I sit, a woman of average means and multiplying wrinkles, as a survivor of the Zoomiverse. I’m not sure if I’m better for having taught a lifetime of high school classes on Zoom, or if I can look at a computer screen the same way ever again, but I can say that I am still sitting up.

I have to admit something I was too afraid to say out loud for the entirety of 2020, which is that at first I was relieved to be a Zoom teacher. I didn’t think I could hack a year of teaching in person. I know, why did I choose this path if I thought I couldn’t do it? My brilliance is still buffering on the answer (something one of my students said). But in August 2020, Zoom felt like a relief after waiting all summer for an answer about whether or not we were going into hybrid (more on this in a moment). After all, if the students failed miserably at everything I tried to teach them, I wouldn’t be entirely to blame. Zoom is two mutes shy of impossible for even the best teachers.

And I was right: the students did fall flat on their faces and the teachers did too. So once we were all good and limping, we were tasked to switch to a hybrid model (a blend of in-person and remote learning options) for the last 9 weeks of school; it was a mental and physical evisceration. I called my mom in tears on the Sunday after the first week had ended because I didn’t know how to get through the next five days. For the first time in my career I was facing students who were facing me with 50 minutes to fill.

The standard I set for myself, of course, is that they should be engaged for all 52 of those 50 minutes or I would not build a strong teacher-student relationship, or I would have behavioral issues as a result of poor lesson plans and watch my career go down the drain like corked wine. So here they came trodding into my classroom, teenagers who I’d only seen in the form of black screens or from the neck up for 24 weeks, sometimes just two or three of them for a whole class period because the rest of the class opted to stay home.

For some class periods, the most engaged students elected in-person, and for other class periods the engaged students stayed home. I lost my zoom students entirely and then I had students who came to school for in-person but had essentially been absent on zoom all year and hadn’t learned any content. If you’re dizzy, you can add a waning ego and nubile teacher anxiety to the cocktail. The bitmoji is no exaggeration, sadly.

“What’s the big deal? It’s high school Spanish” is what I can imagine anyone thinking, and while I totally agree that there are more vital jobs, it’s a big deal to me. It is my career and my students are my responsibility when they walk in the door or join the waiting room.

I couldn’t see the forest for the trees, or all the little wins I made everyday, because I was too overwhelmed by all that is expected of a teacher. If you’re curious, you should see the Danielson framework, what a KNEE-SLAPPER.

Oh, how am I doing now you ask? Well, much better.
I did it. I turned in the things (grades). I walked down the aisles (graduation). I tried my best at the laundry list of interventions to get my students to turn in their work and pass. The list is as long as my arm for things I have little to no idea how to do, but paciencia pulga que la noche es larga.

The thing about the fourth quarter was, like a bad movie, it didn’t last forever. (The bad movie was me watching my own face on Zoom). And everyday that we got closer to May, the anxiety that ate at me like osteoporosis of the mind loosened its grip by 11ish give or take. Somehow every waking panicky thought found me in those early hours when I had to stand in front of the students and try to teach them a language that most, maybe half at least, did not want to learn. It’s not their fault, our education system is complicated and I know that. Our system, period, is complicated and reflects our systemic injustices like an echo into a canyon.

But on a happier note: this job has to be the one for me.

If it’s true what the kids say, that they learned something from my zoom class, or that they enjoyed Spanish, or that they liked the gestures we learned, or that they asked me to speak before graduation or say I’m “dope and need more hype” (#dead), then I am not going anywhere, not even on my worst day, because this job is exciting, impossible, interesting, compelling and downright important.

On a personal note, I found myself flexing muscles I didn’t know I had. In the face of tremendous anxiety over my future or romantic landscape or ability to make it with my family a planet away (Georgia), I rallied and get through my classes. I proved something to myself that I didn’t know I could, which is that I can rally if it’s worth it to me, even in the face of kids whose maturity is still buffering to the point that they don’t understand the lengths I am taking to reach them.

And I don’t think any other place will have me.