In an unjust world, I used to find hope in teaching. 

Before I truly begin, let me first clearly state: This new found lack of hope, it has nothing to do with my students. They are not the problem. I do not subscribe to any “kids these days” beliefs.  Are kids today different than they used to be? Absolutely! Is that the problem? Absolutely not. That’s just how a changing world works. But that’s a discussion for another day.  

And now that that is out of the way, let me get back to where I am. To where we are.  

In an unjust world, I used to find hope in teaching.

I believe that we have been building this unjust world that we find ourselves in for centuries now. We did not just find ourselves here. Where we are now, it is a result of all the injustice this county has been founded and built upon.  And here we are.  

And so now I sit here, in the suburbs right outside of Chicago and each night I go to sleep, or try to go to sleep, with my head filled with the stories of injustice that are unfolding in our neighborhoods, in our communities, in our streets and in our cities. Parents and caretakers are being taken while they are bringing their children to school.  Schools are going on lockdown because ICE agents are lined up in trucks outside of the building at dismissal time.  Teachers are trying to shield their young students from witnessing the kidnapping of those who care for them.  People are being thrown to the ground, arrested, dragged off from the lives they have built, by those who have been given power by our government. 

To be unaffected by this, is to be unhuman.  The injustice is palpable.  

And in these greatest moments of injustice, I try to find hope and seek solace where I can. I find solace in community, I find hope in those who are doing the work to care for and protect others and always, always, always I find all of the hope and solace in the ways that young people demand that this world do better.  

And, in the past, perhaps my greatest source of hope has always come from being a teacher.  For the past two decades, when the world has felt devoid of hope, I turned to the work I did in my classroom. When it has felt like we are powerless to create positive change, I have felt empowered by the fact that I am a teacher.  My classroom has been ground zero for my resistance against injustice.  

And I know that there are some who will read that and instantly claim that I have been indoctrinating students.  And I have come to understand that those are people who I simply cannot argue with. Because to label resisting injustice as indoctrination causes me to question who and what you are really trying to protect and makes it clear that the way we view the world and our role in it is just too far apart.  

So this writing. This is not for them.  

I suppose this writing is for those who are feeling this same loss of hope. For those who have seen what is happening in our schools and in our classrooms and who feel the same frustration or for those who are unaware of what is happening in our schools and in our classrooms who, perhaps, when they better understand will come to want to demand that we do better.  

Because in the past, in this current moment of ICE and the ways in which they are kidnapping and disappearing people off the streets, I would have turned to my teaching in order to counterattack the horrible messages that are filling young people about immigrants and their families. 

I would have resisted the images that I know my students are seeing by flooding their minds with positive images of all sorts of people, from all sorts of places and the ways in which immigrants enhance our country and build our communities.  I would have resisted the current trend of silencing any critical voice by teaching my students the ways in which they can ask critical questions of the information they are being bombarded with.  And I would have resisted the ways in which those with power send messages that protecting their own privilege is more important than protecting those who are most vulnerable by teaching my students the skills they need to care for themselves and to care for others and their community.  

This is how I have found hope. In resisting the current world by teaching my students how to build a better one.  

But now.  Things have changed.  

Because now, in so many ways. Teachers’ hands are tied.  Now, teachers no longer can weave together the academic skills that students need to learn with the work in the world that makes those skills meaningful. Now, teachers no longer can select texts that are relevant to the current moment and meet the needs of the students sitting alongside us.  Now, teachers can no longer take the social emotional learning standards that states provide and craft lessons that teach those standards while using them to help kids make sense of the mess of a world they are living in.  

Because now, teachers are not trusted as professionals. Now, teachers are being treated more like robots.  The curriculum has been scripted for us.  It comes in a box and it comes in a binder and it comes in workbook after workbook.  Instead of seeing the world as it is and crafting lessons that help students to process it all, now we turn to the next page, in the next teacher guide, in the next workbook and we just keep moving because that is what teaching has become. Moving through the curriculum.  

And I believe that this is by design. Those who have traditionally held power, they don’t want our young people learning how to question. They are uncomfortable with young people learning to read critically and view the world critically.  Because when young people learn to do that, then they will come to decide for themselves what is just and what is right and who needs to be protected. And that does not often favor those who have held power in the past.  So those who have held power in the past, they have a real interest in maintaining the status quo.  So under the guise of “protecting our children,” they have found ways to protect themselves.  And under the guide of “getting back to basics,” they have found ways to over emphasize concrete skills at the cost of allowing students to grow the more abstract skills of critically thinking and questioning the world around them through the texts that they read and the writing that they compose.  

And I worry what this means for all of us.  And that leaves me with this growing sense of a lack of hope.  

But I know that I cannot give up.  I know that is what those who have traditionally held power are hoping for.  And I also know that I have to stay safe.  So my resistance these days, it looks really different. To be an educator right now who is committed to social justice in a world that is, in so many ways, decidedly against it, is to be required to find new ways to resist.  

So I resist in the ways that I treat my students. I resist in the ways I ask that they treat each other. I resist in the ways I emphasize community care above rules and punishment. I resist in the questions that I continue to ask. I resist in the words that I choose to hang on my walls. I resist in the books that I choose to put on my shelves.  I resist in the ways that I model owning my impact and repairing harm when I cause it.  I resist in the ways I respond to micro-agressions and hate speech, from kids and from grown-ups, every single time that I hear it.  I resist in the ways I choose to consume information and perspectives and lives and stories.  And I resist in the ways I choose to radically love and accept my students for exactly who they are and the full selves that they bring into my classroom.  

And is this enough? Probably not. It will never feel like enough. But it is something.  And it is better than the alternative of simply giving up.  So who I am now, who I am as a teacher, it is changing and it is adjusting and that adjustment has been really hard. I have profoundly felt the loss of something that I used to know.  But I am also going to keep figuring it out because our kids deserve it and this world needs it.  So that is where I am.  That is where we are. 

In an unjust world, I used to find hope in teaching. 

Before I truly begin, let me first clearly state: This new found lack of hope, it has nothing to do with my students. They are not the problem. I do not subscribe to any “kids these days” beliefs.  Are kids today different than they used to be? Absolutely! Is that the problem? Absolutely not. That’s just how a changing world works. But that’s a discussion for another day.  

And now that that is out of the way, let me get back to where I am. To where we are.  

In an unjust world, I used to find hope in teaching.

I believe that we have been building this unjust world that we find ourselves in for centuries now. We did not just find ourselves here. Where we are now, it is a result of all the injustice this county has been founded and built upon.  And here we are.  

