Where Carrot Farming and Covid-Teaching Collide

August 5, 2020

~Welcome to the Carrot Farmer Memoirs~

page. 1 😏

    This coming week begins my 16th year as a public school teacher. More than anything in the whole wide world, my one true passion is being a classroom teacher. I teach the wide-eye wonderful toothless grins of first graders.  Except, this year... their toothless grins will be hidden behind masks. They won't be allowed to sit beside each other unless they're masked, and they won't be able to see each other's smiles, unless they're 6-feet apart. That's become the new mantra, Amaste ~ 6-feet away.👲👸

I'd rather our new mantra be... 

i don't like it ~ not. one. bit.

    Teaching in #post-school-spring-shutdown-covid-2020 mode is, most likely, going to be one of the most challenging, heart-wrenching, mind-boggling things that I've ever done in my life.

    Page after page of district guidelines & procedures that we'll have to follow, with very little support just yet on just how we'll carry out what we're being asked to do. Getting ready to teach this year feels like a new enlistment soldier, waiting for orders to an unknown destination, trying to anticipate encounters that will not unfold until they get there.

    This morning it dawned on me that teaching this year in my covid-clad classroom is most likely gonna be a lot like my experience this summer, at being a first time gardener. Particularly, a first time Carrot Farmer... where I had absolutely no clue how to go about it, & no clue what to expect! And many things didn't at all turn out as I expected. I planted seeds that didn't grow as expected, and some not at all. 

    Even so, my heart is anticipating great things, in spite of my human mind having no idea what to expect. Deep inside my heart though, like a seed planted deep within the rich dark soil, there's reason to believe that something good can and will come of this. Setting my sights upsom reflecting day by day, on just. how. hard. this all seems, will give me a way to process my thoughts, and see what God reveals to me through those hard, hard lessons that I'll understand along the way.

    Welcome to my pandemically-challenged-TeacherHeart-Memoir, where I pour out my heart, & looking forward to tiny glimpses of hope that will grow, in spite of the weeds. My prayer is that that somehow the random thoughts of my heart might lit up & encourage others. My deepest prayer is that my faith will bolster a bountiful harvest of hope for my heart! 

     Just as I've never lived through a pandemic before... up until this summer, I'd never attempted my skills at growing a garden. But I'm doing it! And there have been surprise blessings every day, in spite of my not-knowingness...

   If there's one thing that I've learned so far, since this 2020 pandemic began in our country, is that I have ab-so-lute-ly no control over the actions or opinions of others.  Especially right now as all the details of going back to school, that are swirling all around inside my heart & mind seem just. so. messy. This morning I'm reminded of the promise of Proverbs 3: 5 & 6 that says:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your path.

And Philippians 4:9 

  9Keep putting into practice all that you learned and received from me & saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.  

And So begins my maiden voyage as a first-year covid-classroom teacher!