{"id":307,"date":"2026-05-15T18:35:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chrisvoisard.com\/blog\/?p=307"},"modified":"2026-05-15T18:35:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:35:21","slug":"post-covid-teaching-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chrisvoisard.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/15\/post-covid-teaching-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Post Covid Teaching Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dream Job Nightmare<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The first hectic week in August 2021 I was employed in a public middle school, post-covid, in Belmont, California. I was handed keys, shown to my room, and given the task of transforming a science lab that was chock-full of expensive equipment, into some sort of art room, in a mere four days.  Never mind figuring out how I was going to devise an art curriculum for about 150 kids a day, I was physically immersed in trying to move mountains of beakers, burners, frogs in boxes, thermometers, scales, weights, books, and other stuff stored and forgotten about, out of the room so I could move in some art supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wow! this district has money, <\/em>I thought\u2026 I was used to begging for supplies, and teachers hoarding crayons. I was sweating solo during those hot August afternoons, looking for carts that were hard to find, as well as custodians or any human to help me answer questions in the vast, concreted prison-like campus.  Where was everybody?  I had questions! Usually, schools were bustling the days before school started, but this one was dead, I thought the teachers may still be hiding somewhere with a stay-at-home covid hangover. Whenever I ran into another human on the soulless campus, it was a masked face with suspicious eyes.   Finally, a woman came into my room, who I later learned taught science next door, and said without greeting or introduction, \u201cWhat are you doing with all that equipment? It belongs to the science department.\u201d  Hmm, not too friendly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I couldn\u2019t find a teacher\u2019s room where people gathered. Usually a school had a central hub with some snacks put out, but I couldn\u2019t find one, except the office, where there were three women sitting in masks behind a fortress of thick plexiglass. I timidly went behind the counter to ask them a question, and was met with six eyes of full hostility. It seemed the only way people communicated at this place was via email. Every once in a while, I would take a break from my boxing and hauling, and reluctantly check the emails, and I was always sorry I did. I would rather exhaust myself physically than look at a screen trying to decipher emails. I saw nothing helpful about the first day of school, welcoming the kids, teaching, introductions of new teachers like me, or anything I wanted to know about.  All of the messages seemed to be about covid protocols: masking, testing, distancing, and cleaning, so I just skimmed over them, I couldn\u2019t absorb it all and get my room ready at the same time.  One email, though, the day before school started, grabbed my attention, so that I had to go back and read it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The letter said something like I\u2019d like to introduce myself, my name is Mrs. So-and-so, and I am so excited that my son, who is in 7th grade, will be having art with you.  I thought you should know that I am the mother of two cis-girls, but (girl’s name), identified as bi last year, has decided to transition and now identifies as male, and would like to be called (boy\u2019s name), and uses the pronouns he\/them\/theirs. His older sister is now in high school, and now identifies a lesbian, although she identified as non-binary last year.  I thought you should know this in case there was any confusion on the roster.  Also please note that he (boys name) is very sensitive to certain sounds, such as chalk on paper, so keep this in mind when you plan your art lessons.  Thank you and look forward to meeting you!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was like, what was that?  What\u2019s a cis-girl?<\/em>  They\/ them?<\/em> I really didn\u2019t have time to think about what it meant, I thought that it must be a crazy lady who wants attention.  I had met plenty of mothers that demanded that their kid was somehow \u2018special\u2019 during my many years of teaching, but a 7th<\/sup> grade girl wanting to be called a boy? That was new, but I didn\u2019t think much about it, I was too busy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

School started, and on that first, beautiful sunny day, the air was still filled with slight wisps of the back-to-school feeling that I have experienced all my life, the excited reuniting, the chattering, the nervous self-conscious newbies, brand new outfits, sparkling white tennis shoes, and un-scuffed backpacks.  This ritual of rebirth happens every year even though the students and teachers have only been away from school for about ten weeks, and a common refrain is always, \u201cWhat\u2019d you do this summer?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year was different, the wisps of that familiar feeling were there, but under a heavy cloud of PTSD since the school had been shut down for 18 months, not 10 weeks. The only students who had physically attended the school before were the 8th<\/sup> graders, who had gone home in the middle of their 6th<\/sup> grade year, never to return until now. The 7th<\/sup> graders had only known the teachers and their fellow classmates via Zoom. The sixth graders were thrown out of their elementary experience in 4th<\/sup> grade, only to be injected into this teaming mass of around two thousand masked kids who meandered around the concrete, many of them standing by themselves looking down at their phones. There was no first day of school assembly, since gathering was to be avoided as much as possible, only orders barked out over the school intercom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I gazed out over the scene, standing at my classroom door, feeling like an idiot, not only as the new, somewhat unwelcomed teacher, but because I was wearing a mask. I didn\u2019t know how I was going to reach these obviously traumatized kids with my face covered.  