My two daughters went back to a classroom setting for school for the first time since this Pandemic began. Let us take a moment to think about all the changes that have occurred this year and reflect on what it has meant for us.
Who would have thought that trying to get our kids to study via zoom and distance learning would be so difficult? Just like many of us, my attention is stretched so thin throughout the day. If I do not make a conscious decision to help my kids with school work… it gets pushed down my subconscious priority list. Once I buckle down and tell my kids to start their work, my own patience for my children wanes as they cannot seem to get focused. This begins to agitate me as I think it should be well within my kids ability to engage and focus. Getting them to focus is not something that my children can do easily and takes sustained and laborious enforcement. Here are some of the words that get cumbersomely repeated… “Sit Still, Look!, Stop!, What are you doing?, Look at the teacher!”... or just flat out… “Nooo!”
What I thought would be a relatively simple guided lesson becomes very taxing on my energy and patience. Only 15 minutes into the lesson and I already feel myself fatiguing. I can see my kids noticing my steadily growing anger. They finally begin to dive into their work and get some solid work done. We finally get through the work in a respectable fashion after much struggle and now I need to let off steam. I begin to wonder, was it always this hard? Are my kids just not studious?
This shows me that patience and resolve is just like a muscle, it needs to be worked on. We often fail to realize how much we owe our teachers and schools. Let’s take a moment and think about what it really takes to be them. We often measure teachers on how well they connect with our children and that connection is facilitated by their patience. This is something I had to experience for me to realize and appreciate their resolve.
Let us celebrate the steadfast abilities of our teachers and schools that help our children learn. Let us look at the silver lining of this pandemic and use this opportunity to be more involved with our children’s education. Let us acknowledge the titanic task our teachers have in our children's education. Let us realize that we need to be tested in our own resolve and be forged into better parents with perspective.