Dear Helpless Teacher,
In the spring, I was feverishly watching videos to learn how to use Microsoft Teams, so I could communicate and upload assignments for my students, who ironically were the ones helping me navigate what I was doing wrong in terms of attaching their assignments.
I don't know where I would have been without their guidance. Most of my students were diligent in their communication, but there were a few I didn't hear from once.
Three weeks into "the ordeal," as I have now dubbed the spring shutdown, I received a private message from a girl in my class begging for help. The help she needed wasn't in regard to plot elements, although I quickly learned a major internal conflict was brewing.
She received a text message from a boy in our class she sat beside before desks were COVID hot spots and group work was outlawed. In the text, he confided that he could not take one more minute of isolation. Plagued with mental health issues for years, he wanted to end his life and was saying a parting goodbye. Not knowing where else to turn, she reached out to me for an address to alert authorities.
I tried to move into action swiftly, but I was trapped at home without a database of school records. He was one of the students I hadn't heard from once. Twenty minutes later, I finally reached an administrator who secured an address. The cops arrived in the nick of time. He was sitting on his bed with a loaded shotgun in his trembling hands.
It was Good Friday.
The school calendar said we were off that day, but what is an off day to a teacher?
Thankfully, his life was spared.
In my entire teaching career, I don't think I've ever felt as helpless as I did that day. I wanted to do something, anything, to get that 14 year old boy the help he desperately needed.
This year a lot of people can relate to this sense of desperation.
Maybe, it's the person sitting in a hospital parking lot being denied entry to see a sick loved one, a grandmother who can't visit labor and delivery to meet her first grandchild, or a teacher wringing her hands because she instinctively knows something is off with her students but feels utterly powerless to fix it.
I can empathize with this teacher. I have been pecking out daily blogs for half a school year now, and I still feel like I haven't done a thing to "fix the problem."
Teachers are problem solvers, but this problem remains unsolved. The lack of a solution is killing us.
It may be years before we truly comprehend the extent of the damage this virus has caused. Like a traumatic accident, the person may look fine on the outside, but there's internal bleeding that needs to be assessed.
Don't let the smiling faces fool you. Teachers and students are not okay right now. They need help.
The week before schools closed last year, we were required to provide mental health training for our students. We were taught to recognize warning signs, seek help, and strive to create a trauma-informed classroom.
We want to do this, and we will.
But where are the people looking out for teachers who are reaching a breaking point.
It's time to assess the internal damage.
Is anyone paying attention?
-CDB