They’ll Be Okay…

Today was unique. I observed one of my student teachers teaching face to face. I’ve ‘known’ this young lady since September, when she was assigned to my graduate level cohort for field-experience, the prerequisite to student teaching.

All those encounters had been remote. I only knew Jillian by her position on my Zoom screen. I’d assessed how she presented well remotely, and where I felt she would benefit from my coaching.

Today I got the other picture. Masked and standing before her sudents, Jillian lead her 3^rd graders through an early fraction voyage.

They have only been back in person five days; ten months has passed since they were 2^nd grader who left their familiar classrooms on March 13^th, 2020.

I’m not sure what I was expecting.

What I witnessed was a strong reminder of our children’s resiliency.

I saw the ‘same‘ focused and distracted behaviors… The needy and the independent personalities… Those who were tired from having stayed awake too late and those who hated to leave at the end of the day.

I write this because I have been envisioning our children in a perpetual valley of ‘less-than.’ Even as I cling to the reminder that it’s “only a year of their life” and that “everyone is basically in the same situation,” I ache for them to have what ‘we’ all believe they are missing.

Today stopped me short. For a multitude of reasons, this generation of school age children will have a unique toolbox of skills that might never have been gathered, honed or even discovered had the quarantine not been put in place. Their reading levels may not be skyrocketing and there will certainly be gaps in their math sense when they move on to the next grade, but children have a buoyancy in adversity than is nothing short of amazing.

I write this because there are a lot of stressed out teachers, assistants, administrators, parents and community members who worry about this generation. I am NOT advocating to just let things be. We all must be diligent and do our part to help hold up our youngest members. But kids  are hardier than we sometimes give them credit for. They spring back with energy.

I thought watching Jillian In person was going to be some rare experience for me today. Instead, when her lesson began I simply saw a teacher doing her magic in front of her children, like I have seen dozens of times before. The mask (it was the first time I had seen Jillian wearing one!) was a non-issue.  

Distance and restrictions did not dictate the learning. Committed instruction focused on children engaging and understanding was! And I breathed a grateful sigh of relief.