Optimism in the Time of Corona

 

I grit my teeth all the time now. Don’t you? I didn’t always, but when everything about existence that I used to reliably count on got flipped on its head, what’s a guy to do? 

Don’t get me wrong, I have never been an unwavering, Love it or Leave it "patriot" about the United States of America. Far from it. As a lifelong student of its history, I can find all of its warts, scabs, and cancers with a critical eye. Kind of sucks, actually. You see, we’re a two-steps forward, one-step back kind of nation. We always have been. Broadly shared gains seem to always be followed by bitter, aggrieved setbacks. Emancipation leads to Jim Crow, Civil Rights spawns White Citizens’ Councils, Barack Obama is succeeded by Donald Trump. Our “better angels” have been taken to the woodshed time and time and time again.

All pessimism aside, I still believe what Dr. King espoused, that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The ongoing struggle he spelled out was daunting but straightforward: confront injustice, marshal the forces of moral persuasion, present a clear case to the stakeholders, and overcome the problem. The quintessential American story.

Now I’m not so sure. An unlikely dystopic future seems to have been dropped like an anvil on our doorsteps and none of us noticed as we tripped face first over it. Is that possible? Is it already too late for America?

Like I said, I grit my teeth all the time now. You can see why. I love learning, but I swear too much knowledge is a dangerous thing in the present age. Not because being informed isn’t wise, but because it can be so damn discouraging.

I think I’m getting ahead of myself. I am, after all, one of the lucky ones—a gainfully employed middle-aged white male who can see retirement in his not so distant future. Sounds like the jackpot, right? Well, it kind of is. Now before you hate me, you should know one other thing: I am also a middle school social studies teacher in a public school. There’s the sympathy I was looking for.

Twenty-three years ago I was a new father and floundering paralegal at a small Minneapolis law firm when a relative asked me, “Are you still interested in teaching, because I think you and the principal I work for have a lot in common. You should give him a call.” A week later, stunned and a little unsure if I actually did want to go into education, I said yes to an offer to teach geography to 7^th graders across the border in the small town of Osceola, Wisconsin.  

Two plus decades later I’m still there, still making the hellish commute, still meeting a new batch of 130 twelve and thirteen year olds every fall. To my everlasting surprise, 7^th graders turned out to be in my wheelhouse. They aren’t quite people yet, but they’re not fawning elementary school kids either. Just old enough to appreciate a steady dose of sarcasm, but not so old that they don’t think I can teach them anything (that too cool for school window is reserved for 8^th graders). 

So what’s an urban, liberal Democrat like me doing teaching in a rural, conservative Republican town, you might be wondering? I stopped asking myself that question years ago, but that doesn’t mean that it’s still not a good one. Let’s face it, my carbon footprint (even with a rotating corral of carpoolers over the years) has been a disaster. The simple answer is this: when life throws you a bevy of curveballs (as it always does), it is comforting to have something consistent and reliable to count on. Teaching 7^th grade social studies in Osceola, Wisconsin has been my one constant. I assume you were wondering. Now you know.

Where was I? Oh, yes—something reliable. But then along came COVID-19. So long, reliability. Hello, shitshow.

Like every other “exceptional” American, I assumed this particular coronavirus was simply going to miss us. Sounds insane now, right? But you were thinking the same thing, weren’t you? “Come on, we’re the United States! Those things don’t happen here.”

In fact, on March 13^th, exactly four days before the Wisconsin state government ordered kids home for the rest of the school year, I did my level best to reassure my students that the risk of dying from COVID was relative and relatively low. I even pulled up a chart of annual deaths from cancer, heart disease, suicide, accidents, and of course, the flu. Needless to say, I felt like a backpedaling idiot when I said my goodbyes to them on St. Patrick’s Day. Erin Go Brainless!

What a month last March was—confusing, scary, even a little exhilarating. Now I don’t mean that in a thrilling sort of way, but it is undeniable that a large portion of the globe (minus Africa, it’s about damn time they catch a break) had a moment of shared pain and suffering. How often does that happen? Ever? What a uniting opportunity, right? Ha, if only.

My kids are all grown up and on their own now, so I can’t speak to the difficulty parents endured those last two months of the school year, and the summer months that followed. But surely, the Haves did just fine while the Have-nots struggled every single day. Gaps in learning widened and mental health needs went unmet as countless thousands of children tiptoed around their anxious and agitated parents who were being laid off and filing unemployment claims by the millions.

Back to that jackpot I mentioned earlier. Odd as this may sound, I was sort of built for a pandemic. I enjoy the company of friends but still enjoy my solitude. Having lived alone for more than a decade, I don’t think those first few months in lockdown bothered me much. Distance learning with my students began in early April and continued through the end of May, but my time was largely my own. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t exactly thrive (who did?), but I didn’t exactly suffer either. So what did I do?

I became consumed with America’s suffering. I listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts devoted to the American President (his incompetence and his corruption), the ongoing public health crisis, and the racial reckoning the United States faced after the murder of George Floyd. It seemed like more than we could possibly bear all at once. I have wavered between hope and hopelessness about the American Experiment from one day to the next. Fresh outrages are followed just as quickly by glimmers of that “arc” that MLK believed in.

To be an American in the spring and summer of 2020 was to be set adrift in a leaky ship, with no way to steer and no direction home. No plan, no priorities, no leadership. Rudderless, masks optional.

Fast forward to late September and my school has resumed (face to face) with new protocols and new procedures, all with student safety in mind. But there are only so many scenarios to account for when it comes to teenagers. They are, by definition, walking germ factories who constantly touch, grab, and jostle everything in their field of vision. Plenty of side bets have been made regarding when/if remote learning will start.

I hope it doesn’t. I’m one of those teachers who needs to interact in person with students to feel like I am doing my job well. After all, much of middle school education is pure entertainment, doing the big and little things to engage students, to make them look forward to walking into your classroom. It can be exhausting, and there have been more days than not this fall when I am asleep on the couch before 9pm, but I can’t think of any other way to pull it off year after year.

Maybe it was to put things into perspective or perhaps simply to be with other people, but I recently made another visit to the area of south Minneapolis where George Floyd had the life squeezed from his neck four months ago. The entire area is now a memorial to him and countless other African-Americans who have been victims of police brutality and systemic racism. Hope and hopelessness live in equal measures at 38^th & Chicago. His outline is visible where he breathed his last, but steps away there are tireless activists urging people to make sure he didn’t die in vain—speaking, despite every reason not to, positively of the “beloved community,” of a chance for peace and progress. I’ve tried to take that lesson of hope with me as the school year began. I may have forgotten it from time to time, but if I can keep counting more good days in the classroom than bad, grit my teeth less, it will have been worth it.