When the world closed down and schools moved to remote learning, there was heroic activity happening in the homes of teachers and principals across America.  They were handed a new challenge, and they picked up this newest baton, and they ran with it.

It wasn’t only teachers who were needing to recalibrate and accomplish work in a new and different fashion.  Businesses closed, shopping went online, and home delivery systems grew. Zoom exploded.  Food from restaurants needed to be picked up at the curb.  All athletic events were canceled.  The print edition of magazines and newspapers got smaller.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote to Edward Carrington from Paris in 1787, he talked about newspapers.  He said that he thought that the good sense of the people would always be the best remedy for civil unrest.  He thought that even when people were led astray for a moment, they would correct themselves.  He thought that information meant success for democracy.  He said that if it was left to him to decide if we should have “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” *1

Fortunately, when the pandemic hit, newspapers continued to print news.  Newspapers remain the heartbeat of America and the lifeblood of democracy.

Unfortunately, no one was writing stories about teachers.  There were hardly any stories about teachers who…with no instruction manual….with no training….with no outside infusions of money and resources….were figuring out how to teach in a whole new way.  They were figuring out how to connect with five-year-old children behind a screen.  They were figuring out how to teach orchestra without instruments.  They were figuring out how to teach PE to thirty junior high school students when there was no equipment, no field, and no gymnasium.  Teachers only had all of their students in little glowing boxes on a computer screen.

When all athletic events were canceled, newspapers still printed the sports section of the newspaper.  What were the stories?  Reruns.  Yes, they printed stories about games that had been played and decided years ago.

The greatest hits of sports history made it to the front page of the sports section of newspapers, while the entire teaching profession was left to figure out the impossible.  Teachers were left to participate in an event with different and barely discernable rules, while the rules and plays and scores of games from long ago got top billing in the nation’s newspapers.

I watched from afar.  I was like the teacher on the playground at recess.  I saw all of the activity, but I did not play in any of the games.

*1 Thomas Jefferson, Writings: Autobiography, Notes on the State of Virginia, Public and Private Papers, Addresses, Letters, by Thomas Jefferson, Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, NY, 1984, 2011, pg. 880