Category: teacher

Christmas Looks Different This Year

I have a friend who had a small gathering of family to celebrate a milestone birthday, just 9 people representing 5 households. Four days later one of them tested positive for COVID-19. The rest need to get tested now and are in quarantine.

I have a family member whose neighbor had a small gathering to celebrate something, 12 people, I’m not sure how many households were represented. Ten of them tested positive for COVID-19, a few ended up in the hospital, one sadly passed away due to complications from COVID.

This Christmas I’d really like to see my family, but I think I can handle a different Christmas this year if it will help, not just my family, but many families to not have a missing family member at the next birthday or holiday gathering.

Thinking about how different Christmas will be this year, and how different this whole year has been, I wrote this poem:

Christmas Looks Different This Year by Mishell Wolff 2020

January, whispers began in the news eclipsed by death of a basketball icon.

 February into March, murmurs rippled as a cruise ship stays at sea, later docked in the bay, passengers in quarantine.

Mid-March became a full-fevered, all-out effort to stop the spread of Coronavirus, “Fifteen days to slow the spread.”

April and May, stay home, wash your hands, social distance, distance learning

Restaurants, take-out only, salons stay closed, hospitals fill, nurses stretched, protests.

End of May 100,000 U.S. COVID deaths, George Floyd, “I can’t breathe!” protests.

June, July, August, protests fill the streets, open business, save the economy, defund police, Black Lives Matter, defend America, antifa, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, too many to name, protests divide, tear gas, flash bangs, photo op in front of a historic church.

September, open schools, teachers are lazy, kids need socialization, they’ll fall behind.

October, small schools manage in person, others COVID spreads and revert back to distance learning, some stayed online, safety first.

November, please stay home, wear a mask, Zoom Thanksgiving, hospitals have no capacity for gathering-driven surge, staff is exhausted.

December, why didn’t we listen, ICUs expand, not enough, over 300,000 U.S. dead from COVID alone.

Many families, many reasons, no option to choose, an empty place this holiday season.

Christmas looks different this year; stay at home, wash your hands, physical distance, wear your mask.

Christmas looks different this year, help others, household only, so next year won’t have to be different.

Christmas looks different this year, the Spirit of Christmas doesn’t have a look, love others, do justly, love mercy, walk humbly.

Thankful in the Turmoil?

https://speakzeasy.wordpress.com/tag/emotional-turmoil/

I haven’t written much recently, but with what I have written, you know that I am broken, depressed, anxious, and generally not in a good place.

To help combat that I have been seeing a licensed therapist to gain insights and strategies to help navigate this cruel, cold, divided world we live in that is being ravaged by a disease that’s wreaking havoc on people’s physical and mental health.

I also just finished teaching a unit on stress and how to better manage stress in our lives. Between the two, therapy and teaching, one strategy stood out, being thankful, or showing gratitude.

I’m not talking about toxic positivity, the idea that if you think positive thoughts all the bad stuff will go away and you’ll feel all better, depression will magically disappear and your thoughts will suddenly slow down.

I’m talking about taking a few minutes each day in the midst of the turmoil and chaos that is life at the moment (because it is a moment, no matter how long it lasts, it will pass) and seeing the good things that are still there. We may have to squint our eyes and look really hard, maybe even pull out a magnifying glass or a microscope, but they’re there; those positive things that give us hope in humanity, that make life worth living, that make it that much easier to get out of bed the next day.

When my therapist first suggested the idea to write down five things each day I thought it was a dumb idea. I didn’t see how it could help, I knew it wasn’t going to make everything magically get better, but I did it anyway. For about three weeks now, I have been faithfully making a daily list of five things I’m thankful for.

I was right, the world hasn’t changed, my life is still in turmoil, I still feel broken, but it has made it a little easier to get out of bed each day. It has given me a challenge to look forward to as I try to find a few good things everyday, and I love a challenge.

