Dear Teacher as Learner,
This weekend it stormed. Today it is beautiful.
And when I say beautiful, I do not mean beautiful in the trite way that some people use the adjective to describe a new car or a mediocre steak. I mean the downright gorgeous that makes you wish you could make a direct call to heaven to merely say thanks for a day so scintillatingly glorious it mirrors what eternity will look like.
Though we’ve had to fight many storm clouds for these treasured days of spring, I am grateful for each one- maybe even more so because of the threatening winds and rain all around us.
Each radiant day catapults me back to last spring- a time when fear literally had a death grip on each of us.
Yet, fragile birds, completely immune to COVID, sang a different tune. I distinctly remember surreal, late morning walks on a random April Tuesday. I should have been giving an Act II quiz, instead I was watching a mockingbird on a powerline with a worm in her mouth and a red woodpecker going about his daily business while thinking, “Why does he get to work, but we can’t?”
I recall wanting to ask the birds if they knew about the global pandemic and if they had considered masking up for the good of all. But I quickly learned, nature doesn’t ask permission or follow any man-made rules. It was here before we got here, and it will be here when we leave.
No, she does not wear a mask and for that I am grateful because today I was able to see all of her again like I did last spring.
And I keep thinking maybe she has been here the whole time trying to get my attention, but I have always been too busy to notice. I don’t ever want to be that busy again.
As teachers, we are daily teaching others, desperately trying to get our students to learn something, anything. We know the first step is getting them to slow down and really focus.
Maybe one of the benefits of the universe flipping on us last year was the opportunity it provided for teachers to be the learners- the ones who needed to slow down to really focus.
In doing so, this is what I learned. Storm clouds don’t last forever. It feels like they will, but behind every black cloud is a radiant light.
Can you see it yet?
-CDB