And so now I sit here, in the suburbs right outside of Chicago and each night I go to sleep, or try to go to sleep, with my head filled with the stories of injustice that are unfolding in our neighborhoods, in our communities, in our streets and in our cities. Parents and caretakers are being taken while they are bringing their children to school.  Schools are going on lockdown because ICE agents are lined up in trucks outside of the building at dismissal time.  Teachers are trying to shield their young students from witnessing the kidnapping of those who care for them.  People are being thrown to the ground, arrested, dragged off from the lives they have built, by those who have been given power by our government. 

To be unaffected by this, is to be unhuman.  The injustice is palpable.  

And in these greatest moments of injustice, I try to find hope and seek solace where I can. I find solace in community, I find hope in those who are doing the work to care for and protect others and always, always, always I find all of the hope and solace in the ways that young people demand that this world do better.  

And, in the past, perhaps my greatest source of hope has always come from being a teacher.  For the past two decades, when the world has felt devoid of hope, I turned to the work I did in my classroom. When it has felt like we are powerless to create positive change, I have felt empowered by the fact that I am a teacher.  My classroom has been ground zero for my resistance against injustice.  

And I know that there are some who will read that and instantly claim that I have been indoctrinating students.  And I have come to understand that those are people who I simply cannot argue with. Because to label resisting injustice as indoctrination causes me to question who and what you are really trying to protect and makes it clear that the way we view the world and our role in it is just too far apart.  

So this writing. This is not for them.  

I suppose this writing is for those who are feeling this same loss of hope. For those who have seen what is happening in our schools and in our classrooms and who feel the same frustration or for those who are unaware of what is happening in our schools and in our classrooms who, perhaps, when they better understand will come to want to demand that we do better.  

Because in the past, in this current moment of ICE and the ways in which they are kidnapping and disappearing people off the streets, I would have turned to my teaching in order to counterattack the horrible messages that are filling young people about immigrants and their families. 

I would have resisted the images that I know my students are seeing by flooding their minds with positive images of all sorts of people, from all sorts of places and the ways in which immigrants enhance our country and build our communities.  I would have resisted the current trend of silencing any critical voice by teaching my students the ways in which they can ask critical questions of the information they are being bombarded with.  And I would have resisted the ways in which those with power send messages that protecting their own privilege is more important than protecting those who are most vulnerable by teaching my students the skills they need to care for themselves and to care for others and their community.  

This is how I have found hope. In resisting the current world by teaching my students how to build a better one.  

But now.  Things have changed.  

Because now, in so many ways. Teachers’ hands are tied.  Now, teachers no longer can weave together the academic skills that students need to learn with the work in the world that makes those skills meaningful. Now, teachers no longer can select texts that are relevant to the current moment and meet the needs of the students sitting alongside us.  Now, teachers can no longer take the social emotional learning standards that states provide and craft lessons that teach those standards while using them to help kids make sense of the mess of a world they are living in.  

Because now, teachers are not trusted as professionals. Now, teachers are being treated more like robots.  The curriculum has been scripted for us.  It comes in a box and it comes in a binder and it comes in workbook after workbook.  Instead of seeing the world as it is and crafting lessons that help students to process it all, now we turn to the next page, in the next teacher guide, in the next workbook and we just keep moving because that is what teaching has become. Moving through the curriculum.  

And I believe that this is by design. Those who have traditionally held power, they don’t want our young people learning how to question. They are uncomfortable with young people learning to read critically and view the world critically.  Because when young people learn to do that, then they will come to decide for themselves what is just and what is right and who needs to be protected. And that does not often favor those who have held power in the past.  So those who have held power in the past, they have a real interest in maintaining the status quo.  So under the guise of “protecting our children,” they have found ways to protect themselves.  And under the guide of “getting back to basics,” they have found ways to over emphasize concrete skills at the cost of allowing students to grow the more abstract skills of critically thinking and questioning the world around them through the texts that they read and the writing that they compose.  

And I worry what this means for all of us.  And that leaves me with this growing sense of a lack of hope.  

But I know that I cannot give up.  I know that is what those who have traditionally held power are hoping for.  And I also know that I have to stay safe.  So my resistance these days, it looks really different. To be an educator right now who is committed to social justice in a world that is, in so many ways, decidedly against it, is to be required to find new ways to resist.  

So I resist in the ways that I treat my students. I resist in the ways I ask that they treat each other. I resist in the ways I emphasize community care above rules and punishment. I resist in the questions that I continue to ask. I resist in the words that I choose to hang on my walls. I resist in the books that I choose to put on my shelves.  I resist in the ways that I model owning my impact and repairing harm when I cause it.  I resist in the ways I respond to micro-agressions and hate speech, from kids and from grown-ups, every single time that I hear it.  I resist in the ways I choose to consume information and perspectives and lives and stories.  And I resist in the ways I choose to radically love and accept my students for exactly who they are and the full selves that they bring into my classroom.  

And is this enough? Probably not. It will never feel like enough. But it is something.  And it is better than the alternative of simply giving up.  So who I am now, who I am as a teacher, it is changing and it is adjusting and that adjustment has been really hard. I have profoundly felt the loss of something that I used to know.  But I am also going to keep figuring it out because our kids deserve it and this world needs it.  So that is where I am.  That is where we are. 

To My Dearest Students,

I began this school year with a letter and I would like to end it with one as well.

Well, here we are. The final day of one very long school year. Before I send you off into this world beyond our classroom, I wanted to take a moment to just let you know a few things.

This year has been something. I think it will be a long while before any of us are really able to fully process all that took place between the start of this school year and the end of it. We are not leaving here unscathed. There are scars that we bear from this year that will take a good long time to heal. And that is okay. Those scars have made us stronger.

You may hear the adults around you talking about what kids have lost this year. They might call it learning loss. They might say things about how behind kids are. They might worry about how you are going to catch up. But, as always, I want you to remember that who you are, right now, in this moment, is exactly enough. And while there are people around you who might want to focus on what you have lost, I want to just remind you of all that you have gained. Of all that you have learned this year.

You have learned to build community, such a beautiful community, while remaining 6 feet apart (well, almost 6 feet apart, almost all of the time). You have learned that community can sustain us through difficult things and it can also amplify the joy that we feel. And, perhaps most importantly, it serves as the foundation upon which we can do the hard work that the world requires of us.

You have learned to better understand who you each are and how your identity impacts the way you move through this world. You have learned that who you are is a complex mixture of beautiful things and if the world does not see that and does not make space for you, it is because there is something wrong with this world and not something wrong with you.

You have learned to better understand others and who they are and understand that who they are impacts the way that they move through this world. You have learned to see people for who they show you that they are and not who you assume for them to be. You have learned to listen to their stories and to know them through their stories and you have learned that true connection and understanding is built upon this story sharing.

