No teacher training ever covered teaching during a pandemic. Since Covid closed schools mid-March 2020, we’ve had to adapt on the fly. Overnight. Constantly. Repeatedly. My district’s students and staff endured nearly a dozen “first” days of school as our schedules continuously changed, gradually increasing remote instruction time, gradually welcoming more student cohorts into the …
(*WARNING: the following contains spoilers for Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner) By now you should have read through chapter twelve of The Kite Runner. And please don’t tell me you’ve read when you haven’t. I’ve been doing this a long time and I can tell, especially with this book which contains so many deftly plotted …
I packed books when I left home mid-March, but I have not been able to read them. They require an emotional energy I cannot muster, so they remain unopened in my bag. However, I can still read poetry. Mornings as I drink my coffee, I read my daily poems from Poets.org and The Paris Review. …
I have misplaced my ability to discern time. I left it back home on the table next to my spot on the living room couch where every morning I drink my coffee and watch the sun rise while I clear the sleep from my brain and plan my day. Or used to. Here, an hour …
Spring 1999, my two-year-old daughter awakened from her nap with a painful limp. Hoping perhaps she’d slept awkwardly, I changed her diaper and took her and my son outside to play. Rationality warred with fear. Then, we had no Google. No WebMD or its equivalent with which to quickly search for answers. I thumbed the …
Embedded in the middle of the Hoover Dam walkway is a survey marker delineating the state line between Arizona and Nevada. Summer 2011, I straddled that imaginary line as my husband snapped photos and our children high-fived passengers meandering the Dam’s rim in slow-moving vehicles. Some tourists venture to that scenic halfway point at the …
The first in an occasional series… I thought I was ready. March 6, my teaching district conducted a survey of students’ at-home internet and device access. The following week, we had conversations and meetings, a flurry of emails offering resources and support. I began updating my Google drive, copying my in-district files for access at …
My Name was Supposed to be Elizabeth Ann 