I have been along for this quarantine ride since March 13, like most of you in Los Angeles County.

I went into work March 16 and 17 and got my belongings, brought home my computer monitors and some things I needed and got ready to do my best “working from home” impression.

After two weeks (and one surgery) later. I can honestly tell you, I am (not) ok.

I can hear some of you now:

            “But Tom, you are not even in the classroom, you don’t have students, it must be vacation.”

            “But Tom, you don’t have to plan curriculum, and you got all this digital learning figured out.”

            “But Tom, you love computers, and you can have your office anywhere as long as your laptop is with you.”

Bullshit. All of it. And I can tell you why.

First off, I don’t have a classroom full of kids to plan for, but I have to help all of our district teachers make this sudden and rude and crude jump into digital and distance learning. ALL OF THEM. The tech embracing, the tech reluctant, the ‘I wouldn’t put in a pacemaker to live, that’s how much I hate tech” teachers. No judgement, we are on at different points in the path, I get that, just stating how it is. And then I have to worry about all of our digital inequity as a district, and how working from home looks CRAZY different for the half with district issued devices than it does for the half without. (That doesn’t take into account wifi or internet at home, which is a whole different ballgame)  There is no tech-equity and at this point there is nothing we can do as a district to bring that equity we so desperately need. I have two-hundred and seventy-three emails touting the best and the free-est new sparkly learning tool, and if I am getting them so are the teachers I serve. I get questions like “why can’t we use X tool, and what about Y, and Z is shiny and free, why can’t I use it?” These are teachers who have never logged into our available tools asking for training on a tool we never even heard of, let alone have vetted and made sure it is safe for our kids. Yes,  I have some of the digital learning figured out (a relative term, I know, but what can you do), but it has always been a work in progress. The inside joke with tech trainers is that as soon as you have a program figured out and put together an awesome training, the program gets an update, and now you have to redo all your slides. Learning technology is an ever-changing beast, and as much as you try, you are almost guaranteed to be a month or two behind the curve.

(And on a side note, our district, in it’s lofty wisdom that I cannot see from my lowly perch, paused our Digital Learning Initiative on March 14, so no new devices this year, nor next year, which would have brought us truly to 1:1. They made this decision ONE DAY AFTER we sent students home for three weeks. Paused it. I’m confounded. It literally gives me headaches trying to figure out why they pause a fiscally responsible and sustainable plan in the middle of a WORLDWIDE EMERGENCY that is forcing us to ISOLATE and teach and learn from HOME. Ok, rant over. . . for now)

And you are right, I don’t have to plan curriculum for my class. I have to manage curriculum for an entire district. I, along with my five TOSA friends, are in charge of putting together guidelines for what amounts to the “educational apocalypse” in an environment where we couldn’t get a grade level to agree which essential standards to use on the last benchmark, and how many questions our next formative assessment would be. I have been in meetings over the past two weeks that go WAY BEYOND “other duties as assigned.” I have had learning program after learning program and wonder app after wonder app forwarded to my inbox with “check this out” or “FYI” or “Good to know” or “keep this filed” or “this looks great!” with no real understanding of what implementation, rollout and training would be for any of the new, free, and shiny things my inbox is being bombarded with. I cannot tactfully tell them all to stop, I cannot point out that I am receiving the same emails and that there is almost no way our tech-poor and internet challenged district can implement any of these sparkly, shiny, new and free things. I cannot tell the principal of the teacher who had not touched a computer in seven years and now she wants to do X and Y and Z and A and B and C, that we don’t have X or Y in our district; that she has had access to A and B for four years; that I personally trained them on Z and C in the fall. I can just reply and say “I’ll look into it and get back to you.”

And while I may love computers and all the time I saved in the classroom, I only did that through years of trial and error. My processes work for me, work with my idiosyncratic and eclectic brain and workflow, and your mileage may vary. I struggled long and hard to develop my skills, and most times that cannot be distilled into a ten-minute online tutorial so “all my teachers can get trained and be on the same page.” Online training and learning are HARD. And it is really not the best way to be exposed to something for the first time.

To be honest, there is a reason I never take work home. Home is where my fun times are. Home is where my distractions for work live. I have toiled long and hard to make home the place I escape from work. Now I find myself having to work in my play area, and that, for me, is hard. More than hard, sometimes I just can’t. I get overwhelmed, I start to have a mini freak out, and I need to take a walk or go smoke or blow off steam playing a game. Just like everyone else, this new normal is far from normal, and I’m adjusting poorly at the moment. I waiver between furious bouts of inspiration (like blog writing) and ebbing lows of Netflix binging. I’ll reach some sort of homeostasis eventually, but until then, buckle up kids!

There will be a light at the end of the tunnel. I will get the hang of this. I can persevere, as will we all. We will go back to school, if not in May, or June, definitely by August. We will have a new appreciation for online learning, for digital tools, and for the four walls we took for granted as we taught and worked every day. And while I may not have a classroom of kids waiting for me, I do have a training room full of adults I get to train. I will make it, we will make it, and we will all have a better appreciation for the work we all have to do. Stay sane, and if not, stay interesting. Good luck friends.