You have learned to see not only the beauty in the world, but the parts that are ugly so that you can work to fix them and make them better. You have learned how to read in a way that will allow you better understand the things that feel wrong and broken and you have learned to use your voice and your writing to ask for the changes that you want to see in this world.

You have learned to be inspired by those doing the work around you. You have learned to look not only to those who are in the spotlight, but to those who are in the margins and behind the scenes and on the sidelines and in all the places that power and privilege leave in the dark. You have learned that those are the places where some of the strongest fighters for change are grown. And you have learned how to learn from them.

You have learned ways to work to see the world more accurately and to better understand the world around you even when the world around you continues to make so little sense. You have learned to ask questions and seek answers and not to just accept what you are being told or what you are not being told. And this has navigated you through some difficult moments this year in a way that has brought you closer to some kind of truth.

There are just so many things that you have learned and I want you to know that I have been there, this whole time, learning right alongside you. And I have learned so very much from you as well. It has been an absolute privilege, gift and honor to have been your teacher this year.

There has been so much darkness in this world during this school year and you all have been the bright spots of light for me in so many ways, on so many days. You have given me hope when the world has seemed hopeless. You have given me joy when the world has seemed joyless. You have reminded me to laugh and to move forward and to question and to seek out information and to always, always, always, imagine ways that this world can be better.

So please know that while our school year ends today, our journey together certainly does not. Because each one of you is leaving behind so many lessons that you have taught me and I will continue to carry those with me for a very long time. You all have changed me and made me better and the effects of that will continue in immeasurable ways.

And though I would like to keep you here with me longer, I know that I must share you with the world. Because there are so many things that need fixing out there and I know that you are ready to do just that.

Thank you for this year. I love you.

Ms. Lifshitz

When I signed in tonight, I noticed that I have not written a single blog post since this school year began. And that feels about right. Because I signed in here tonight to write about how exhausted I am. I wish I was coming back here after all these months of the school year to share with you something inspirational, some of the work that my students and I have been doing, some words of peace as we make our way through another week of violence fueled by racism. But I don’t have any of that tonight, though all of that is desperately needed.

What I have tonight is my exhaustion.

You see, when I think back on the past two years, I think about how I went from my own personal crisis, straight into a global one. I started to heal from my own life falling apart just as the whole world began to fall apart. And there was never a choice to do anything but just keep going. To gather the broken pieces, to build some kind of foundation, no matter how fragile, and just move forward while standing on top of something I knew was not built to last.

I think that is what so many of us have done this year.

And now. Now that we are maybe starting to be able to see a light at the end of this tunnel, it seems as if the cracks in that fragile foundation are beginning to show. This moment reminds of me of when I used to come home from college and as soon as I got back to my parents’ house, I inevitably got sick. It’s like my body knew I was home and it knew it could get sick because now there was time and space for that. Well, I think that has been what has been happening these past few days and weeks for me. I think my mind and body know that we are coming into the home stretch, of this school year and, hopefully, of this pandemic. It seems to know that there is going to be time and space to fall apart a little bit, and my mind and body seem to be taking full advantage.

And the cracks are beginning to show.

For a year now, we, as educators, have struggled through our school days, however they might have looked, and we have carried our exhaustion along with us as we have adjusted and readjusted and tried and retried and failed and failed and failed. Because no matter how hard we have worked or how innovative we have been or how damn much we have loved our students through it all, there was simply just no way to make this school year feel fully successful. For those of us who have been full in-person teaching since the start of the year, for those who have been fully remote, for those who have been doing one of the millions of combinations of something in-between, nothing has felt fully successful. The best parts of what we do, have largely been made impossible. And the world has wanted so much from us. And there are administrators who have thanked us for being flexible, while continuing to ask of us the impossible, all the while telling us that it really isn’t all that bad. It all has just been so exhausting.

And the cracks are beginning to show.

And as many of us try to do right by our students, we are also trying to do right by our own children at home. And it feels as if we are constantly letting them down. Because as hard as this has been on educators, what we have asked of children this year seems infinitely harder. But it is hard to be there for your child, when you are also trying to be there for everyone else’s. For me, it has been making hard choices of what to do with my own remote learner while I am off teaching in-person. It has been watching her struggle and feeling like I should be able to help more. This is what I am trained to do. Why can’t I do it for my own kid? I have seen her stress and her anxiety and I have wanted so badly to protect her from it all. But I have learned that I can’t. I have started to navigate the IEP process and worried the whole time about what this means for my kid and where I should have made different choices and how this year has affected her and all of that feels useless because all I want for her, really, is to feel happy and loved and safe. But trying to make that happen has also just been so exhausting.

And the cracks are beginning to show.

And for many of us, as we take on these burdens, we are doing so in isolation. While I spent the first year of my personal-falling-apart, learning to exist while being held up by those around me, this second year has seen all of that ripped away as we became so very much defined by the units living within our own households. Community was something I came to rely on and then, in so many ways, community was ripped away. So many of us have struggled on our own as staying safe meant staying isolated. I have never been very good at asking for help to begin with, and this pandemic found a way to really exasperate that even more. When people have asked this year how I am doing, I came up with ways some standard ways to respond. I would say things like, “Oh, you know, I am still here.” Or, “I am surviving.” And I would always say it with a chuckle. And in many ways it was true. But what was behind the truth, was the other truth, “I am drowning and I feel completely on my own, but there is nothing anyone can do and there are so many people who have it so much harder and so I am just going to chuckle a little bit and admit that it all sucks.” And that truth has been so exhausting.

And the cracks are beginning to show.

For the past two years, I have told people that I exist in two states. I am either sad or I am busy. Happy isn’t really a thing for me right now. I feel joy. There is a lot of joy in my life. And I am grateful for all of it. But happy feels like something else. And it just isn’t a state that I exist in right now. So, when I can, I choose to be busy. And, over this past year, it has been hard to stay busy as we have been stuck inside of our houses. So, for me, that has meant that I have taken on one project after another. I have written curriculum and I have guided new team members through existing curriculum as we’ve tried to figure out a way to teach in this new way and I have worked within the community I live in to try and push our district closer towards justice and equity and I have said yes to webinars and presentations and I have started to cook more and make cookies for my kid’s lunch because it’s one of the few things that seems to make her really happy and and and. That is largely how I have kept myself moving. But the truth is, all the busy has been a way for me to hide. My ever growing to-do lists are a way to help me find purpose and value in my life when there are so many days were I doubt that those things exist. And that kind of busy has been so exhausting.

