This week we head into virtual learning 2.0 along with so many families around the world. With a bit more insight into how this looks after last year, I’ve been more intentional about how to prepare. The hope is that I’ll choose more wisely which battles to engage in going forward.
There’s a time and a place to put up a fight – to take a stand and commit to the long game. Like when we’re asked to compromise our values, or when the health and safety of our families and ourselves are being threatened. In these instances, to fight is the only option.
Remember to choose your battles carefully.
More often than not, the battle is not worth the spoils. As a species, I feel we’ve become confused about when and where to expend our passion to reap the most benefit. We’re easily distracted and forget to come back to the few key elements in life that truly matter.
My greatest teachers of this lesson have been my own children during these past several COVID months. Demanding, passionate, and ever present, they make this point crystal clear: To engage in the fight, it must be worth it.
If my youngest doesn’t want to change out of his pajamas for virtual learning, I just might be okay with that. If we eat breakfast during recess instead of before first period, fine. If either of them needs a mental health day, we’ll take it.
It’s not worth battling the limits and stamina of a child (or adults). Trusting that we’re all doing the best we can with what we have means that sometimes we need to take the path of least resistance. And when we’re in the middle of a crisis, it means we need to take that path more often.
Virtual learning during this global pandemic is not like homeschooling. It’s crisis schooling and that crisis piece cannot be overlooked. Proceeding as usual is denying the very real struggles that our children are facing, and the myriad of outside challenges they are learning from.
Emphasis on high standards this year is less important than celebrating stamina, resilience, and effort. In truth, these are the lessons of childhood that make better grown ups, and should have more emphasis in our schools, even outside crisis learning.
Right now the world is providing enough resistance and pressure on our children. We parents don’t need to add to that. Right now, our job is to pick up our children when they fall down. To brush them off and remind them that no matter what, they belong and they are loved.
Crisis schooling is life schooling and as much as I believe academics are vital stepping stones to the future, there’s no good in knowing how to read and subtract numbers if we can’t remember how to pick ourselves up when we fall.
To all the parents out there, the caregivers, and the teachers: you’re doing an incredible job. You’ve been dealt a bum deck and you’re making the best of what you have. Give yourself some grace, some patience, and trust that we will recover from this.
All of us will be forever changed as a result of this experience, but I guarantee that the changes will propel us forward, not backward. There’s something to be said about being forced to clarify priorities, focus on the essentials, and find gratitude in the little things.
It makes us more authentic, more purposeful, and more grounded in our ever changing world. It makes clear the separation between distraction and what a life well-lived is truly made of.
Generations past survived the Great Depression and two World Wars, and we will survive this pandemic. As a species we know how to adapt, and we are strong enough to do what it takes to move forward.
Trust that what you’re doing is enough – as a parent, a spouse, a friend, a virtual teacher, and as a human. Just because it feels difficult doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. it just means it’s difficult.
If the world has shown us anything, it’s that change is the only constant. This situation will also change. Hold onto that truth and do what you can to put one foot in front of the other.
