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Day 146: Go Forth With Confidence!



August 8, 2020

I am coming to the end of “the longest Spring Break ever”.  When I go back to work next week (in the middle of a still raging pandemic) it will have been over five months since I’ve been in my classroom (except for running in for an hour to close it all down in May).  That does not mean I haven’t worked in five months.  When school was forced to be “at home”, the only thing that got easier for teachers was that we didn’t have to dress professionally every day.  Everything else got more complicated and murkier.  We, along with our students, endured weeks of unanticipated stress, complicated by the ever-changing decisions as to how everything should be done.  The administration was doing their best, but these were uncharted choppy waters in a too small boat.  Then, thankfully, summer came, as it does every year, a deserved physical, mental and emotional break.  I love my job teaching Algebra to half grown people who think they know everything about life and the world.  (I really do!)  But, for the first time in many years I am nervous about the start of school.  It is like being a new teacher all over again times ten.  The only thing that is going to be even remotely the same is the Math, and even that will be adjusted to make up for the deficits caused by the end of last year.  I will meet and greet my students wearing a mask and a face shield. No handshaking allowed.  How will I stand at my door and still maintain social distance?  They won’t be able to see me smiling at them and I won’t be able to read the emotions of these people whom I just met, who are surely more nervous than me.  And don’t even get me started on all the technology that I do not know how to use to teach the kids who have opted to attend class “virtually”.  Gone are the days of “overheads and markers” when our most dreaded glitch was a burnt-out bulb.  Every seamless routine that I have perfected in over 30 years of teaching will be impossible to follow.  How will I discipline and redirect my students when I cannot walk among them?  How will we bond and grow to care about each other when we can’t even see each other’s faces?  Teaching is first and foremost a job of caring for children.  “If they don’t know that you care, they don’t care what you know”.  I think this is worrying me most of all.  So, this week as you pray, please remember all the teachers, students and school administrators who are headed back to unexplored territory in crowded buildings full of a possibly deadly virus.  That may be a negative way to say it, but it is the unfortunate truth.  Life, it seems, must go on.  I am thankful that my faith has grown these last several months.  I will be calling on God to protect my loved ones and to guide and direct us through this unprecedented time in history.  I know that He will.  These are the verses that I will carry in my heart:  Isaiah 12:2 (NIV):  “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid.  The Lord, the Lord himself, is my strength and my defense, he has become my salvation.”  Isaiah 26:3 (NIV):  “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.”  Psalm 28:7 (AMP):  “The Lord is my strength and my [impenetrable] shield; My heart trusts [with unwavering confidence] in Him, and I am helped; Therefore my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song I shall thank Him and praise Him.”  Go forth with confidence!  Smile and be joyful!

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