And the cracks are beginning to show.

So while the world starts to feel some hope again, I also want us to remember that it is going to take a long time for us to heal. I started writing tonight because I want to remind myself of that. So much damage has been done this past year. People have been harmed in so many different ways and for educators that harm has just been so public. And while we keep moving forward through this final stretch of the school year, I hope that the world can remember that the cracks that have made their way deep into our foundation, those cracks are going to take a long time to mend. I think for many of us, we are only just now starting to become aware of how deep these cracks really go because for so many of us, there is still no other choice but to just keep moving and telling ourselves that we will just have to fix it all later.

I am not writing tonight to ask for advice. To be honest, I am not in any kind of advice-receiving head space. I just needed somewhere to put this all because I know that when my own thoughts get too heavy to keep carrying alone, this little space is a good place to put them all down to allow them to rest for a while. And maybe there are others out there who are feeling these same things and knowing we aren’t alone always makes this load a little easier to carry.

So I am sending lots of love to all of you out there. Love with all your deep, foundational cracks. And I am hoping that we all can find some moments of peace sometime soon to allow those cracks to start to heal.

To My New Students In The Fall Of 2020,

Hi. Welcome. I am so very glad that you are here.

We have certainly all lived through quite a lot this summer.  So many things have been swirling around us.  A global pandemic. Cries for justice and equity and Black Lives Matter. Debates on what our very school year should look like.

You have probably taken in a whole lot of things and you are carrying those things into this school year and into our learning space and those things are probably feeling really heavy.  And so today, I want us to begin to build a space we can collectively hold the weight of all of the things that we are carrying and find some relief in carrying those things now together. As a community. And so I want to say to you again, “Hi. Welcome. I am so very glad that you are here.”

And before we get started, I want to tell you a few things.

First of all, I want you to know that I, too, am walking into this school year carrying the weight of a lot of the things the world has thrown at us over these past few months. This summer, I have found myself time and time again disappointed and angry with many of the adults around me and the decisions that they have been making. I have been angry because a lot of times it has felt as if those decisions that were being made were based on the needs of only those with the most power and privilege and that those decisions have not always led to the best conditions for all of our children to live and learn in. And that makes me angry. And so I have pushed back and I have questioned and I have raised my voice because that is what I would want you to do. And while some might say that this makes me unprofessional, I believe that fighting for the very best conditions for all our children to live and learn in is the very definition of what it should mean to be a teacher.

So, now, I want to tell you that it is okay to be angry.  It is okay to be sad. It is okay to be scared. It is okay to carry all of those things with you into this school year. You might hear some adults around you tell you that you need to be positive.  That you need to have a good attitude.  I have heard those things too. And, yes, those things can be important. But those things are not everything. And if those things come at the cost of you feeling invalidated for being upset, then those things are not what you need to hear. Adults sometimes tell you to be positive, because they are uncomfortable with your discomfort. Because they love you so much and they want you to be happy and they want you to feel good, so they sometimes forget to let you feel the pain that makes so much sense in this moment.

But the truth is that just like me, you might be carrying some of the anger and sadness and disappointment of this summer into this school year and I want you to know that it is okay. There is space for all of that here.  There is space for us to feel those things and those things can actually serve as the strong foundation on which we can build a successful community. Because building community happens when we are allowed to be honest about who we are and what we are feeling. When we feel like our emotions are valid simply because they are our honest responses to what we are living through. When we feel as if we are being heard and being seen for exactly who we are and not the versions of us that would make others feel more comfortable. When we are able to be our full and authentic selves, that is when we will find the strength that we need to make it through this moment. That is when we will begin to figure out who we are as a community. That is what I want for us this year.  And that starts today.

And while there are already people writing books on how to be a good teacher in this moment, I want to be really honest with you. I have no idea how exactly to do this all. I have nothing fully figured out yet.  I do not yet know how best to teach you because I have not even gotten to know you yet.

But I can tell you this.  We are going to figure this out together. No matter what we are carrying into this school year, I can tell you that I am going to find a way to get to know you all, to love you all and to meet you all exactly where you are, wherever that might be, and we will move forward together no matter what format our school year will take.  I might not know exactly how we will do that yet, but I can promise you that it will happen. Because that is what it means to me to be a teacher.  That is what it has always meant.

So while I will continue to be angry when I see decision makers ignoring the voices of entire groups of people, I will also be loving each and every one of you and working alongside of you to move us forward together as a community. There is space for both. And I want you to see that and know that and understand that part of loving a place is pushing for that place to be better and to do better. And that we can feel our anger and disappointment and sadness and still have space to feel all the other things too.

Because this year, we will also feel joy. We will feel the joy that comes along with creating something new together. We will feel the joy that comes along with sharing our stories and hearing the stories that other people have to tell. We will feel the joy that comes along with learning new things and understanding the world around us and finding our own ways to work to make that world a better place.

So as we start to walk together into this uncertain school year, I am going to say it just one more time so that it is absolutely clear.

Hi. Welcome. I am so glad that you are here.

Now, let’s get started.

It seems that every time we white folks suddenly wake up to the racism and white supremacy that has been around us for our entire lives, there is one question that gets asked over and over again, “Well what are we supposed to do?” I believe that this question comes from a desire for concrete actions that will lead to immediate results. Well, we know those actions do not exist. We cannot possibly fix over 400 years of oppression in a single moment. However, what we can do is use this moment to propel us towards the kinds of actions that will lead to the types of changes that can work to prevent moments like this one from occurring again and again indefinitely. But we often do not know where to begin.

Many schools and school districts begin with statements. In fact, yesterday, I sent out a thread of Tweets asking school leaders to just begin there. To not remain silent. But once a statement is made, there is a danger of feeling as if that is enough. When statements are made and no action is taken to back those statements up, our words are empty. So once a statement is made, then action must follow and that is where we often feel lost and so we give up and then nothing ever changes.  And so, I have spent some time over the last few days pulling together some resources that I can share with my own district as we look for actions that we can take in our journey towards becoming a more anti-racist school district.  And I thought that maybe those actions could be helpful to others as well.

Let me begin by acknowledging that I am a white educator. I teach in a district that is mostly made up of other white educators. The students and families in my district are mostly white. Because of the privilege our whiteness gives us, and because of the white supremacy that exists, many of us in my district have NOT done much work to understand our own identities and the role our race plays in shaping our lives and our experiences in our school system. This reality has shaped the actions that I feel we need to take. The actions that I am suggesting are geared towards districts that are similar to my own because that is what I know. I recognize that these same actions would NOT be places to start for every district. But I want to offer these suggestions for those who might need a place to begin in places that are similar to my own.

