The Absurd Normal

There's a lot of talk about the return from CoVid and what will be the "new normal."  While I'm not a big fan of that phrase, I am starting to get behind the term, "the absurd normal."  I have been back to in person teaching since August, with one brief move to remote learning just before and after Christmas break, and what was bizarre in August is now just what we do.

There has been plexiglass separating my desks since August, and I barely notice them anymore.  We have gone through so many disinfectant wipes that we had to start making our own (our facilities team, not individual teachers).  Each day, students walk through the door and lean in for temperature scanning.  Our chairs at lunch are six feet apart, and half the kids are either outside or in the chapel.  And, of course, masks are just part of our wardrobe.  

All of this is just logistics, but we have more absurd normal activities than that.  Every teacher in our building logs into a virtual class every day because there are at least a few kids at home.  Our entire basketball program is virtual as part of a sports bubble.  There are some who quarantine due to exposure or close contact, and there are some who have chosen to stay home from the beginning.  While it is difficult in ways that are hard to put into words, we have incorporated talking to the kids in front of us and the icons on our screens as a normal part of our lives.

If you teach a course in which a hands-on component is expected, it can be weird to navigate teaching kids who are at home.  I send an email when needed to tell my students what kind of supplies they might use at home.  If they don't have those things, I make them the partner of someone in the room so that they can at least see the experiment and contribute their observations.  Our chemistry teacher has set up after school times in which the virtual students can come and complete the lab (and during the basketball bubble, she has offered a second time period so that they won't be interacting with anyone outside the bubble).  That means she is running a lab three times, two of which are outside of her "normal hours."  Test equity between kids at school and at home is part of our weekly discussions.  As a yearbook teacher, I am photographing kids on a screen in order to represent them in the yearbook.

I am not complaining about any of this.  We are doing what is necessary to both educate our kids and keep them as safe as possible.  But every once in a while, there is a moment when it strikes me how strange our lives have become and how we have just absorbed it onto plates that were already at capacity.  

I am astounded at how adaptable the human brain is.  I have always known that there is a limit to how much the brain can process at once, but I am daily shocked at how much higher that limit is over what I would have guessed.  I look forward to teaching with my face exposed again.  I miss being able to pull a student quietly aside to tell them something (which is hard to do while social distancing and impossible on a virtual call) or pat them on the back.  I'll be happy to lack awareness of my daily temperature average.  But for now, I am happy that God made my brain adaptable.