From a Burning Building

Today is Saturday, Day 116 in Bahrain’s stay-at-home time, day 81 of The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. The prompt today is by Susan Cheever. What would you write from a burning building, where there is no escape? You know it’s the last thing you will write. Who do you write to? What would you say?

Dear family,

(Or whoever gets this paper airplane flown out the window of my burning building – I hope you will try to pass it along to my family.)

Well, this is not how I expected to go out. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has made me realize that it could be a fatal bout of coronavirus that does me in or DNA related to my heart or, like this, in a burning building. It has made me more appreciative of my days, hours, and minutes. And now I just have a few left.

What should I say when I’m limited to these few stress-filled minutes left on earth?

First, of all, I’m not afraid. It took me some time, but I’ve realized it will happen. I know that there is a God and I’m thankful I don’t have to be in charge of life or death. So I’m ready.

Having said that, I do want to say that I have regrets. I have years that I was more fully alive than others. I wish I would have been more intentional about making the world a better place. I wish I would have listened when Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke when I was a kid.  I wish I would have asked more questions and demanded more answers. Now, it’s too late. I leave it to you, my daughters. I trust that the world is going to be in a much better place because of your generation. I know you will be better.

It’s getting hot now. I better go fly this letter out the window.

With all my love for now and eternity,

Mom

Remote Learning – What I Learned

This post is week 1 of 8 in the #8WeeksofSummer Blog Challenge for educators.

I will finish up my remote learning / teaching tomorrow. Tuesday is our last day of school, but tomorrow is the last time we will meet with our students. We’ll play a Kahoot selfie guessing game. And say our good byes and best wishes for the summer. What a sad way to spend the last four months of our school year.

I guess the most important takeaway I had after that whirlwind, crazy experience is that students and teachers who own their own learning are going to be most successful at this. There was no way we could help the few students who chose not to be involved. But those who owned their learning were able to keep growing. I’m not sure what our future holds, but I’m confident that the ones who really bought into remote learning, even in this emergency, are going to succeed. I wish I could give a gift to all the troubled or reluctant ones. First, I pray they are safe and just making choices that this wasn’t important. After, I know they are safe, I would give them the gift of being able to want to learn, to be resourceful and take initiative. If they just jump through hoops and try to please the system, this remote learning is not going to work for them.

He did Genius Hour remotely, and it was without a doubt, my best series of lessons this past semester. I wish all of remote learning could be like that!