In addition, I want to point out that the very FIRST action that I am suggesting is that districts pay for professional development and consulting that will guide districts through necessary equity work and anti-bias and anti-racist training. I suggest that when hiring people, the focus is placed on seeking out organizations that are led by Black people, Indigenous people and other people of color. Every suggestion that I make after that comes from what I have learned over the past few years by listening to and learning from Black educators, Indigenous educators and other educators of color. I have learned because there are others that share generously and are, too often, not compensated for their work. They are the ones that should be guiding our work as districts. They are the ones who should be getting paid for their work. I share these suggestions of action because they have helped me to move forward and I hope that they might help others as well, but if districts want to really dig into this work, we need to be guided by those who know more than we do and whose lived experiences give them the perspective to know what is not working within our schools and districts.  That is not something I can provide.

What I can provide is what I have learned from others, what has worked for me in my own journey and what I want to see from my own district. And so, I offer those suggestions here in the form of 7 actions that we can take as schools and school districts as we attempt to create the kinds of change that will last beyond this one moment and will lead to real and long-lasting change in creating more anti-racist school districts.

ACTION 1: Commit to providing our district with anti-bias and anti-racist professional development and consulting led by organizations that center and are led by people who are Black, Indigenous and other People of Color. Before we guide our students in anti-racist work, we must do this work ourselves. You have the power to bring us the opportunities that we need to do that work. A wonderful place to begin in order to find this type of professional development is with Teaching Tolerance: https://www.tolerance.org/professional-development/request-a-training

ACTION 2: As you hire someone from outside of our district to help us grow, you can also begin to help us grow from within. We need books that will help us to better understand race and racism and the ways racism impacts our schools. We need practice in having conversations on race and racism with each other so that we can do better having conversations on race and racism with our students. You can allow for that by purchasing a text for us to read as a staff and providing us with an opportunity to discuss that text. Here are a few titles that might work: 

1. 1. So You Want to Talk About Race? by Ijeoma Oluo
   2. Black Appetite. White Food. by Jamila Lyiscott
   3. We Want to do More Than Survive by Bettina Love
   4. Not Light, But Fire by Matthew R. Kay
   5. How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
   6. Courageous Conversations About Race by Glenn Singleton

ACTION 3: As we grow our own anti-racist skills, and as we grow our ability to talk to each other about race and racism, then you can help us to talk with our students about race by purchasing books written for children, by Black authors, that center Black joy and Black lives and Black history and books for our classrooms that explicitly discuss whiteness and racism and white supremacy. Here are a few to start with: 

Picture Books 

Hey Black Child 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy 

M is for Melanin

Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness 

Something Happened In Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice 

Middle Grade Chapter Books

This Book is Anti-Racist

Clean Getaway 

The Parker Inheritance 

Ghost Boys

Black Brother, Black Brother

Piecing Me Together

There are so many other titles, but sometimes long lists can be overwhelming. But use those lists and help us to get those books into our classroom. As you do that, you can provide us with opportunities to evaluate the books that we are using in our classrooms so that we, as educators, can get better at reading all books more critically. This will allow us to ensure that we are choosing to bring books to our students that do not perpetuate harmful stereotypes, misrepresentations and erasures. I have put together a tool based on the work of Teaching Tolerance and Social Justice Books that can help us to do that work. That tool can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1joub6JP0mF3BBAjETNCMLuyI_vwxr7nRNERP2VTjI9M/edit

ACTION 4: Form committees of grade levels teams to critically evaluate our curriculum. We can look at what is being taught across each grade level and begin to ask questions such as: Whose voices are being heard? Whose voices are being centered? Whose voices are being marginalized? Whose voices are being left out? You can provide opportunities for us to work together to evaluate our current curriculum through this lens and then when we find the voices that have been left out and marginalized, you can give us time to make the curricular changes that bring those voices into the center. Give us opportunities to do this work in regards to the history we teach, the texts that we read, the cultures that we study, etc. Have grade levels identify just one unit that feels problematic and then work together to ensure more voices, more stories, more perspectives are presented within that unit. Let teachers feel the difference in a more inclusive and anti-racist curriculum within just one unit and then allow that feeling to motivate us towards making more change. Give us time and compensation to create those changes. 

ACTION 5: Provide us with a structure to look at our data. We have so much data that can help us to get a better picture of who we are helping and who we are failing as a district.  We need to look at the numbers of students from specific groups in order to see who is over-represented and who is under-represented in areas such as special education, gifted and talented programs and discipline referrals. And when we can identify specific groups whom we are failing, then we need to ask ourselves HOW are our policies, programs and procedures are standing in the way or creating barriers for all students to have equal access to success. As a district, those are then changes that we need to make in order to remove those barriers for our students.  Cornelius Minor brilliantly explains how we can do this work in his book We Got This. 

ACTION 6: Examine our hiring process. The task of increasing the diversity of our staff is not an easy one, but we must begin that work if we truly want to become more anti-racist. So we need to examine and make changes in our hiring practices. We can start to do that by asking questions such as: What is the diversity of our staff? What is the diversity of the people who are applying for jobs in our district? Who is passing our screeners? Who is not passing our screeners? Where are we recruiting teachers from? Where are we getting our student teachers from? What are we doing to actively recruit more diverse teacher candidates? Who are we hiring? Who are we not hiring? Who are we retaining? Who are we not retaining? How are we supporting teachers once they are in our district? Digging into these questions will likely illuminate a place for us to start and then we can look to others who know more than we do in order to create more equitable hiring practices. 

ACTION 7: We must commit to teaching our students to be anti-racist. Through all of this action, we also need to ask ourselves, “How are we explicitly teaching our students to be anti-racist?” One way we can do this is by critically evaluating our social-emotional curriculum. We need to make sure that we have lessons that go beyond teaching students to just, “be kind” and go beyond teaching our students how to be better students. We must teach students about their own identities and about the identities of others so that our students can learn that it is not that “color does not matter,” but that they can, instead, come to understand that a person’s skin color is one important facet of a person’s identity that shapes the way that person experiences the world. There are extremely powerful lessons within Sara K. Ahmed’s book Being The Change that can help us to do this work. We also need to make sure that we have lessons that teach students how to recognize and interrupt racist incidents if and when they see them occur. Again, Teaching Tolerance provides incredible resources for this within their Speak Up! curriculum.  As a district, we need to ensure that these kinds of lessons are being taught to our students so that they have the skills that they will need to be anti-racist in a world that is still racist.  