Here are some of the things I’m thankful for (in no particular order)

  1. My kids because they made me a mom and showed me what it is to love someone so much that you can’t imagine life without them and how bad it hurts to see them hurting, and how amazing feels to see them happy and successful and being who they want to be.
  2. My job because it allows me to be immersed in my favorite subject and to be with my friends on a daily basis (pre-COVID; now it’s more on a weekly basis) and my co-workers are some of my best friends.
  3. My friends because they are there when I need people to talk to, to have fun with, etc.
  4. Food, because I love food, especially homemade food that I get to feed to my family at dinnertime all together talking about our day.
  5. My family, the ones that are by blood and the married in ones, because we are there for each other no matter what and help each other out.
  6. My students because I know that distance learning isn’t easy for most of them, but they show up on their computers every day and listen to me, then they go off and do the assignments I give them. They tell me things about their lives and struggles with school in emails, they ask for help, they’re doing their absolute best in this weird new world we live in and it gives me hope for the future that we have such a resilient group of young people who will go out into the world in a few years.
  7. Jesus because without him in my life, I wouldn’t have any peace.

This idea of giving thanks in the turmoil is actually biblical. In 1 Thessalonians 5:18 it says to “give thanks in all circumstances: for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Sometimes I think people mistake this to mean that Christians have to be thankful for our circumstances, but that’s not what the verse is saying at all, it says IN all circumstances.

That means, looking for the little things that make the living in those circumstances just a little bit easier. Seeing the things that make getting out of bed worth it every day.

Some days I do have to pull out a magnifying glass to find what I’m thankful for, but I still find at least five things every day to be thankful for, it hasn’t changed the chaos in the world, the division in the nation or the turmoil I feel in my life, but it has made getting out of bed each day easier.

Migraine Day: Sense Don’t Words Make The When

According to NortonHealthcare.com, approximately 39 million Americans suffer migraine attacks each year. I am one of those lucky people.

Some people don’t seem to understand just how debilitating a migraine can be and seem to think that a migraine is just a “bad headache.” A migraine is so much more than just a headache though.

A migraine wreaks havoc on many parts of your body. It can mess with your balance, your cognition, your vision, your gastrointestinal tract, your sense of smell, your sense of touch and taste and so much more.

For some people who suffer from migraines, they can be knocked down from a few hours to a few days. Many migraine sufferers have learned ways to cope with them in order to get on with life because they happen so frequently that if they don’t they may end up losing their job.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a migraine hit me during work, luckily I was working from home, but I still had students depending on me on the other side of the computer screen. When I started to feel better, later that evening I wrote a poem about it and want to share it here with all of you.

Wake up, systems check.

Nose is clear, I can breathe.

Stretch, just the usual cracks.

I can move, not too stiff.

Roll out of bed, start the day.

Morning routine, exercise.

Breakfast, brush the teeth.

Daily dose of migraine preventative.

That should do it, fingers crossed.

Need a good day, need to teach.

Pinprick of pain, behind left eye.

Could it be, a migraine coming?

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Swallow the meds, for onset of pain.

Gulp some caffeine, help it to veins.

Walk ten steps, work from home.

COVID era, has some perks.

Set up Zoom, students show in tiny boxes.

Pain is gone, but words don’t work.

“Student’s hello, To Welcome Wednesday!”

Funny looks, smiling faces, in little squares.

One asks, “Are you okay?”

I laugh, “I’m fine, just tired today.”

Can’t let them know how bad it is.

It’ll get better, it always does.

Classes Zoom, Periods 1, 2, 3.

Lunch and prep pass by, I’m busy.

Time for class, Zoom again.

Ice pick stabbing my left eye.

Wave of nausea, washes over me.

Students, swim on the screen.

Tiny boxes, all blurry.

“Yesterday, work to do.

Here. Questions. Let me know.

Tomorrow. I’ll see.” Waves goodbye.

More meds, dizzy, walls in my way.

Couch close by, alarm set for the end of class.

Sleep release, gone too quick.

Back to work, at my desk.

One more class to suffer through.

School is over, for today.

Sun too bright, turn it off.

Dog too loud, make it stop.

Clothes hurt my skin, take them off.