An old teacher\u2019s saying is, \u2018Don’t Smile Until Christmas\u2019 so that you can establish that you are the strict, distant, emotionless boss at the start of the school year, and kids didn\u2019t take advantage of you.  I generally didn\u2019t follow that rule. Some have called me strict, but it\u2019s only because I don\u2019t want them to know right away what a pushover I can be.  I\u2019ve connected with many kids with kind smiles, and I wasn\u2019t going to have that important tool in my box this year. I had had many years of experience teaching middle school, but I had no confidence in what to expect this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I had finished cleaning the class room, working like a maniac all weekend, and had put up the finishing touches of Van Gogh posters, art vocabulary, and inspiring Picasso quotes. I had only a few art supplies, some colored paper and paint that I had scrounged from the other art teacher who was very reluctant to give me anything although her room was overflowing with stuff.   The only things that I had been generously equipped with as far as supplies were cartons of boxed covid tests that took up two cupboards worth of space, sanitary wipes, disposable masks, rubber gloves, and gallons of hand sanitizer that we were to put in smaller bottles so that we could squirt each of the student\u2019s hands as they entered the classroom, instead of shaking them or giving them high-fives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I somehow made it through the first few periods in a blur, hardly connecting at all with the sea of masked faces with expressionless eyes, but mostly trying to figure out how to take roll with the software system in the computer, and listening to the never-ending commands that came out of the loudspeaker. Please remember to only pull your mask down while you are eating, and to pull them up between bites, <\/em>it said before the bell rang for recess. I had to go to the bathroom badly, but as a teacher I was used to holding it. I didn\u2019t go before class started mostly because I only knew of one faculty bathroom on this vast campus, and it was like a five-minute walk away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey, are we supposed to walk all the way down there to go to the bathroom during out ten- minute break?\u201d I somewhat breathlessly asked the science teacher next door, who I now knew by name, since we shared a common storage space and copy machine between our rooms. She told me that teachers in our wing could use the single-stall handicap bathroom at the end of the building that was between a boys and a girls bathroom.  I thanked her, and ran along the building to the end, where I saw the three bathroom doors, only to find the middle door, with the handicap sign, locked.  I waited, walking in circles. I considered going in the girls\u2019 student bathroom but I knew we weren\u2019t supposed to. No one came out.  I knocked. No answer. I waited some more, panicked that break might be almost over, and yelled through the crack while slapping the door with my open hand, is anyone in there? <\/em>I could hear movement, but no one came to the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked around wondering what to do, getting desperate, when I spied a teacher on yard duty. \u201cHey, I\u2019ve really got to go to the bathroom and I was told to use this one but it\u2019s been locked all break, and I think there might be some kids in there.\u201d  She walked over to the door, put her ear to it, barked a couple of words in an authoritarian voice, and taking out a ring of keys,unlocked it.  I was shocked to see a half a dozen kids in there, looking at their phones. \u201cWhat are you guys doing in here?  Don\u2019t you know this is where teachers have to go to the bathroom?\u201d I yelled as the group of kids, dressed in Goth style, as they silently filed out without even acknowledging me. The yard duty lady didn\u2019t say anything.  I\u2019m thinking, what the hell <\/em>as I pushed the torrent of pee out, and ran back to my classroom to get ready for the next period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I poked my head into the teacher-neighbor\u2019s room. \u201cAre kids allowed to go into that bathroom?  There were a bunch of kids locked in there looking at their phones, the yard duty didn\u2019t seem to care, and I had to yell at them to get out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, that\u2019s the trans bathroom,\u201d she said casually.  The trans bathroom<\/em>?  I must have missed that memo.  I thought back to that email I got from that mother. I knew what trans was, in fact, I thought I knew about it more than most people, since my mother\u2019s cousin, Jan Morris, was one of the world\u2019s most famous and early pioneers of transitioning from male to female when he was in his 50\u2019s. I had read her book, Conundrum<\/em> that explained a lot.  It was my understanding gender dysphoria was very rare psychological disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe trans<\/em> bathroom?\u201d I repeated.  \u201cHow many trans kids are in this school to warrant a whole bathroom?\u201d  I wondered if there could more than the kid with that crazy sounding mother, whoever that was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, around fourteen,\u201d she said like it was the most normal thing in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFourteen?!\u201d <\/em>I couldn\u2019t believe what I was hearing. \u201cAnd are they all allowed to go into the one single toilet bathroom at the same time? The handicap bathroom that we\u2019re supposed to use?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, that is a \u2018safe space\u2019 for them,\u201d and her sentence was cut off by the bell.  I closed my gaping mouth and went back to greet the next bunch of masked students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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