Clearly, there are many more actions that can and should be taken, but I also believe that we need to be realistic in where we choose to start. And what I know is that we have to start somewhere. It will be too easy to let this moment pass and to continue to believe that this is not work that needs to be done here. But this work is vital. I believe that it will save lives. And while we cannot fix all of the world’s problems in this moment, we can use this moment to make a commitment to action. 

I look forward to joining you in this work and for doing better for our students together.  

I write this post, speaking directly to my fellow white educators.

Over the past few days, I have seen many white educators express anger. Anger about racism, anger about the murder of innocent Black humans at the hands of the police, anger about our president. There has been so much anger.

And while I am grateful that people are raising their voices, I worry that these voices are being raised by white people right now because right now anger feels comfortable for as white people. It feels comfortable to express anger when murder is captured on video and goes viral. It feels comfortable to express anger when the country feels that anger along with you and expresses it vocally and across every social media platform that exists. It feels comfortable to express anger when you are expressing it alongside of athletes and CEOs and even alongside of Taylor Swift. Right now, expressing anger feels comfortable.

And we white people, we are so comfortable with being comfortable.

But what I know is this. Murder at the hands of a police officer, does not come from no where. There are so many things to be angry about that lead to the existence of the many racist systems that allow for incidents like the ones with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Racism does not begin with murder. Murder is the result of a combination of the many racist systems that our country is built upon. And our school system is one of those racist systems. And we educators, we make up that racist school system.  And, we white educators have traditionally been terrible at expressing our anger about that.

So now that you might be feeling this anger, I ask that you hold on to it. Remember it when it feels less comfortable to express anger.  Because when there isn’t a current viral murder to get angry about, there is still so much work to be done. It is the work that we can do that can prevent the murders from happening. Not in one day, not in one year, not, perhaps even in one decade, but we have more power then we realize, we just have to learn to see it and use it.  And that comes from the long, hard, slow work that begins within us.  It begins with learning about the racist systems we perpetuate, about seeing the ways we allow for white supremacy in our schools and then for speaking up when those racist systems are at play.

And in those moments, it won’t feel comfortable. It is not comfortable to be the singular voice raising issues of race and equity when all those around you remain silent. Right now, it is easy because there is a collective yell going out. But it is harder to be the single voice amongst the silence.  But, for us white folks, this is our work. We cannot continue to stay silent. We cannot continue to leave this work on the shoulders of Black educators who are already bearing the weight of our racism. If we mean what we say when we ask, “What can we do?” Then we need to do something, even, and especially, when it doesn’t feel as comfortable.

So remember your anger.

Remember your anger when you are sitting in a meeting writing curriculum and you see your coworkers focused on a narrow, biased, white-washed version of history and of voices to teach to students.

Remember your anger when you are writing policies on behavior and consequences and you see that the behaviors being privileged are only those that match white social norms.

Remember your anger when you witness a coworker responding more harshly to the behavior of a Black student than they would to the same behavior coming from a white student.

Remember your anger when a Black educator speaks out against racism and you see white educators bristle and whisper that this issue is not about race.

Remember your anger when you are interviewing candidates for open positions and you are only presented with white candidates.
Remember your anger when a reading list is being built and you know that there are not enough Black voices represented in the texts being selected and an argument breaks out on the necessity of Shakespeare.

Remember your anger when a colleague suggests that hanging a Black Lives Matter sign in your classroom is controversial and suggests that you should take it down.

Remember your anger when, yet again, coworkers insist on celebrating Dr. Seuss Day when you know that Dr. Seuss’s racism has been shown in countless ways.

Remember your anger when you are sitting in yet another meeting where decisions are being made about children based solely on the standardized testing data that you know is biased and does not reflect the whole child that is being discussed.

Remember your anger when you see the data that shows you that your Black students are over represented in special ed and under represented in gifted and talented programs.

Because in these moments, that is when you need this anger. Allow this anger to give you the courage to speak up. Speak up even when those around you will roll their eyes. Speak up even when people tell you this is not about race. Speak up even when people say, “There she goes again,” or “We don’t need this conversation in OUR district.”  Speak up when it is NOT comfortable.

Because that is when our kids need us. We don’t prevent murders by expressing our anger AFTER they occur. We prevent murders by disrupting the systems we are a part of that create the murderers and create those who perpetuate the systems that allow for the murders. And if that is feeling comfortable, then you are doing something wrong.  Because you don’t get to ask, “What can I do?” If you are only willing to do the work that feels safe and comfortable.

For many of us, our school years are ending or are already over.  August is a long way away. This August, in particular, feels a million miles away because there is so much we do not know. And that means, that the anger that we are feeling today, it is going to feel so far away by the time we go back to school. So we have to hold on to it now. We have to use it to motivate us to read all the books that all the lists are telling us to read and we have to start looking NOW for the ways we can use our position in our own system to create change. That is the work. And it is only going to happen if we are willing to remember our anger and be willing to express it when anger feels a whole lot less comfortable.

This week, I felt the powerful effects as my administrators made the choice to stand by their teachers. I felt the effects as my administrators heard that we, the teachers, were breaking and chose to reach out and work to understand what we were living and then used that understanding to motivate them to take bold actions to step in and help us to hold the fragile breaking pieces together. 

And I will tell you this. Their decision. Their choices to help us, they did not make a single one of us think, okay, now we don’t have to work so hard. Instead, they made us all feel a great sense of relief that allowed us to recommit ourselves to working harder than ever to best support our students and their needs. But we are now able to do it in a way that does not sacrifice us or our families quite as much.  

But not every educator is so lucky. In fact, too many are not. And so, for them, I write this post. Because I believe that when we share our stories, we can work to help others understand us. In fact, one of the very first lessons that I teach my fifth grade students each year is that writing our stories, sharing our stories, gives us the power to help shape and define how others see us. And right now, I think that the world needs to see that the teachers are breaking.  

Last week, I sat in a virtual faculty meeting and watched my coworkers, my fellow teachers, cry as we came together to discuss ways to navigate this new world of online teaching. We spoke of the work that we were already doing and the added work that still needed to be done. And I watched as my fellow teachers began to reveal the cracks that we had all been trying so desperately to cover up. 

Because for many of us, we do not want to complain. Because for many of us, we love our work and we love our students and we are grateful for the privilege of being a teacher.  And we also know too well, how quickly this world can shift. How we, as a country, seem to only operate in one of two dangerous and harmful extremes when it comes to teachers. We seem to swing between the narratives of “teachers are heroes” and “teachers are not doing nearly enough and we demand more!” 

Now I want to stop here. Before I say anything else. Because I know that already someone is reading this and thinking, “Those teachers should just be grateful that they have a job, when so many others are not as lucky.”

And I get that. I really do. This is an awful time for the world. 