Climb in bed, maybe tomorrow…

Us vs. Them is Tearing Me Apart

Last weekend I finally told my husband what I’ve been afraid to tell anybody, but since it’s Suicide Prevention Month, I decided to be honest.

I don’t want to be here anymore.

I’m actually feeling much better now, that I put it out there to another human being and not just keeping it in my head and it was much worse back in July when I wrote the blog titled, “Broken Nation, Broken Me.” Back then it was so bad that I thought everyday what life would be like for those I left behind, now it’s maybe once every couple of weeks.

I don’t have a plan, I’m actually scared of the thought of going through with it, and I would never willingly leave my children without a mother, but somedays it is extremely difficult to get out of bed and do all the things required of living.

Now, with that out of the way, let me explain why.

I’m hypersensitive. Many people don’t know that about me because I learned at a young age that showing emotion caused me to be called weak. If I cried over something my dad would ask, “Do you want me to give you something to cry about?” usually reaching for the stick he used to beat us with. The “stick” was a piece of wooden baseboard about 3 feet long that he kept on top of the refrigerator. I learned rather quickly to not show when I was upset by something and just bury my emotions.

That was probably the beginning of my anxiety and depression issues, but that’s not what this post is about.

Every four years our nation goes through a presidential election cycle and of course people choose sides. I was raised by my mom in an uber-conservative Christian church, part of the “Moral Majority” led by the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jim Baker. While my mom was a registered Democrat because of John F. Kennedy, she completely agreed with everything the Moral Majority preached and pretty much always voted Republican as far as I knew. She and my Grandma loved Ronald Reagan and everything he stood for and voted for George Bush when he ran because he would follow in Reagan’s footsteps.

I say all that to say that I was raised in a religion that attempted to teach me that if I was a true Christian I would always vote Republican because they were the party that supported life. The Democrats were the evil ones who supported killing babies. I was even taught that some Christians weren’t Christian enough if they were Democrats, because Democrats were so evil.

So every four years, I see our nation divided between those who vote Republican and those who vote Democrat, however this year seems to be the absolute worst!

If someone criticizes anything that the Republicans or Trump has said or done they are automatically labelled a “libtard,” a “sheep,” a “bleeding heart liberal” or many other not so nice names. If a person criticizes Biden or the Democrats they are “haters,” “Trumpkins, ” or “racists.”

In my lifetime, I have never seen our country so divided. I teach history, so I know that it has been this divided in the past, I mean we had a Civil War, talk about division! However, I wasn’t alive for that, so it didn’t affect my mental health.

The election isn’t the only thing people are divided on. People are divided on race issues, whether or not there is systemic racism in this country (there is).

Whether or not we should wear masks.

Whether or not hair and nail salons should be open as well as other businesses.

Whether or not COVID-19 is real.

Whether or not schools should open and if teachers are actually working when they do virtual school. (This one really hurts me mentally and emotionally because I am working my behind off to be there for my students and teach them and answer their questions any time of the night or day. I mean, I am getting emails from them at midnight and one o’clock in the morning sometimes.)

All this division is wreaking havoc on my mental health as well as on our nation.

On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln quoted Matthew 12:25 in his “House Divided” speech when he said that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Matthew 12:25 actually says that, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.” New King James Version.

This amazing, great nation that we call the United States of America is not very united right now. It is extraordinarily divided right now.

This division is breaking me. I speak about something and I’m attacked by one side or the other. Just seeing the division is disheartening and making me not want to be a part of this life.

When I have spoken how disheartening this is for me, I hear amazing platitudes like, “God is in control.” or “Give it to God.” or, “It’s just the devil trying to get you down, you need to rebuke him.”

I’m tired of Christian platitudes.

I want to see Christians begin to live by the example that Jesus taught. To love your neighbor as yourself. When they asked who was our neighbor, Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan where a priest saw a person who needed help and he walked by on the other side of the road, then a Levite saw the man and he also walked by on the other side of the road. When the Samaritan saw the man who needed help (Samaritans were looked down on by Jews in that time) he helped the man, took him to an inn and paid to have the innkeeper look after him. (Paraphrased from Luke 10:25-37)

Instead of Us vs. Them how about we begin to look at it as we. We need to get along. We need to survive this life. We need to help each other. We need to understand and support one another. We don’t always have to agree with everyone in order to love them.

