While in my 20 years in education, there has not once been enough time, the academic calendar always offers the same irresistible promise. The promise of an elegant solution provided by four rows of geometric squares set into a larger square and the dozen months lined up one next to the other. A calendar turns the school year into a Russian doll, with all its pieces nesting perfectly together, leading us to think, despite years of evidence to the contrary, it is possible to fit it all in before the middle of June.
To say that I'm feeling unmoored by the uncertainty and unpredictability that COVID-19 has brought to my abiding faith in time is an understatement. If you don't leave your house today, how do you know it's tomorrow? If you work from home and you're always home, when are you done working for the day? How many hours of screen time is too much when going to school requires a screen? Most days, I feel like I'm living the 21st version of Abbott & Costello's "Who's on First?" Today, I almost found comfort in the fact that my children will only take turns if I set a timer. Almost.
The structure and pace of a school year are like muscle memory--we innately know how to tether the rest of our busy lives to this familiar anchor. Right now, we are collectively at sea, trying to create something akin to a familiar rhythm in an utterly unfamiliar schedule. For teachers and parents alike, each day is a poor approximation of what we once knew how to do so well. I keep thinking that if only we could pinpoint the day when we'll return to campus, if we could just mark a return date in one of those neat little boxes on the calendar, the rest of the pieces would fall into place.
With the certainty of the calendar yet to be restored, I find myself asking, what do I know for sure? Right now, I’m assured by the unwavering, unadulterated joy of young children. (My two and a half-year-old celebrates the arrival of Taco Tuesday with a celebration dance each week without fail.) Right now, I do not doubt that my son’s avid curiosity will ensure that my whole family will continue to learn at home. (Today’s lesson: the peacock mantis shrimp has the strength to break the glass of an aquarium.) Today I find myself saying, as I do during the hardest part of the academic year, that the only way out is through and we'll only get through this together (while remaining six feet apart). Today I am certain that Friends School Haverford is a community whose connections extend beyond the common rhythm of the school day or the academic year. If that weren’t true, this wouldn’t be so hard.
These are not new truths--I’ve known them for a long time. I don’t know when we’ll be back on campus together. I doubt I will ever know how to teach math to my second grader. I still cannot grasp that the calendar has been rendered temporarily out of order. But the things I still know to be true and certain are the things that matter now more than ever. So that’s what I’ll be teaching my kids tomorrow, even if we all show up for class in our pajamas.