Let me say I feel much better tonight than I did yesterday.
On Monday I had outpatient strabismus surgery to correct my wandering left eye. The surgery itself took only an hour, but it required a general anesthetic that left me parched and groggy.
I spent most of the day on the sofa, repositioning an icepack over my eye and considering metaphors that best captured my sensations:
~ Someone had taken a ball-peen hammer to my eye socket and sinus bones.
~ My eyeball had been tugged from its socket with a spoon.
~ My eye had been rolled in fiberglass before its repositioning (too deep) in my head.
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I am healthy enough day in and day out that even minor sickness/discomfort throws me off-kilter. And almost as bad as the fiberglass-eye sensation was my utter boredom.
With my eyes on lockdown, I realized 98% of what I most enjoy requires sight:
I couldn't read, I couldn't write. I could barely walk across the room without bumping into something. I listened to audiobooks, which offered some reprieve, but for the most part, I just felt sorry for myself.
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Today was much better! I'm still seeing double, but the scratchiness abated after the eye clinic told me it wasn't fiberglass, but dryness causing the pain. They told me to use more eyedrops!
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I was able to Zoom with my Remote Learners today, which was really nice. Usually, they Zoom into class while I'm in-person teaching 15 or 20 others. Today it was just me and one or two students at a time. I could share my screen and read and respond to their writing in realtime. We talked about the assignments, their reading. They nodded sympathetically when I told them my eye felt pretty whacked.
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Later I Zoomed with my building principal to touch base on my students who have been out for quarantine or remote learning and have fallen off the radar. I've read that students across the country are struggling with school this year. (Surprise?) My own building has nearly 40% more failing grades this fall than we had at the same time last year. Some of this is attributed to students' lag in learning from March to August, but many of the students with difficulty are our remote learners.
I get it. I know my RLs do not get the best of my teaching.
What I don't know is how to fix it while still keeping my nose above water.
Part of me thinks I'd do a better job if all of my students were Remote. But then I remember my friend Haley who is teaching in that situation. She is a rock-star educator and can pack a Zoom class with bells and whistles and engagement to make even mashed couch potatoes take notice! Yet she has called near tears on days her students refuse to turn on their cameras, fail to engage.
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Another part of me thinks my students should just all buck up and come to school! Yet I, myself, do not feel safe from COVID in the classroom. Our basketball team is currently out on quarantine. Our tiny county has experienced 26 deaths, including five people I knew personally. For this reason, I commend my Remote Learners for minimizing COVID risk to themselves and their families.
All of this is to say the vaccine can't get here fast enough.
Enough.
Be well.
Wear a mask (maybe an eye patch).
Write.
Allison
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| Those Kiwi thighs! |
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