs and educators are driven by a selfless desire to help their students and communities. They are an army bearing no armor yet equipped with an arsenal of personal gifts and tireless motivation.

It is my hope that we will see a growing trend of more Americans joining PTA – supporting their communities and proactively, not reactively, realizing we are stronger together.

Hopefully, there will never be another pandemic in our children’s lifetime, but undoubtedly, there will be something again challenging us to work together. Let’s face it head-on as PTA.