But here is the thing. Systems that take advantage of their workers are often allowed to continue taking advantage of their workers because they convince those workers and others that they should just be grateful that they have a job. And I believe that we have reached a point in all this awfulness, that teachers need to start pushing back as we are pushed to, and beyond, our limits.  

Because if we continue to push teachers past their limits, then teachers cannot think critically about what we are doing for our students. When we are forced to operate in pure survival mode, then I believe there is a much greater potential that we will do harm to our students. And when we, as teachers, start to break, there is no way that we can fully be there for our students. And that’s why now is the time for us to share our stories. 

Because the teachers. We are breaking.

I have watched it happen over the past few weeks as teachers have shared, online and in person, their frustrations and desperation and cries of, “This is not sustainable!”

I think that all teachers are at their breaking points. We have all been asked to do an impossible thing. An impossible thing on top of all the other impossible things that the world of education demands from us. And many of those who were in tears at my faculty meeting are those of us who are trying to teach other people’s children while also trying not to neglect our own children who are supposed to be learning in our homes. And it is a losing battle.

I have a daughter. She is seven. She is the absolute light of my life. And while I try to be there for other people’s children, I am very surely failing my own. My daughter goes between my house and my ex-wife’s house. She is with me four out of five days during the school week. When she is with me, it is just her and me. There is no other adult. There are no siblings. It is just the two of us. I have pretty much fully given up on her eLearning, though I try to work in as much reading and writing and math as I can to the things that we do throughout the day. At this point, I have seen her very fragile academic skills regress and I have had to give myself permission for that to be okay. I have to trust that one day, she will learn what she needs to learn, even if that day is not today. Because today, we are just trying to survive.

I am committed to getting her through this crisis and I am also committed to getting my students through this crisis. But to do that, I have had to make adjustments. For me, here is what that looks like: After I put my daughter to bed, I begin another three hours of school work. I look through student work, I provide feedback, I answer emails, I answer questions from students. I am often up until 11 or 12 at night doing the work that will support my students and their families the next day.

And on the two days that my daughter is not with me, I spend almost every single minute of those days preparing instruction for the week ahead.  I attempt to take a curriculum that was built for conversations and face-to-face interactions and I attempt to transfer that onto an online forum. I create smaller versions of the charts that would hang in my classroom and I photograph them to share with my students. I create slideshows that model for my students the work that I am asking them to do that week. I record lesson after lesson after lesson in an attempt to provide my students with the instruction that will support them and move them forward in the way that I believe is best for them.  I spend hours recording the read alouds that I will post throughout the week because I believe that if anything can hold our community together while we are physically apart, it is a shared reading experience. I do all of this ahead of time because I have realized that it is the only way that I can manage this all and manage my own child as well.

And during the week, when my students need me, I find a way to be there. I have set up ways for us to check in with each other every day, I look through the work they are doing as they are doing it and I leave comments and feedback to make them feel seen and also to support them in moving forward in their work. I have created multiple platforms for them to use to stay connected to each other and I have found ways to let them know that I am connecting with them there as well. I am emailing with students and their families constantly. I am on the phone with parents when they need me. I have set up sessions with students who need extra support. I have set up one class meeting every week where we just check in and chat and look at each other’s pets. Often, my daughter joins us on these calls (and often that is the most stressful part of our week). I have set up an additional time during the week when students can Zoom with me if they have specific questions about their work that they need help with. And I have worked all of this around my own child and the schedule that we have.

It has been so much. But I found a way to make it work. I am exhausted. I am at the very edge of what I can manage. But I am making it work. Other teachers have found their own ways to make it work. One teacher spoke at our meeting about getting up at 5 am to get her work done before her own children woke up and before her husband, an essential worker, had to leave for the day. It is an awful way to live and an awful way to teach, but we are making it work. We have found a way to do it.

And that is good enough. 

Until we are told by the world that it isn’t enough.

That is why we are crying. Because so many of us are giving so much. We have been taking away time from our own families to be there for our students and their families. We are doing it not because it is all mandated, not because we have been told we have to do all these things, we are doing it because we love our kids. Our students and our own children at home. That love has pushed us to do more and to give more and for many of us there just isn’t another option.

And then yet somehow, we are made to feel, by the world, that it is still not enough.  

Sometimes that feeling comes from the media as article after article details the problems with the way teachers are teaching. Other times, that feeling comes from worried parents. Parents who are seeing their own children struggling, who are worried that schools are not doing enough to help them. Parents who go to Facebook or other social media outlets and begin to discuss. 

So through the media and social media people’s problems with educators are broadcast and other people want to fix them. And I get that sometimes it seems like these are easy problems to fix. Asking one more small thing of teachers shouldn’t be a big deal. Right?

Except the weight of those decisions are not always felt by the people who make them. Instead, oftentimes, they are felt intensely by those of us who are already standing on the very edge of what we are able to do and then are being asked to do just a little bit more. But that little bit more, comes on top of all the other work that we are already figuring out how to do. And suddenly, it feels impossible. A small ask, feels like a huge demand. And that is why there are tears. Because we are standing on the edge already and just one more thing has the capability of pushing us right over that edge.

Too often in education, mandates are made as quick reactions to complex problems. They often are attempts to quickly stop a problem before we even take the time to investigate that problem and how it is affecting our students and what variety of ways there might be to fix any needs that are not being met. 

Because if the conversation really centers around children, then we would start not with a mandate, but by, instead, asking questions like, “How are you allowing your students to feel a part of a community? How are you working to meet the needs of your students and their families? How are you checking in on your students mental health and well-being? How are you being there for your students?” And then we can have a conversation. We can work together, as a team of parents and teachers and students and administrators to think about the myriad of ways that we can support our students. We can honor the fact that our students are all different and we are all different and there is no one right way to do all of this.

But all of this is hard. All of this is messy. It seems easier, sometimes, to just make one, consistent rule and demand that everyone follow it.

But what I have learned is this, complex problems cannot be solved by simple rules and mandates. Difficult problems that seem to be solved simply have not really been solved at all. And I have never faced a teaching problem more difficult than the one we are currently in, so to think that there is any one easy answer or one way of doing things that is going to fix the problems that our students are facing, that seems impossible to me. 

Instead, what I think we need is to take a breath. To take a pause. To have difficult conversations. To listen to the realities that we are all living in. To hear the stories of others. Because, ultimately, I think that is what has helped my own district. We stopped. We listened to the stories of students and of parents and of teachers and of administrators and we used those stories to gain better understanding. And from a place of  better understanding, we are able to make better decisions. And when we lack understanding, we stop and reach out and ask for more stories. 

