"There are no good answers." I've said these words approximately five thousand times in the past few months. I say them when people ask, "So, seriously. What do you think? What will school look like in the fall?" Then they tell me why they're asking. It usually takes me a couple sentences to identify their "side." My child needs to be back in school. I have to work. I can't lose my job. Last spring was a disaster. My child needs socialization. Have you seen the data? Hospital capacity is lower than ever. We have to get these kids back in school. Special education! English language learners ..read more

"What do you do all day?" This question came from my mother on, oh, about March 19. She is always curious about my job, and the idea of me overseeing a school from my living room was especially intriguing to her. "I don't know what I do all day, Mom. All I know is it's taking me 14 hours a day to do it." She laughed and told me I'm probably handling it beautifully, which, of course, is part of her job. She has complete and unwavering faith in me. She's good at her job. Like all my educator colleagues, remote teaching and learning struck us like a thunderbolt. At first, it seemed overwhelmi ..read more

A woman I know is out of work. She was laid off in February. "I kept telling them they didn't need my position. I told them they should cut it. Promote me to do something bigger." She laughs. "They listened to the first part and not the second." She doesn't know what she'll do, once she's on the market—when her unemployment runs out, she'll look again. "I was in sales for thirty years, but finally put myself out to pasture. I can't sell anymore." Then, as is her way, she corrected herself immediately. "But that's not true, because I will have to sell. All of us have to sell. All jobs are sale ..read more

I launched this blog because I'm a school principal and I have a lot to say about that. But over time, I've sometimes wished it were something else. I feel a pull to tell personal stories and overturn memories. Especially now. I'm in a mood. I have professional fatigue with these days. So many edu-blogs feel judge-y and pretentious, both adjectives I'd rather avoid, thankyouverymuch. So let's talk about Mother's Day. No, no, no!  Don't leave! I don't want to talk about my kids making me breakfast in bed (god, no, please) or the cute cards they created from bits of construction paper and ..read more

When I was a kid, my mother adored lilacs. She still does. There was only one lilac tree on our farm, and it was a spindly little thing whose flowers barely bothered to open. It grew, reluctantly, from behind the dilapidated workshop where my father repaired broken farm equipment. Seven or so years after they'd move to the farm, my father tore it down and built a bigger shop, this time with a real concrete floor and a functional garage door. It had a chain, even, to raise and lower it. He saved the lilac tree. "Probably the only thing I did right in this marriage," he mused to me once, which ..read more

Son: Mom, what have we done that's creative? Me: Um.  What? Son:  It's for language arts. I need to write something we've done over the last six weeks that's creative. Me:  I can't think of anything. Crap. I mean, we must've done something creative, right? Son:  No. Me:  Well, I don't know. Think of something. I have to work, honey. You know that. Son:  Mom! Me:  [putting aside my laptop, swearing I won't forget what it was I was doing before this hundredteenth interruption] Well, okay. Creative. Sure we've been creative. We've... well, we've cooked. A ..read more

COVID-19 has uncovered some of the solid truths about education and "school": How much we need and love the actual physical space, how much we value what happens there, how much we depend on one another for energy and momentum. These are truths we’ve long known, as educators, but now get to see the rest of the world understand, too. Here they are. Community: Yup. We’ve always known it matters to be part of a community—as a classroom, a school, a town, a place, a where-we-live community. We see it so clearly now in our students and their parents. They are looking around for their people. The ..read more

“You’re a fine writer,” Professor Slote told me. “But there’s a student in the class who is better. He gets the ‘A’.” He lifted his shoulders dismissively. “That’s how it works in my class. One ‘A,’ one ‘F.’ Everyone else falls somewhere in between.” I started to cry, a reaction I regret to this day. I'm still mad that I cried. I couldn't have stopped, though; the tears were of frustration and fury, born from fifteen weeks of hard work, early morning hours spent in a cold basement computer lab, revisions and edits beyond count, all to to fit my words to this man’s schema of good writing. “I ..read more

Sixty-seven years ago, when my father was five, his entire spring term of kindergarten was cancelled because of the polio epidemic.  He was delighted.  He could play outside!  All day, every day!  At the perfect time, too!  Winter had faded; trees were blooming into spring and the days were lengthening into warmth.  I imagine him, all full of sass, dusty nose and monkey bars and bikes and baseballs, sprinting pell-mell down the street to stir up mischief.  Many kids weren't allowed outside, but some kids were, and they thought it was great fun to sneak up to spy on the houses of kids who were ..read more

I'd been waiting for the email, assuming it would come.  Coronavirus fear kept building, and all the media output, opinions, and cancellations were piling up.  On the phone, my sister said it was coming.  She was making pancakes for her kids, so I heard the rattle of the spatula and the sizzle of the butter behind her words, and I could picture her shrug.  "They have to cancel, Jen.  They can't not.  It's too scary."  My friends and colleagues said it was coming; one of them, in particular, should be in Austin right now at the SXSW conference, a trip she'd been excited about for over a year. S ..read more