Back to School: 2020
Maslow before Bloom in practice
Usually, by this point in the summer, when the mornings have a chill that hints Autumn is right around the corner, I’m excited.
Usually, I can’t wait to pick out new school supplies, design a perfect organizational system to abandon by October, shop for quirky but professional pencil skirts and cardigans, and perfect my first day ensemble.
Nothing about 2020 is business as usual. I’ve found myself really short tempered this week, a week that usually brings me joy anticipating the changing of seasons and the start of new school year. It wasn’t until I remembered how much I usually enjoy late August that I realized why I’m so down.
This is just one more thing our underwhelming response to Covid-19 has taken from me. Obviously this thing is very small compared to so many injustices, which is probably why this is the loss I can write about. Some losses are still too raw for me. And I’ve been much luckier than most.
So why is Back to School so hard this year? Why can’t I find joy in preparing? I want to give my students (my kiddos) the best experience I can give them. But I just can’t get my head into the game this year.
It’s not the challenge. I love a challenge. In fact, the only thing that gets that flutter in my belly is the idea that I’m in the pedagogical challenge of a lifetime. I’m excited to leverage technology in new and interesting ways. I’m really excited to disrupt everything we think we know about education. I’m over the moon thinking about how much I miss talking to kids and soon I’ll have a whole new crop of them to love on and nurture.
Obviously, fear is a factor. I don’t want to get sick, or bring anything home to my family. I’m high risk, and I don’t want to take my chances. I don’t want my colleagues to get sick. I don’t want my students to get sick.
I don’t want my school community to suffer a loss. If you’re a part of a school, you know how a loss tears through the fabric of that community. I don’t want to grieve with my students.
I know this is a factor, but this dread goes deeper than fear of death and loss. This is fear of the unknown. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if I’ll get sick, or if my friends will. Or if my students will, which I can so hardly bear to write I had to bury it in its own very clunky sentence. I don’t know how the virus will affect our health.
But I also don’t know how the virus will affect my day to day life. I don’t know how I will teach students at school and at home at the same time. I don’t know how to adapt what I do into something that can be livestreamed. My best work is guiding students to their own revelations but privacy dictates that the camera focus on me. How can I create a student centered experience under these conditions?
I don’t know my schedule yet. I don’t know what grade I’m teaching. I don’t even know what books I’ll be teaching or what my curriculum looks like, as it is being entirely reworked to address what was not covered last spring and incorporate our new platforms (as well as to incorporate the eventual return to fully remote instruction, which no one denies is inevitable, we’re just not discussing it, I guess).
I don’t know what my classroom is going to look like. I don’t know what materials I’ll be able to use. I don’t know where I’ll eat lunch or spend my prep periods.
I don’t know how I’ll use a bathroom safely when I’ve never seen a lid on a school toilet and the virus sheds in fecal matter, which is aerosolized as soon as you flush.
I don’t know how I’ll react to the chemicals used to disinfect my classroom. I don’t know how I’ll adapt to wearing a mask for a prolonged period of time- I’ve barely left the house since March.
I don’t know how I’ll be evaluated this year or what’s expected of me. I don’t know how I’ll be able to do everything I do for my students in half the time, from 6 feet away.
I don’t know what I’ll do when I would usually give someone a hug.
There’s so much I don’t know; there isn’t much bandwidth left for anything else.
To be clear, I don’t blame anyone for these unknowns. I don’t envy my colleagues and administrators on the reopening committee working to solve these problems. They are undergoing the same trauma as me and are still able to show up and create a plan from an impossible situation. When things fall apart, they deserve all the grace in the world; they were given no good choices.
I don’t know how they are doing it. I can’t even convince myself to finish a professional development project that I truly found fascinating and worthwhile, but opening that file means acknowledging a whole lot of things about my life in next two weeks that I am really not ready to deal with.
And I know why. It’s the core of my teaching philosophy, but this time, I’m applying it to myself.
You’ve gotta Maslow before you Bloom.
So, for the noneducators, here’s the tl;dr explanation of what that means. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a way of structuring our challenges to increasingly deepen the learning as students get more comfortable with the material. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a psychological theory that states that basic needs must be met before social needs or personal fulfillment can be pursued. In other words, you can’t thrive until you’re sure you can survive.
So when educators say “You’ve got to Maslow before you Bloom”, we mean we can’t get to the difficult stuff until the kids feel safe. Intellectual challenges are at the top of the hierarchy, so we can’t work in our Bloom until we’ve made sure they’ve got everything they need to self actualize.
And I don’t have everything I need to self actualize. I don’t have even the most basic information about what my life will look like in just a couple of weeks. I just went through Maslow’s chart, and sure enough, my needs are not being met at any level.
No wonder I can’t get excited about going back to school. I’m avoiding it, because that’s my preferred trauma response. Nothing about this is normal and every part of the preparations is a reminder. I’m not shopping for cute pencil skirts and cardigans, I’m shopping for masks and scrubs. Every detail brings the trauma into focus. I’m sure I’m not alone in these feelings.
So here I am, clinging to summer with every fiber of my being, even though September is usually my favorite month. I’m going to let my kids stay up late and snuggle up to a movie a couple more times. I’m going to eat all the Popsicles I can eat and make my family’s favorite scrambled eggs every day. I’m going to rearrange my pantry and start a new hobby. I’m going to pretend it’s still July and the entire summer looms ahead full of promise, and safety.
I’m going to let myself Maslow just a little bit longer. And I promise, I’ll do the same for your kids, this year and every other. Because we’re all suffering, and because everyone deserves grace and that goes doubly for the kids. Because it doesn’t matter why, it’s just what’s best. Because there are no short cuts in healing.
You can’t grow if you’re not securely grounded. You can’t Bloom, until you Maslow.