Love is a choice and it seems the United States of America have become the Divided States of Hate and my mental health is deteriorating in this nation as well as the mental health of many of my fellow Americans.

Instead of demonizing “them,” maybe we can begin to work to understand where they are coming from.

Instead of demonizing “them,” maybe we can listen to what they have to say instead of what “Us” says “they” want, believe, are going to do etc.

I find myself retreating further and further into my shell to get away from the division in this country, in this state and in my city. There are still days I don’t want this life.

Let Me Say It Louder For The People In The Back

I LOVE this country! My favorite place to visit is Washington D.C., I have been there more times than I like to admit (about 18 times, 3 times last year alone.) Other people go to Disneyland over and over, I prefer to walk among the buildings and monuments that tell the story of our nations’s 200+ year history. I especially love to take other people and share it with them. (Hit me up if you ever want to go when this pandemic is over, I can’t wait to get back there.

I love DC so much that one of my retirement goals is to be a tour guide at the Nation’s Capitol for at least one season before finding a beach to relax on for the rest of my life.

I LOVE the United States so much that I became a U.S. history teacher to instill just a tiny bit of the knowledge of our past into our future generations and maybe a few of them will begin to truly LOVE our country too and want to pass on the knowledge of our past.

I say all that because many people believe that it’s impossible to LOVE this country while at the same time acknowledge that we aren’t as perfect or exceptional as we’d like to believe we are. It’s one of the divisions I wrote about in my last post in July. It’s part of why I haven’t written since then. The division seems to have grown and I’m still struggling with that.

Instead of working to make this a better place for everyone, it seems like a very loud group of people are trying to say that everybody is already treated equally and we should all just be happy with it. That same group of people are also “helping” police keep cities safe from Black Lives Matter protests by showing up with guns when according to a report by the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project released on September 3, 2020 has said that 93% of the protests that have taken place this summer have been peaceful and non-violent.

In fact, as I write this, there is a planned Black Lives Matter protest happening in my lovable, livable town and a possibly armed group there to “defend” our town against them, even though the chief of police has been letting people know all week that the police don’t need civilian “help.” They don’t want what happened in Kenosha to happen here.

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston wrote the Declaration of Independence, the most famous break up letter ever. In it, they wrote that “…all men are created equal…,” but they didn’t all believe that when they wrote it and many Americans still don’t believe it today.

If they truly believed that ALL men were created equal, then why at first did they not want to include enslaved people in population counts? Then when they settled that question, why did they decide to only count them as 3/5 of a person?

Once slavery ceased to exist at the end of the Civil War, yes we had to fight a deadly, costly war to finally end the peculiar institution in this nation, many states passed laws that became known as Jim Crow laws to keep African Americans in a second class status. People in power in those states, cities and counties, still didn’t believe that ALL men were created equal.

In other places around the country banks instituted redlining, where they wouldn’t approve loans for houses in certain areas, usually areas of town where people of color lived.

There is a whole lot, I won’t bore you with about how all of that led to institutionalized or systemic racism, which is defined by McGraw Hill in Sociology and You as the type of discrimination that results from unfair practices that are part of the structure of society and that have grown out of traditional, accepted behaviors. That leads to discrimination in education, employment, the criminal justice system and many other public arenas.

The United States government continued to prove that they did not believe that ALL men were created equal when they passed the Chinese Immigration Act in 1882 and continued to renew it until 1945, and again when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that resulted in the Internment of 122,000 Americans of Japanese descent, with about 70,000 of them being Nisei, a person born in America of Japanese parents (ourdocuments.gov). It wasn’t until 1988 that the Senate voted on a bill to apologize to the internees and offer them reparations for their time in the internment camps. The last camp closed in 1946 (New York Times).

