The Day the Bear Fell
How the Pandemic Continues to Impact Education
I was already suffering by then– 14 miles into a trail run in Canyon de Chelly. The first three miles ran through deep sand as the canyon walls heightened and closed around me, and there were only a few miles left, climbing to the top of the canyon overlooking the valley, before I could turn around and head back. I kicked up yet another red sand pile, then looked at the massive walls surrounding me, having caught motion out of the corner of my eye– What was that?
I stopped running, doubting what I was seeing: a brown bear falling hundreds of feet to the canyon floor. It could have been floating, swimming through the air, turning circles as if performing a barrel roll down an invisible hill, but even though the bear didn’t struggle, this didn’t look intentional.
I heard the impact as the bear hit the ground at the bottom of the canyon wall behind bushes about 100 yards away. I felt it, too. The ground shook, and so did I. What if the bear didn’t die on impact? It would surely be angry, and I was no match for an angry bear. But nothing happened. I paused and looked, without stepping closer to the bushes. There was no movement, only silence.
Tentative and scared, I ran, questioning if I really saw the bear fall; it felt too horrific to be real. I wondered if I should have done something? Told someone? But I didn’t stop, because there were more challenges waiting, miles of sand and fatigue until I could rest, so I kept running as if I didn’t watch a bear fall off a cliff.
And sometimes I feel like that’s what we are all doing. We ignore the impact from the pandemic; we ignore the fallen bear.
Do you remember the hope we had in quarantine and the year after? Hope that we would come back stronger, that we would take all we learned and… change? Re-invent? Become more?
Do you remember giving grace? Everyone was struggling so we empathized, offered exceptions, and accommodated needs. Do you remember kindness? Telling everyone to be well? Do you remember waving on Zoom, how we smiled as we waved, how every movement felt so vital? So human?
Do you remember the fear? What would become of our world? Was this forever? Would we ever return to normal?
We kept moving forward; we had challenges waiting ahead before we could rest, but at least we were paying attention. We recognized the slow motion roll of the pandemic; we hoped and adapted, even while we feared.
But what did we do when the masks came off? We scrambled backwards up mountains and over rubble and fallen bears to race back to normal, back to a system that wasn’t serving students enough then and wasn’t serving teachers either. We stopped listening to the impact and settled into comfortable familiarity; we upped the rigor, reduced the grace, and got back at it.
When you ignore the bear long enough, however, it comes back. I’ve been dreaming about bears a lot lately, about a bear chasing me, trapping me behind doors, pawing at me, demanding the attention I never gave it. I’m not surprised to see him; I watched him fall, felt the ground shake, and did nothing. It’s time I look at my fallen bear to understand what really happened. And I keep wondering when we will all do the same?
This year for my composition class, students wrote reflective essays about what events have most impacted their lives. And guess what? Not one of them wrote about the pandemic, quarantine, online school, loss, grief. Not. One. But many wrote about eating disorders, panic attacks and depression. In Creative Writing, poems about swirling storms of anxiety and dark forests of pain and powerful oceans of stress abounded. They still feel the impact but have forgotten what they saw.
Can you feel it? Can you feel the ground shake beneath us?
And I can’t forget about my colleagues. In a recent Gallup poll from 2021, teachers are listed as the #1 most burnt out profession with over 52% of teachers stating they “always” or “very often” feel burnt out at work. The National Education Association has stated the rate of teachers quitting is up 41% last year. I have witnessed the same with the teachers I work with, too– including myself. We re-invented our jobs more times in the last three years than conceivable and were maligned publicly in doing so. We carry the pain for our students to lighten theirs, but no one is carrying ours, and we have forgotten why it’s even there.
Can you see the fallen bear? Can you still hear him hit the ground?
The bear is watching us, wishing we would just look, wishing we could see beyond the danger of changing, wishing we could find humane solutions to take what we learned and grow, wishing we would pay attention. He chases us down packed hallways and claws at us behind closed doors. He’s dangerous, but not more dangerous than turning away.
We turn away from our knowing– our knowing the pandemic taught us, our knowing about what matters. Taking a moment to pause, to give grace, to be kind, to listen to each other, to build connections over everything else, to pay attention– all of that matters. But education doesn’t seem to be built on that. We demand performance and results and more of these each year. We need to catch up, keep up, go beyond so that achievement increases while humans suffer silently.
We need to pay attention to the world we live in today– not the world from four years ago, not twenty years ago, but today. The pandemic changed our students in ways we are just beginning to understand, and the pandemic changed our teachers, too, but in our rush, we let our systems resume without pause.
Education needs to look at the scenery it’s in right now; it needs to listen to the impact; it needs to feel it and adapt. Because not doing so when the world has changed is as unrealistic and horrific as watching a bear fall from a cliff and hoping it is ok.
