No you won't get it right

No you won’t get it right

You probably never trained to be a teacher and if you did it wasn’t to teach your own children.   Now here you are, stuck at home with your children who should be at school, your significant other who should be at work, and those little furry children who are thrilled beyond compare because you are home.

There is lots and lots of stress to go around.   You should be grateful because you have a job and lots of people are not receiving a salary.  You are not all that used to working from home and that creates stress.  It was easier to just reach out and ask  question or walk around the corner when you needed a co-worker's help.  Now it is all virtual and sometimes the answers take longer to get back to you.  It is hard enough to work from home without being expected to be your child’s substitute teacher.  This is not what you want to do nor what you signed up for.

Or maybe, you are one of the unlucky people who would just love the stress of working from home if only you had a job to do that would bring in the money you need to live.  You are really worrying when the unemployment will kick in and will it be enough to get you by.   It is really hard for you to concentrate on your student’s distance learning when your mind is on next month’s rent or mortgage.   Yet the teachers expect that you do a lot of assistant teaching.   If your child is in high school, you may not even be familiar with the new content.  Your child keeps insisting that is not the way the teacher explains it.  If your child has special learning needs, the task just got harder.

People think they have complimented you by calling you an essential worker.  Sounds nice but no one told you that meant possibly putting your family at risk because of your contact with the outside world.   You know you need to work to keep your family solvent, but does that mean putting those same people at risk.  Wait a minute tell me again what today’s online learning objective is?   What is it you expect me to do for this lesson?  Sorry my mind wasn’t on it.

You are trying so hard to get it all right so you and your family can get through this pandemic together and your kids not fall too far behind in school.  There just seem to be so many balls in the air.  Why do you feel so guilty, like you are not quite measuring up no matter how hard you try?   Relax, you won’t get it right- just won’t happen way too much to juggle.  Kick the guilt to the curb- move on.