Many cities had laws that restricted Blacks and Hispanics from buying homes as late as the 1970s and 1980s (https://www.kqed.org/news/11727455/black-farmworkers-in-the-central-valley-escaping-jim-crow-for-a-subtler-kind-of-racism). Many police departments still pull over people of color far more often than whites. (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/the-stop-race-police-traffic/)

I’ve been in teacher mode for this blog far too long and it’s time to end. If you’ve read this far, THANK YOU!!!!!!

I LOVE this country, but we have a problem with treating ALL men AND women equally. We can do better, we have to do better because Black lives matter as do Hispanic lives and Asian lives and the lives of every marginalized person in this country.

If you’d like to learn more, here are a few videos. There is also an incredible documentary on Netflix called 13th.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_66tq4A3WYQ

Divided Nation; Broken Me

Our nation just celebrated Independence Day on July 4th. It was the 244th birthday of our country. Of course there have been times that our nation has been divided, once it got so bad it lead to the Civil War and 1968 is described in multiple places as a “tumultuous year,” but it hasn’t been this divided in my lifetime.

After 9/11, for the most part, Americans joined together against a common enemy; Al Queda. It was nice to feel the solidarity between most Americans as we stood together in unity.

Fast forward to 2020, the longest year of my life and we’re only in July. It started with wildfires in Australia and the threat of World War III and we’ve experienced COVID-19 protests to get our hair cut and go to a bar to have a drink as well as protests against police brutality. I just heard that most counties in California are having to close restaurants for in restaurant dining, bars, hair salons etc. yet we are debating how to open schools safely.

Everyone is an armchair epidemiologist and knows exactly how this new virus will work, even though actual scientists, virologists, epidemiologists and other doctors are constantly learning new things because they are seeing what the virus does to people in the hospitals around the world. Because of new knowledge, scientists, the CDC and WHO are giving new guidelines and recommendations that the armchair experts are calling BS on because its different than what was said earlier. That’s the thing with learning something new; sometimes it causes you to change your mind about what you thought was true before because you have more information now.

Then we are being led by a group of people at the national level who continue to make a physical illness political. Masks help prevent the spread of all kinds of germs, not just COVID-19. We have known this for years! However, now, if you wear a mask to protect others, you are actually wearing it to show your disapproval of Trump, or because you’re scared or a sheeple or a myriad of other negative connotations that people have come up with. If you are one of the people who for whatever reason choose not to wear a mask (which I honestly don’t understand except for some health reasons, that you should probably be staying home if you have) you are called selfish, a Trumper (or worse).

Masks are dividing us. Seriously people, this is our collective health.

That brings me to the next thing that divides us. So many people who say, well it has a 99% survival rate. That means there is 1% that won’t survive and that doesn’t take into consideration that many people who “recover” will face lifelong medical complications from “surviving” COVID-19.

I also hear so many people ask about those dying of COVID, “how old were they?” or “what were their underlying conditions?” As if being old or having a preexisting condition is an acceptable reason to die of COVID before your time. I’m sure as long as it is someone they don’t know who is dying those people don’t really care.

Then there’s the argument about opening schools. All the real experts say the best way to avoid spreading COVID is to avoid crowds, close contact and confined spaces, but then so many parents who either don’t believe COVID is as dangerous as scientists say it is or are tired of having their kids at home or are worried about them falling behind some arbitrary educational goals that non-educator government officials created want their kids back in school all day. Unfortunately, there is no safe way to send kids back to school in the school buildings.

Classrooms are going to be crowded, mine cannot accommodate 6 feet of spacing between people, we’ll be lucky to get 2-3 feet of space between each person. The classrooms will be crowded and they are confined spaces. Add to that the fact that most classrooms are poorly ventilated and schools can’t afford hand sanitizer and Kleenex during a regular flu season. Schools will not be able to keep students safe if they are back in person for learning.

Schools will also not be able to keep staff safe if we have to return to in person learning, there is just not enough money to purchase enough safety product.

All of this stress leads to broken me.