And I guess that is why I am writing this.  Because maybe someone will read it and it will help them to reach a little bit better of an understanding. 

Maybe there is a teacher who will read this who will feel a little bit less alone and maybe a little bit more seen.

Maybe there is a parent who will read this who will decide to reach out to their child’s teacher with concerns and to share their family’s story first with the teacher before turning to social media.

Maybe there is an administrator who will read this who was about to ask one more thing of their teachers and will instead decide to ask, “What are you already doing to support your students? How can I help you to do that?”

And maybe not. Maybe this was just for me. Because I needed it all to be said. And that will be good enough, too.

I haven’t been able to write much lately. This moment has felt too consuming for that. But tonight. Tonight there are things weighing heavily on my mind and I needed a space to put them. So I have come here to rest some of those thoughts, to share that weight with anyone who is willing to carry some of it along with me.  I can’t offer you inspiration tonight or some way to make your way through all the madness or ideas on how to make any of this eLearning or eTeaching or eSurviving more manageable. What I can offer you are my thoughts. So here they are in all their mess.

So there are things that exist in this world that are unjust. That are terrible creations of oppressive systems and I believe that we, especially those of us who have benefitted from those systems, have an urgent responsibility to fight to change those things. Those are things we should never accept.

And then there are other things. Things that happen to us. Things that are awful. Things that might be caused by other people’s bad decisions and actions, but that we cannot do much about. Those are things that I am thinking of tonight. The awful things that happen to us.

And here is what I have learned about those things: We, humans, we are capable of adjusting to awful things and sometimes even finding small bits of light in them.

Almost exactly one year ago to the day, my wife cheated on me and left me. I don’t bring this up to ask for pity or to stir up drama or to show myself as some sort of pillar of strength. None of those things are helpful. I say that because one year ago, almost to the day, I was changed. And I learned some things. And not by choice. It came on suddenly. It was not the result of years of an unhappy marriage. It did not happen after months of endless fighting. To me, it came out of nowhere and I was left unprepared.

In the days and weeks and months after she left, I found myself in a puddle of tears more often than not. I had the most incredible people around me, carrying me through, but none of it felt like it was ever going to be okay. I was wrecked. I was betrayed. I was hurt and I was left shattered and in pieces.  When I go back now and read the words that I wrote then, I remember the reality that existed for me. This complete and utter disbelief that I was ever going to be okay.

And then, something started to happen. Things did not get less awful, but I started to adjust to them.  I wrapped myself and my love, around my kid and we started to adjust to this new life that we did not choose.  We drew strength from each other, we drew strength from the amazing people that surrounded us, we drew strength from within ourselves that we did not know existed.  And we kept moving forward. Because we had no choice. And slowly, over many months, we started to adjust.

And I want to be clear. Things were still awful. And in so many ways they still are. But we started to adjust to the awful. We started to mold ourselves around it. We found new ways of being, we found new ways of living, we found new ways of loving each other that allowed us to get up each morning and make it through the day.

And then. Then something else started to occur. After my former-wife first left, I reached out to a friend (such a wise friend) who had gone through a similar situation with her former wife and she told me something that has guided me forward every since. She said that she could now see her the gifts in the betrayal of her former wife. Her ex-wife’s betrayal had been a gift.  When she first spoke those words to me, I thought that perhaps they were nice for her, perhaps they were even true for her, but they could not be true for me.

But in this past year, and through a whole lot of therapy and a whole lot of painful self-reflection, I have reached a point where I, too, can see the gifts in my former wife’s betrayal. Because now I can look back on our relationship, from a distance, and see it for what it really was. How it was about me giving up who I was in order to meet someone else’s needs. How it was about a toxic kind of love where I was expected to make myself small in order for someone else to feel big. How it became necessary for me to distance myself from the people who had been supports to me in my life so that someone else could feel more important. These were truths that I did not see. These were sacrifices that I had made for a decade that, in the end, cost me a big piece of who I was, or who I could have been, in order to try to appease someone who ended up leaving me in the end anyway.

And when she did leave. I was free from all of that. In the first weeks and months and parts of a year after she left, I could not have seen it. But her departure allowed me to find myself again. Or to start to, anyway. In her betrayal, there lay so many gifts.

This past week when I texted a friend (a friend who knows this road well, a friend who was brought into my life because of the shared experience of being left, a friend whose presence is yet one more gift in all of this) and I told her that I was pretty sure that day was the one year anniversary of when my former wife began her new relationship, she told me to celebrate the day. She told me to celebrate myself. She told me to look at the day as the day that I started to reclaim who I was. The day when I was set free.

And that. That is the bit of light. I am not saying that there is a silver lining. I am not saying that things happen for a reason. Because so much of that feels dismissive and does not honor the very real and very heavy pain that also exits. But I am saying, that I have learned to adjust to the awful. I have managed to find these bits of light. I still have nights where I drink glasses of wine by myself on my couch and cry myself to sleep. But I also have so many moments when I truly feel like I am okay. And I am grateful for the life that I now have and the me that I can see myself becoming. I have adjusted to this new life. I have accepted the truth within it. I keep moving forward and I can see the bits of light.

And all of that, right now, in this moment that the world is experiencing, all of that feels really important. Because things now are awful. The world is in a terrifying space. As educators we are struggling. Our students are struggling. Our families are struggling. It is all just so awful. And it does not appear as if things are going to get less awful any time soon. In fact, it appears as if it might just get worse.

But here is what I know and here is what I have come here to share: We, humans, we are capable of adjusting to awful things and sometimes even finding small bits of light within them.

So here we are in this moment. We all seem to be searching for a way to make things less awful, but I think that might be the wrong approach. I think that maybe, instead, we accept that this is awful and we allow ourselves time to adjust. We allow ourselves time to recalibrate. We allow ourselves time to find a path forward. We are kind to each other, we are kind to ourselves, and we allow ourselves time and space to breathe and trust that we are going to adjust to the awful around us. We remember what we know about children. We remember what we know about ourselves. We remember what we know about teaching and learning and we use that to guide us through this all.

And who knows, maybe we will be able to find the small bits of light in this moment as well. Knowing that this moment is terrifying and that lives are at stake and that our unjust systems have been highlighted in a myriad of ways, maybe there will also be some small bits of light in all of this. And those are what we will cling too and what we hold on to and those will be what will move us forward.

So, hang in there, everyone. We have all been asked to do an impossible thing. It is awful and terrible and we are all feeling the affects of it in an indescribable way. But I believe we will adjust. I believe that we will find our way through it all. And I believe that maybe, just maybe, we will be able to find those small bits of light in all of this darkness.