People say schools need to open so parents can work. Why is it the schools responsibility to provide free daycare to parents? Why isn’t it possible for workplaces to provide variable schedules so that parents can be home with their children to provide some guidance with the distance learning that teachers are providing? Many social problems have been exposed by this pandemic, a lack of internet accessibility was exposed at the beginning of distance learning and it was up to schools to work with local internet service providers to get hotspots for families that needed it. Why can’t internet service providers provide free or low cost internet to students whose families make below a certain income? Schools already continued to provide food for children under 18 during distance learning. Many restaurants have stepped up and provided meals for seniors who are low income. That’s awesome, why can’t something similar be done for kids, oh wait, because schools will do it.

Society needs to step up and step in and begin to help with some of society’s problems that have been exposed. They can’t just leave it all to the schools to take care of. If we send all students back to in person instruction in a few weeks, there will be an even larger increase in the number of people who are infected with COVID-19. Many of those who are infected will become terribly ill, some will die. I hope it isn’t you, or someone you love.

I’m tired of feeling broken by our divided nation. We need to unite and work together to fight against this disease and stop its spread as much as possible instead of fighting each other.

Wear a mask. Stay 6 feet away. Avoid crowded places. Avoid confined spaces. Show compassion and love for others in your actions and words. And lets work together to fix society’s problems.

I’m a teacher and This is NOT a Vacation

We all have bad days from time to time, right now, in the midst of this worldwide coronavirus pandemic, there are probably many people who are having bad days. I know that my day isn’t the worst one out there. I still have a job, a house, food and most importantly, toilet paper, although I could use some hand sanitizer and I’m beginning to run low on soap.

The main reason that I’m having a bad day is that I just got word, that what I’ve been dreading since I first heard that things were closing down and that we needed to shelter at home, is official.

School buildings in my district are officially closed for the remainder of the school year.

Distance learning will continue to happen, but the connections to students just aren’t the same through the computer as they are in the classroom. I had so much more to teach them and I’m not talking about the curriculum.

April is sexual assault awareness month as well as autism awareness month and I make both of them a big deal in my classroom.

I want them to know they are loved for who they are, I don’t only care about them because of the grades they earn, I care about them enough to want them to learn and earn good grades.

I want them to know that its okay to make mistakes and that mistakes are actually a huge part of learning for the rest of their lives.

I want them to know that the knowledge they learn in school is useful, but not just the curriculum. It’s learning to work with others, time management, learning to learn, expanding what they know, looking deeper into things, asking relevant questions, thinking for themselves and not just following others, respect for themselves and others and so much more.

I want my students who may not come from the best families to know that their background doesn’t determine their future, they do.

I want my students to know that college may not be for everyone, they may be better off going to a trade school or opening a business. College doesn’t teach people to fix my backed up kitchen sink, but a plumber knows how to do that and can charge me an arm and a leg to do it in an emergency. We also need people who can build houses, install electricity components, fix cars, farm our food etc.

I want other students to know that if they want to go to college to absolutely go for it. We always need more business people, more teachers, doctors, nurses, scientists, computer technicians, graphic artists, authors, etc.

I want them to know that they are capable of doing great things, they just have to be willing to put in the work to accomplish them, whether that’s brain work or physical work, most great things don’t come easy.

I want my students to know that their education is up to them. They are responsible for how much or how little they learn. I can only give them the resources and guide them in the right direction, I can’t cut open their heads and pour the information in. It’s up to them to read and write and do the work required to get an education.

I want them to know that getting an education doesn’t end when their time in school ends. They can learn new things for the rest of their lives.

I want my students to know that I miss them. I miss coming to the classroom everyday and seeing their faces, whether they were smiling, angry, ambivalent or whatever that day held. I miss them. I miss joking with them and talking to them and getting to know more about them. I miss seeing their eyes light up when they make a connection with the material and see how something from the past relates to today.

I want my students to know, I’m not done with them. I will do my best to teach them remotely. I will do my best. No matter how much of the work they do, I will continue to provide them with opportunities to learn. I will do this because I am a teacher and this is NOT a vacation.